The Return of the Light

Take heart in the fact that it is no longer the shortest day of the year, but the second shortest. And every day now until June grows lighter. 

But much as we want more and more light, there is something inescapably superior about winter light, more beautiful than the other three seasons, especially just before and after dawn, and late in the afternoon as the sun dips below the frozen hills and fills the western sky with wan peach smears and gray cloud boas the colors of hearth ash and washed out apricot.

Or just after 3:00 setting out for a spirited reservoir romp, passing St Spyridon Church, old Greek Acropolis cloud sky embracing the be-crossed dome in the muted sun glare. 

December 4, 2016

On these rides, you have to be extra careful, you have to be aware of your surroundings at all time, as aware as an owl or a mountain lion, you have to take note of every road detail and never let your attention waver. A frozen road surface, an icy gutter sludge, a patch of sand, they could all take you down in a Zen breath. 

So today is the second darkest day of 2016 and I'm filled with light, and trying to be light on my bike, and light in my awareness, and light in the universe, an airy soul speeding along on rubber tubes of air. To the reservoir! 

December 22, 2016

And so 17 miles unexpectedly, a Thursday afternoon late in December, like finding a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk. All the miles between now and spring training are gravy, the low fat version. Every pedaled mile counts as a gold star. 

A Note on Team Shad

Not for the first time did I ponder the odd circumstance that finds Team Shad training on the road roughly 90% of the time, yet the only organized events on the team's race schedule year in and year out are gravel road affairs (Rasputitsa, D2R2, Tour de Heifer). What's up with that? wondered Dubstoevsky near the end of the year. Who is running this team, anyway?

Grim Portents of Darkness to Come

Dark days in America, literally and figuratively. The US election dropped a giant orange rat onto the dining room table and now we're all afraid of what the rat's going to destroy. It is hard to look on the bright side because the shadows cast by America's Folly are dense and long and have cast a pall across the land.

Still, Shad rides. Despite the raw cold, the early onset darkness, the tortured landscapes. Despite the specter of authoritarianism that has suddenly broken upon the country like a poison mist. Joy is hard to come by. The portents of decay are many.

Like the death of this noble creature which I found on the road running alongside the Holden Reservoir on November 27.

Owl down

Farewell, wise one

At first, I rode past it but, realizing what it was, went back to look. Wanting to spare this beautiful creature's body the desecration of being run over by cars, I moved it off the road and laid it down in the bracken alongside the reservoir's edge. I wanted to offer it a dignified resting place, and I asked its spirit's forgiveness for the destructive capacity of my species.

Then I rode on, saddened by the owl's death, troubled by the ugly forces that have been unleashed across the land.

Lately

Team Shad, by dint of the planet's spin and the arbitrary changing of the time, has essentially arrived at the off season. Darkness comes earlier and earlier each day now. Biting air. Hard sunshine. Falling leaves. Wind. 

Rides are catch as catch can.

Still, catch them we must. Team Shad is already on the books for the Rasputitsa (April) and the D2R2 (August) of 2017, so going into complete dormancy for any extended period of time is unacceptable. Besides, neither Dubstoevsky nor Wing Nut could handle that. They get surly and distant when deprived of the bicycle for too many days.

Zooming along the reservoir
November 1, 2016

The November landscape devolves into leaf-whipped barrenness, Bruegelian imaginations, trees, farms with gray, crumbling out buildings. Strange creatures pass gas, card-dealing crabs snap their claws at the ace of spades, whole sheep herds shift fearfully like twitchy coral reef minnow schools, a big fire maw opens wide to suck it all in. Fucknatty!

It's election day in America. Forgive the hallucinations.

Catch as catch can indeed. Like today's spirited dash of 17 miles that took in Bancroft Tower, Chester Rd hill climb, South Rd climb, the Reservoir dash, and a hard-driving return through Woo 'hood. 

Bancroft Tower on election day
November 8, 2016

Holden Reservoir nearing sunset
November 8, 2016

Riding with The Badger, Bernard Hinault

The Badger, Bernard Hinault, five time Tour de France winner, one of the greatest cyclists of the modern era, came to the Woo on a charity fundraising tour. A VIP dinner at the Sole Proprietor Wednesday night, October 12th; then a forty mile group ride the next day, Thursday, October 13.

I, Dubstoevsky, took it upon myself to attend both events, to keep an eye on the Badger, to welcome him to Shad territory, and simply to BE in the presence of cycling Royalty. And also to be able to say "One day, the great Bernard Hinault rode with Dubstoevsky."

