From Orange with love! Love and honor the spinning wheels. Peter Matthiessen has died. OM AH HUM.
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| Team Lime About I-ward (left) has just gotten a new bike (pictured) |
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| Captain Shad with the Ventoux Jersey from Scrod and lightening impromptu from I-ward |
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| The bare hardwoods the sandy roads the blue sky Mostly it was like this It was chilly at first but warmed throughout the ride |
We wing it. Orange. New Salem. Shutesbury. Pelham. Old mountain biking routes from decades earlier revisited. Montague Rd a sick incline that goes on and on. Jennison Rd. Another Montague Rd. Many dirt roads. If only the Rasputitsa were to be like this! Some softness and melt but much firm moist roadway. We try to imagine what it will be like but we can't. We agree that our approach & our strategy will depend on the conditions. I hope for colder temps, overcast skies, surfaces unmelted. Newport Vermont and the surrounding land currently has a snow cover greater than any around here. A full warm day of melting with roadside snow banks will transform the race into a mud bath. I hope for frozen sand pack.
But ours is not to expect favors from Mother Nature, we're to make our way forward regardless. Life is un gran abrazo, a great embrace. So we embrace!
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| Monsieur Rouge in the foreground The Virginian up ahead |
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| Leaving the Leverett Coop en route to Wendell three quarters through the ride |
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| Spring Melt, the Great Flow, and Us |
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| Eventually it's Shad Time |
Ride Summary: Lots of climbing! 40.80 miles (64 K) over all. Almost a Rasputitsa! Over three hours in the saddle. Plenty of dirt roads. Rutted, pot-holed, squishy. Chilly to start, it warmed throughout the ride. Once again I was dressed just right (even without the brown paper bag which I forgot to bring). We pushed it at times but also stopped occasionally. Getting a sense of what we can and cannot reasonably expect to accomplish. First and secondary; not get hurt, and finish. After that, it's gravy.
I want I-ward's very cool looking bike! Flat dark gray with lime lettering? Mmmmmm. You hope for "frozen sand pack"!!! HARD-CORE! "Eventually it's Shad Time"!!!! You WILL not be stopped! Less than a week to go for you by my calculations - a bit of advice if you don't mind: don't try to dismantle the derailleur on the night before the race. Ride on oh Team Lime About! You guys gonna have uniforms? Pants, jersey, socks (very important for style reasons), neck tube (very important for breathing reasons - keeps mud out of mouth). I take L (currently XL but once I get back on the saddle the pounds will melt away.) The best price for a neck tube that I've seen around here was Euro 7.95. I bought 3. Usually they go for 19. Was thinking of you while reading the Matthiessen obits. Heard about the CIA issue for the first time. SCROD
ReplyDeleteScrod! hey man ... I don't even know what a neck tube is! As for Team Lime About, well, we're a trio of lime abouts so we never organized ourselves for uniforms. We'll be a stitched-together quilt of blurred colors, I'm afraid. But we will ride with headlong abandon, that's for sure. 13 days and counting now. I am READY. Felt really strong on this ride, at one point I even dropped The Virginian on the massive climb up Montague Rd to Shutesbury. But road conditions and the weather will dictate the results of the Rasputitsa more than my own conditioning, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Matthiessen's CIA involvement came out a few years ago, I remember being surprised and dismayed by it. Shortly after that news broke, I attended a talk with the year-from-dying mighty old lion Norman Mailer. After the talk, people could ask questions. I asked Mailer if he was surprised by the revelations of PM's CIA involvement. Mailer scoffed and said "No, not at all. Makes sense, he was the perfect guy for the job at that time ..." (or something like that). No dissing on him, no expressions of distaste - just a matter-of-fact response. So maybe it's no big deal ... the years just after WWII were a different time, that's for sure. Being in the CIA then was, perhaps, more palatable and less tainted with the lawlessness, thuggery, and nefarious subterfuge that later became the hallmark of that shadowy institution. But who knows? I hope someone has been hard at work on a biography of Matthiessen, his career was long and inspired and he knew all the literary giants of the second half of the 20th century. A fascinating life and character. I would read his biography with great interest.
Interesting anecdote with Mailer. I imagine in 1950 it was hard for a college kid at Yale without a socialist background to want to avoid the CIA. The US had just saved the world and was going toe to toe with Stalin, an evil bastard yes but ...
DeleteDoesn't surprise me that you dropped the Virginian - you, at 144?!? Climbing power! M. S.
Alas, my superior mass only benefits me on the downhill side of the rides. Shad and the Virginian dropped my sorry ass on each and every hill. However they are good natured about it, so its not that bad.
ReplyDeleteI Word.
Not a problem, mon, climbing is just a tool that the Moment uses to remind us that we're alive.
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