Bernard Hinault, Sole Proprietor, the Woo
October 12, 2016

Before dinner was fully underway, and before the person for whom the chair next to him was reserved had arrived, I took the opportunity to sit down, bid him a fond welcome, exchange a few snarls, and bump paws. Turns out, because he doesn't speak English, he didn't fully grasp what I said nor, I suppose, could he appreciate the historic moment that saw Dubstoevsky and the Badger squaring off across a linen napkin and a glass of ice water. Still, I regaled him and he smiled broadly and I took that as a good sign, even though he might have been thinking "I will crush this fake Russian shad clown tomorrow."

But no. Au contraire. The charity group ride is a congenial event, sans competition. Attacks are discouraged. The point is to engage in, and manifest the irie vibe of, the Bicycling Community in general, and the Woo in particular. C'est bon.

The morning of the ride dawned overcast and vaguely humid. The low-slung gray sky seemed weighty with moisture and chill. 9:00 AM Bikes for Life at Webster Sq. A parking lot of riders in full color regalia, many Hinault replica jerseys (I-self included), probably three times as many men as women riders. The vibe is distinctly relaxed.

Then the Badger arrives and a mini buzz percolates through the gathered mass of cyclists. He goes inside the shop and emerges ten minutes or so later dressed to ride. His grinning face is immensely warm and charming. I want to ask him, where's a good place to go in Brittany? what's his favorite part of the USA? what happened during the 1986 Tour with LeMond? 

But I don't. Instead, I listen to a few words by the event organizer who has gathered everyone around in a circle and who urges everyone to relax, enjoy the day, share space at the front, be safe, etc. 

Setting the tone

Then the Man himself speaks though it's evident he's not one for making speeches. He says something like "Have a great ride today, and let's hope no one falls over."

Allez!

And we're off. A long colorful train winding westward toward Auburn. The sun starts burning through the cloud cover and the day begins warming perceptively. After much deliberation about what to wear, I've nailed it. I left from Team Shad HQ wearing a sleeveless windbreaker, but I doff that in the parking lot before setting out. The temperature is actually perfect, low 60s, no wind to speak of.

With this many cyclists, we control the road. In just a couple miles, we're rolling through the 'suburbs,' neighborhoods that form the transition to the more rural byways and the in-between-town connector roads. We have a motorcycle escort. In Leicester, where we arrive soon enough, we pick up a police escort. 

I cruise along, alone in my head, an imagined halo of achievement garlanding my Specialized Prevail helmet. Except paying close attention to the dynamics of the peloton is a must; how mortifying to lose your concentration for a moment, touch someone's wheel, and cause a crash! 

Nothing of the sort happens. In fact, increasingly comfortable in the middle of the pack, I bide my time knowingly, waiting for the climb up Mannville St toward Kettle Brook reservoirs and route 56. That's the climb for me. I make my move on Chapel St and move toward the front so that, when the Mannville climb starts, I'm in the front twenty riders, including the Badger.

Bernard Hinault on the Mannville St Climb

Dubstoevsky riding with the Badger
Mannville St Climb

These are my roads now. This is Shad Territory. The Mighty Hinault may have won EVERY MAJOR RACE EVER, may have conquered every Alp in France, but he's not besting Dubstoevsky in Shad Land, so I launch off the front and put things to right. Phil and Paul have the call (in my head):

Phil: There goes Dubstoevsky! He's having a go of it! Rather cheeky.
Paul: Yes he is, Phil. These are roads that he calls his own. He knows them in and out. The Badger is going to have to dig in his claws now to match Dubstoevsky's acceleration.
Phil: That's true, Paul. And if I know Bernard Hinault, he will not let Dubstoevsky open a gap.
Paul: No he won't Phil, and here he comes now. He does not look happy.

The peloton coming
The Badger 2nd from left

Yes, the peloton comes for Dubstoevsky, that's the natural order of things. And continues onward, sweeping it all up - autumn leaves, tarmac, landscape, and me. 

On two occasions during the day I caught flashes of Hinault descending at the front of the group and his posture was arresting, like a hurtling block of lean granite, with shoulders. There was something distinct about his form, about the way he held himself; without being able to adequately say why, you could just tell he was a professional cyclist. Flashes of swagger and certainty, the slashing hammer of dominance unquestioned.

Here's something to consider. He is one of two cyclists (Alberto Contador the other) who has won each Grand Tour more than once. Grand Tours! The Vuelta. The Giro. And the Tour de France. Mon dieu. 

And today he rode with Dubstoevksy. 

The Five time Tour de France champion, Bernard Hinault (L)
 with Dubstoevsky (R)

Dubstoevsky and the Rigors of Shadity

In the weeks immediately following the D2R2, Dubstoevsky scales back his aggressive training and reins in his typically fast-forward pace. Months of training have come and gone and what's left is, well ... actually, there's plenty of nice weather still and an ample amount of late afternoon sunlight so really there's no excuse, other than the body's natural urge to pause, to not keep charging ahead at breakneck pace, to not maintain an unrelenting assault on ennui. 

In that happy light, Wing Nut and Dubstoevsky rendezvoused the Saturday following Team Shad's abbreviated D2R2 and, in semi self-flagellation mode, hammered out sixty redeeming miles. The Connecticut River was crossed four times at four different places.

4th Crossing of the Connecticut River, 
Sunderland, August 27, 2016

"Dub, it's water under the bridge"
August 27, 2016

Wing Nut, ever ready to sum up complex issues in succinct elocution, offered guidance.

"Dub, it's water under the bridge." 

And now the After Season (though not the Off Season).

Now the onset of autumn and the waning light. The certainty of New England cold. Who knows whether the coming winter will mimic last year's and be a rider's dream winter of no snow and mild weather, or be like two winters ago, a snow apocalypse. It's day to day, ride as one can, ride as mood and sensibility allows.

September has almost slipped away. Dubstoevsky has banged out solo rides in the hills outside Woo City, has lashed himself periodically on hard rushes past the half-empty reservoirs in Leicester and Paxton; though on the whole, there's been a waning of purpose. 

Then Dubstoevsky fled to California, to the high mountains, to the Sierra Nevada east of Fresno. He wanted to get away, to evaluate the season's ending. The stress of the six month run up to the Big Challenge and the frustrating outcome weighed on him.

He had to see the Giant Sequoias. He had to get away from the Shad.

In the company of giants

The President Tree
More than 3,000 years old

Being in the Giant Forest overwhelmed Dubstoevsky. Everywhere he looked, he saw tenacity. He saw the cartoon thighs of Eddy Merckx. He beheld the dogged force of enduring survival. A real gut-check. What was Team Shad and what did it mean to gnaw away ride after ride, honing the sinewy gnarl of quad and calf?

In the end, nothing compares with standing in the shadow of a 3,000 year old Giant Sequoia. Dubstoevsky soul-searched, ran his fingers through his non-existent hair, he gathered duffel bags of sequoia cones so that later he could lay in a porcelain bathtub immersed in the trees' clustery seed husks. There was power to be had, genius to be understood and wrestled with, there was the possibility of attaining the kind of true humility that shields one forever from shame and scorn. 

D2R2: The Mystery Ride and the Implosion of Shad: Part V: The Denouement

Just like that I was alone on East Rd; a long dirt stretch heading back down and a long dirt stretch climbing upward, and all around me hardwood forest, a shaded canopy of calm. 

I walked and pushed for about half an hour. Occasionally one or more riders would come huffing and grinding up the road and pass me at a tortoise pace, head down, suffering. Some asked if I was alright. Others didn't know if they themselves were alright and no doubt, in their own minds, thought "I can barely get up this hill, I can't possibly provide any help or assistance to this poor bastard, whatever happened to him."

I didn't begrudge them. I'd had my own evil thoughts earlier in the day during the Catamount Forest Death March when we'd hooked up with a group of riders, one of whom, Cha Hank, Wing Nut knew. The group was unsure of where they were and Cha Hank saw Nut and exclaimed "Hey! it's Wing Nut! Hey man, you know these roads!"

Just ahead was a little three foot wooden bridge over a stream bed a foot or two below. Cha Hank directed his bike onto it to cross and somehow lost control and endo'd over his handlebars and off the bridge onto the rocks of the stream bed, head face first.

Everyone froze. It looked horrible. And my immediate mental reaction was "Oh fuck, this guy just wrecked himself and we're going to have to deal with it!"

Cha Hank picked himself up, a bit dazed but remarkably steady and uninjured. His bike was okay. None of us could believe it. It had looked awful! Later, I chastised myself for having such selfish thoughts first when encountering a fellow rider's distress.

So when people passed me by and ignored me, I understood and begrudged not a one of them. I didn't want to deal with me either.

Eventually, I pushed my bike passed a guy who was taking a break on the side of the road. We chatted and I explained what had happened.

"But you're stuck in the lowest gear, maybe you can ride" he said, pointing at my mangled derailleur.

"Well, no, see, the chain doesn't turn" I said and demonstrated. Except the chain DID turn. The lowest gear could be pedaled in. Yes, my rear wheel rubbed against the brake pad every time it passed, but it did revolve. I could pedal.

"Holy crap" I said, "you're right" and I got on and, gently, pedaled off. Pedaled up. And kept pedaling. Once, when it got crazy steep and gravelly loose, I got off and pushed, but remarkably I was able to limp to the top of East Rd and hook up with Forget Rd and arrive at Side Hill Farm. It was something of a miracle.

At Side Hill Farm at last

It was also 4:30, more than 90 minutes after Team Shad parted ways. Nut must be arriving at his car anytime, I thought.

I reclined on the grass by the picnic table in front of the Side Hill Farm barn & self-serve farm shop. I did some yoga poses and various stretches in the shade, unwinding, accepting the situation. It could be worse, I told myself, I could be stuck in the forest being devoured by mosquitoes. 

But I am not someone who waits well. I see time wasted as an affront. Not to mention that I require constant mental activity. I'm the type of person who never leaves the house without a crossword puzzle or book or notebook, something to occupy my head in the event I'm called upon to WAIT - for any reason in any situation for ANY length of time. I don't do Idle.

Then I met Jade. She'd stopped at the farm stand because she was in the area, because she knew the farmer who'd sold this farm to the yogurt makers, and because her dear friend who lived near by was dying of cancer. All this I learned after she approached me and asked about all the riders that she'd seen on the road today, what was going on.

I explained the D2R2 and she nodded. Trim, compact, probably around 50 years old, Jade had once biked quite a bit herself (she had a cyclist look about her), so she understood. She was exceedingly friendly and very shortly after we began talking, she offered to take me back to Deerfield (she was driving a vintage VW rabbit - I could have gotten my bike in).

I was uncertain. Surely Nut had reached Deerfield by now and would be racing to my rescue as we spoke.

"I'll text my buddy" I said "and if replies, then yes, I'll take you up on it. But if he's already en route ..." So I texted. And got no reply. But Jade waited. 10 minutes. 15. A half an hour. She'd just gotten back from 13 days in Ireland and England. I asked leading questions to keep her talking but eventually, reluctantly, she had to go. I thanked her profusely, grateful for her kindness and, with more than a pang of regret and second-guessing, watched her drive away.

Then the waiting really set in. 5:30 came. I had texted and called Nut several times with no response. It was absurd to think that it would take him two and half hours to get to Deerfield. I began to fear that he too had had a mechanical and was stranded. Cha!

So I called the only other friend I had in the area, the Mighty HTR in Shutesbury, and laid out the whole situation. I was stranded at a yogurt farm in Hawley, Wing Nut had gone missing, and I needed help. 

Without equivocating, HTR volunteered to come and get me. Saved! How long would it take to get to me? We decided an hour. 

An hour. I'd already been there an hour. 

Then I met Amy. She drove into the farm store parking lot in a golf cart with a young mixed-breed dog running alongside. Amy, it turned out, owned and operated the yogurt farm with her husband. She couldn't have been nicer and we talked for a good 15 minutes alongside the barn looking across one of the fields. I admitted to sitting in the chair alongside the barn and she replied that they often enjoy their morning coffee there. 

The view from the chair against the barn

Amy told me that if my friends didn't show up I should come and find her and we could figure something out. She asked if I needed water but I was all set. Oddly, I didn't feel hungry or thirsty. I had entered some weird state of calm resignation that was unusual for me.

The thing about waiting without any mental distraction is that it forces you to observe where you are, to evaluate what's in your line of sight and in your immediate surroundings. Around the side of the barn, I found the aforementioned old decrepit chair with a wire cage milk crate for a side table looking out on the expanse of field stretching away north and east. I relished it! It was like a secret that no one else knew about and though I felt a little sly and guilty sitting there, I was also seriously psyched to sit there and revel in the view, the space, the sky, and quiet.

Where I chilled

In front of the chair, in the shaggy growth of the barn berm, were plants with puffy seed globes, some fresh and green and new, and some old and dried out and ready to release their seeds. Lacking other mental stimulus, I began to peel apart the seed orbs and look closely at their composition. I felt like Ernst Haeckel* and imagined his studied vision of the minutiae of biology and botany. The finite exploration of completely foreign and irrelevant-to-me life forms washed over me in a wave of soul-searching humility. The field I gazed upon, the weird tiny black insects inside the seed pods I broke open, the kindness of strangers, the failing light of an August evening in the hills of western Mass filled me with appreciation and contemplative patience. Because there was nothing to be done about the situation, I could let go of everything I wanted to manage.

A little after 7:00 Wing Nut arrived, though not in his car but in his companion's, Ms. N's, with she at the wheel and he looking sheepish in the passenger seat. Before they could get out of the car and before we could exchange relieved cameraderie, HTR arrived. Two saviors! Relief and exasperation. Nut was as relieved to see me as I was to see him, plus he and Ms. N, knowing that I'd probably be hungry, had packed water, cheese, and crackers for me.

But what had happened to Wing Nut? In the long period of waiting, I'd imagined him with a broken bike trying to get a ride back to D2R2 HQ; I'd thought of him in an ER somewhere, victim of a hit and run, or victim of some lonely downhill crash, unfound; and none of us even knowing he was missing.

It all came out.

Wing Nut had indeed ridden as fast as he could back to Deerfield and it had taken longer than expected. When he'd arrived at his car he couldn't find his car keys. He'd lost them. And he realized that he'd lost them when we'd stopped at that convenience store/gas station after lunch. They must have fallen out when we'd hung out there drinking the ginger ale and refilling our water bottles. So he couldn't access his phone (my texts! my phone calls!) nor could he come and get me. So he had to ride home, another 30 minutes or more. And then enlist Ms Nut in the rescue effort. It all took time. Four hours, actually.

And HTR? A Giant of good will. OM AH HUM

We all had to go back to the D2R2 HQ because both Nut's and my car was there so I rode back with HTR - after driving all that way, at least he deserved to hear the day's story - while Nut & Ms. N lead the way back.

DNF. Did Not Finish. It was after 8:00 when we finally got back to the big meadow. Everything was winding down. 13 hours and a DNF. A bitter pill to swallow. The 13th iteration of the D2R2. The Mystery Ride had gotten the better of Team Shad. We'd done our best. Circumstance and weird karma had coalesced to transform this year's ride into something altogether unforeseen. The thing is, you can prepare all you want for every circumstance yet something you never imagined can arise at any moment. That's basically how Life is.

That's also how the D2R2 is, a journey unto itself. Every year is different because every rider brings to it their own karma and circumstance, and both change all the time. We like to think that we've got it all covered, every angle, that we're set for whatever life throws at us. By and large we are.

But the D2R2, filled as it is with random circumstance and the whimsy of weather and road conditions, suggests otherwise. 

Sometimes the fucknatty happens and there's just nothing to be done about it but roll with the punches. And hope to do it with the Niceness.

* Ernest Haeckel's observation of mycetozoa

Part I

D2R2: The Mystery Ride and the Implosion of Shad: Part IV

Under way again

We stopped at a convenience store about ten miles after leaving lunch. Almost as soon as we'd set out from lunch I'd been desperate for something cold, something carbonated. It was weird. I lusted for an ice cold ginger ale, preferably in a bottle, preferably from one of those antique soda dispensers where the bottles were all laid on their sides and you opened a glass door and yanked the bottle from its metal cradle and then popped the bottle top on the opener affixed to the dispenser. I desperately wanted to chug an icy soda in a glass bottle from 1972.

Instead, I selected a Ginger Ale infused with high fructose corn syrup in a 16 oz plastic bottle from a wall of beverages in an industrial walk-in refrigerator at a gas station, and Nut and I shared it, standing with our bikes against the shaggy stand of arborvitae at the far edge of the scruffy parking lot. I also bought more water, COLD water. We refilled our water bottles, we reviewed the route ahead and promised ourselves that we were on target for a respectable finish even though we had a long way to go with several savage climbs to come and it was already getting on toward 2:00.

We arrived at East Rd in good spirits. I'd eaten the meditation and concentrated 
on my pedal stroke, concentrated on how my legs worked in tandem with instructions from my head, and everything started to seem do-able again, like this insane enterprise wasn't that insane after all and that stout lads like ourselves could rise to the occasion and, with the proper attitude, summon the requisite karma & just the right amount of energy to get the job done. 

The slopes of Berkshire East

In fact, circumstances were vaguely reminiscent of 2013 when a small group of riders, confident in their motion forward, had breezed by us en route to East Rd, and how we'd eventually caught them and dispatched them one by one. Today, when a clutch of riders had been with us and then gone ahead, I caught myself wanting to show them what Team Shad was all about, I wanted to school them in the Myth of Shad, so after climbing up the first stretch of pavement and coming to the left turn onto dirt-surfaced East Rd, I thought "Okay, Dubstoevsky, time to get it done."

Except it was different from how it was three years ago. I was different. 

Hell, everyday is a new day and any yesterday's performance, while a valid mile marker at the time, doesn't guarantee that on any other given next day you'll accomplish the same feat, or that your body will react in the same tireless manner. It's a day to day thing. A moment to moment thing.

Wing Nut solo'd off the front. I kept him in sight. We passed a rider, then another rider. We entered a long empty space devoid of other cyclists, we were alone, we were Team Shad grinding our competition down, grinding upward, always upward, forward, forever forward, the next summit was just ahead, just around the corner, we were on the cusp of triumph, despite our limitations.

On East Rd

Then I heard a loud snap, a SHOT, like a rock hitting something that pinged. And in an instant I knew I'd broken a rear wheel spoke. And just as instantly I told myself "it was just a rock" and kept on pedaling. And then the spoke jammed into the derailleur and that was that. 

"Nut!" I shouted. He wasn't far ahead. I'd almost brought myself back to him when the spoke went. Utter fucknatty. "NUT!" He looked back, turned around and rode back down to me.

We evaluated the situation. It was bad. We were far, far gone on the Mystery Ride. It was almost 3:00 in the afternoon. Forty miles from the Big Tent where the beer was. Where everything was.

Wing Nut, a chevalier of the First Order, realized what had to happen. In his mind, it must have been bitter to consider. This, his 13th CONSECUTIVE D2R2, would end with a DNF. Did Not Finish. Double fucknatty. And not by any fault or failure or weakness of his own.

We agreed. He would abandon the Mystery Ride, he would take the most direct way possible back to D2R2 HQ in Deerfield, to the big meadow where our cars were, and he would get his and come to Dubstoevsky's rescue. His phone was in his car so in the unlikely event I should finagle a ride to Deerfield, I should text him (yes, I had my phone with me), he would check for texts and voicemail as soon as he got to his car.

He suggested it would take him at least 45 minutes. I assumed an hour, maybe 90 minutes, though I wasn't too clear on how far he would have to ride. He wasn't sure which way to go either. The most direct route would involve dirt roads; would a more round-about way on pavement be faster? He wasn't sure and though I knew where he was going, I didn't have a clue as to the best way to get there.

What we both knew was that at the top of the climb was Forget Rd and that to the right not a quarter mile up, just passed the well-tended 19th century graveyard, was Side Hill Farm, the makers of the maple yogurt that I eat almost daily. Nut said that he'd pick me up there.

I took the Side Hill Farm yogurt connection as a positive omen. Even though Team Shad had bottomed out, the way forward was already beginning to reveal itself. 

Still, it was a sad moment. With stoic Shadian resignation, we said little. Then off Nut went on his mission of mercy, steadily moving up the still-mile-to-go-East-Rd-climb and gradually out of sight.

Part V
Part I

D2R2: The Mystery Ride and the Implosion of Shad: Part III

Finally, the lunch stop appeared on the horizon, a dusty mirage like the outline of Hope itself hovering in watery heat shimmer just up the road.

Shangri-La

The 160K and the Mystery Ride shared the lunch stop and the scene bustled. Sort of. Actually, looking around, there were a lot of tired bodies, a lot of riders looking a bit shocked at what they'd just been through.

Regrouping on the lawn of the Amos Brown House

It had taken us more than five hours to reach the almost half way point. This was alarming. But in the moment, unnerving as that fact was, my focus was strictly on eating: a dreamed-of ham sandwich (with self-added condiments including hot pepper strips, mustard & shredded lettuce), potato chips, a cola, an Oreo cookie, special homemade cookies, pasta salad, shots of pickle brine. 

Wing Nut Refueling

I scarfed it down without saying much of anything. There were some talkative groups around but most of us just sat and sort of stared into the near distance without focusing on much of anything.

Now think for a minute about that combination of food sluiced into the engine quickly and without much consideration. Alas, even Dubstoevsky's fabled iron gullet felt the blow of this food bomb. All that sugar, and that big mass of half-chewed spongy bread sandwich lolling around in the bile amidst the Oreo crumble and the worm-like tubules of pasta. Mix that with whatever remained of the three bottles of warm water drank so far and ... disgusting! 

But there was nothing to be done about it. Then lunch was over. The steeds were called back from pasture and we climbed on. 

Wing Nut's Surly (L) and Dubstoevsky's Specialized (R)

Some of the herd

Up ahead, we'd have another choice:

Note your options for climbing through Hawley! The main course has two very rough sections, but there are road-bike workarounds.

After our morning march through the Catamount Forest (numerous times carrying or pushing the steed), we had no desire for another similar stretch. Time was already an issue and "two very rough sections" would mean more pushing and walking. We decided to take the East Rd climb instead.

East Rd! The site of perhaps Dubstoevsky's greatest ride, the 2013 D2R2 and the triumph on East Rd. I looked forward to it. I thought it would be grounding, that in being on familiar terrain, with its relentless ascent and its shading canopy, I would be able to find a rhythm and recover a little (if not reclaim some of that earlier glory).

Unfortunately, very shortly after setting out from lunch, my thighs began cramping, but a weirdly located cramping. Not the big thick top quad muscle, but the insides of each thigh; whatever sinewy band of tissue and tendon that is, both began seizing up. 

Not good, I thought.

Somehow, the boost from lunch was short-lived. Now the roads were true gravel grinders, long dusty lines along high fields and hillside forests often with sweeping views. Pretty as it was, the loose and crumbly surface made pedaling that much more difficult, and tiring.

Gravel grinder, with view

I churned after Wing Nut, shifting around constantly and paying close mental attention to how I was pedaling. What muscles, what areas of muscle was I depending on? How could I shift the torque from the part of the cramping muscle to somewhere else, some millimeter away in the same muscle? I got out of the saddle and concentrated on using the hips, piston pedaling, rocking up and down, up and down, letting the body's weight itself contribute to the momentum of the strokes.

Nut just barely in sight

Eventually, after about an hour, my cramping went away. I began to allow myself some optimism. Except for the noxious moil within, I wasn't feeling that bad overall. In just a spot of bother, and only a small spot at that.

Part IV
Part I

D2R2: The Mystery Ride and the Implosion of Shad: Part II

I'd imagined our entry into Catamount Forest the equivalent of the fellowship of the ring entering the mines of Moria, though perhaps not as clouded with dread and portents of doom. Though maybe I didn't pay close enough attention. This is what the cue sheet said about this option:

The 200-year history of this road is incredible, from start to finish, but you need fat tires or else will have a lot of dismounts.
First mile is a severe climb; last mile is a wicked descent with a bad S bend.
Across the top are many historical features and three brief sections of hiking trail around beaver dams.

"brief sections of hiking trail around beaver dams." 

That tacked-on phrase didn't register. Until it did. What it meant was that you'd be cruising along through The Woods and come upon swamp and marsh and come to a halt. 

Swampy Impasse

Generally, we sought the walk-around - some beaten down path off to the side that other riders and various outdoor enthusiasts had, by exploratory use, turned into the detour. Many other riders did the same.

When Nut and I happened upon these circumstances, we wisely evaluated our options and generally chose the path of least resistance. Except once, the first one actually, when a low-lying, sloppy, gooped-up trail passage had a decrepit old pallet laid across the nastiest part, a sort of loading dock bridge across the mud suck. With nails.

A group of four or five riders ahead of us crossed over it, and Nut and I did too and almost immediately I heard the unmistakable hiss of air escaping from tube. Flatted! One dude in the group ahead of us flatted too - so while I changed the tire, Nut went back and heaved the pallet off the track. Better a muddy slog than a flat tire.

The forest was relentless. Much pushing or hefting of bikes. The fat bikes ate it up, no problem. We'd scamper out of the way to let them pass. But most of us hoofed it. Which I came to realize was a good thing. It was like forced rest. Not that pushing a bike up a crazy rocky water-sluiced gullet of a road is easy, but it does give the cycling muscles rest of a kind. 

This is not Dominica

Yet a huge motivating force for getting through the forest was the promise of imminent lunch. Just a few miles beyond. Lunch! A ham sandwich! Potato chips. A cola! Sitting in a grassy shady spot with boots off, stretching!

The lunch stop was more or less around the 36 mile point ('more or less' being dependent on which option you took earlier, the Catamount Forest mountain bike option or the road bike work-around), and that was pretty close.

So onward! 

Wing Nut drove the Shad train toward Gustatory Oasis; Dubstoevsky, encouraged by the very idea of food-come-soon, stayed on Nut's wheel. A dry gravel road, rock-pocked; occasional waves of washboard ripple; loose sand of varying depth; the very definition of a BAD road surface for cycling. 

Nut suddenly slowed down, came to a stop and said, verbosely, "uh oh."

Uh oh? "I think we missed a turn." 

A pick-up truck passed us, then stopped and backed up. A whole family. They wondered if we knew where we were, which was Vermont. Macmillan Rd. 

Wing Nut asks "Cook Forest Rd"?

Back a ways. Back up the hill. About a mile. Maybe two. 

Definitely two. That's two miles AWAY from lunch. And two miles more just to get back on track. So back we go. Team Shad, ever righting the ship. 

Cook Forest Rd is the entrance to Ho Cook State Forest and just like that, we plunged back into the Deep Rough, and seemingly a long way from lunch.

Ripping it up in Ho Cook

Walking it up in Ho Cook

Part III
Part I

D2R2: The Mystery Ride and the Implosion of Shad: Part I

Let's just say that things didn't go as planned. Rather, everything went according to plans ... until everything went awry. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

4:15 AM Saturday, August 20 Dubstoevsky awake, lading the Team car with gear and bike, then, with a high test latte and the seemingly-positive portent of a Grateful Dead concert from Springfield MA, January 15, 1979 on the radio, racing westward on empty roadways toward South Deerfield.  

Pulling into the dew-damp huge gathering field just after sunrise, quickly checking in, locating Wing Nut, eating, gearing up. The Mystery Ride at last!

As fate would have it, Wing Nut, ever resourceful and connected, had already procured a copy of the Mystery Ride cue sheet and was not surprised to learn that most of the roads were ones he knows well. In fact, studying the route last night like a monk studying a canonical scroll, he stitched a clear picture of the whole course together in his mind. Rather than, as I'd feared, having to stop frequently to figure out where to go and where to turn and all that, Nut had it locked in his vision like a GPS brain implant. 

The force of Shad

If we averaged 10 mph over the course of the ride (a low estimate but perhaps not too low if conditions were difficult and the route too arduous), that would mean a 10 hour day to start with. Throw in having to stop and check the map, various rest stops, and lunch, and the potential was there for a LONG day out on course. With Nut knowing the route, however, a huge time suck was eliminated. That meant that our overall time would be contingent upon our legs, our stamina, and the course itself.

We were Team Shad! We'd been training for months and the season had come down to this. We were ready for whatever the day had in store. Or so we thought.

At 7:21 AM we passed through the starting gate and were underway. 

Stage 1: Deerfield to Ed Ckark Rd (31 miles)

The Mystery Ride's description had noted that the first half would have more pavement than the second half, and even though some of the pavement would involve some significant elevation gains, the intimation was that the second half was far more difficult. And so that seemed to be as we rolled along on a gorgeous morning, the sun just climbing into a cloudless sky and the sparkly dew beginning to evaporate in the fields.

I thought to myself "This is seductively easy" and "I feel good! 5 miles already, only 95 more to go." 

You sign onto the D2R2 because you want to ride on gravel roads, dirt farm roads, Revolutionary era dray tracks through the forest, but even the paved roads in these parts are spectacular and afford spectacles of visual grandeur that are hard to beat. 

Crossing the Deerfield

Bardwells Ferry Rd, for example, which crosses the Deerfield River then ascends through forest and emerges onto hill top farm land with a impeccably kept farm house estate and a postcard perfect view across the hills. 

Climbing toward the farm top

The interesting thing is that all these roads in the beginning are in close proximity to Wing Nut's home lair. These are his backyard roads, his go-to byways. Nothing mysterious about them! And so we developed a false sense of security and confidence early on. 

Eventually, things got a little more dicey. There were a few stretches of pavement, at one point we turned onto rt. 2 west and passed by the Mohawk Trail souvenir shop, a kitschy tourist shop that's been there forever. It seemed a weird, incongruous familiarity in the midst of the most challenging gravel grinding grand fondo of them all, but so it was.

Wing Nut on the Mohawk Trail

The climbing began, though initially the grade was easygoing, like a well-spoken huckster or a woebegone con artist. You thought, okay, up we go.  

Climbing toward Catamount State Forest

In short order, we came to the "mountain bike" option through Catamount State Forest, an option we didn't even consider passing up. The choice seemed logical - why would we NOT give it a go, even though we were on cross bikes with 700x33 tires? We couldn't come up with a reason to dissuade us. So into the forest we went.

What unfolded was more than an hour slog through near impossible terrain. Check that. Mountain bikes could handle much of it. Fat bikes were golden. In the command of a steely cyclist, they could deftly traverse the deeply rutted, rock-strewn, wet-boulder sluice ways that were considered a "road" through this forest. The terrain was absurd. 95% of us hoisted our rigs and hiked. Not once or twice but repeatedly. 

The entrance to Mirkwood

In fact, any rider concerned with their personal safety or the safety of their bike on these insane stretches, walked their rides. Dubstoevsky, Wing Nut, many others did. Under such conditions there was no shame in doing so. 

Actually, a sense of Oneness and Togetherness pervaded the small, ever-morphing groups of riders who, mostly strangers to each other, found themselves together on wood roads far from the strictures of social norms. Navigating beaver ponds, slick rock descents, the loose scramble of sand and gravel on relentless down hill plummets, the impossibly rocky, storm-gutted stream bed that, in wet conditions, would be a torrent - it was all moment to moment and we all embraced it.

The absurdity of our collective endeavor unified us.

What walk-around?

Like the stretch with the beaver ponds. The figuring out of how to get around them. The Little Kid in each of us wanted to wade through the inundated roadway, mud and slop and wetness being the POINT of it. But practicality (soaked shoes for the next 70 miles??) overruled bravura. More than a few dogged cyclists thought otherwise.  

In the reality of the moment, though, Team Shad concentrated on moving forward, always moving forward. And upward. Everything seemed upward.  Long & sustained grinding inclines, rolling technical attention-demanding runs through the forest, always upward, even when on pavement it was pedal-churning-hard, and up.

After maybe the first two hours or so, much of it on pavement, I noticed with some alarm that our average mph was only 10.6. Uh oh! If we were barely eeking out 10 mph on PAVEMENT, what would happen when we hit the serious challenges ahead?

This concerned me as we rode. Particularly while deep in the Catamount State Forest where the conditions were, well, yes, better suited for mountain bikes. It took forever getting through that stretch.

Catamount Forest

Dubstoevsky's Handlebars

Detour

Beaver pond!

Part II