Me and My Uncle

Call him Uncle Steve. A septuagenarian from New Jersey, he's a sinewy, wiry dynamo of cycling enthusiasm. He's family and doesn't visit often but when he does he becomes an honorary rider for Team Shad.

The ringer from NJ and Dubstoevsky

He got a new bike a month ago, a carbon fiber Cannondale with some kind of extraordinarily expensive and incredible wheels. It was last year's model so he paid half price for it in Florida (where he lives and rides during the winter months). It still cost $6,000. The bike weighs next to nothing and is completely matte black, like a Bat Mobile or something. I mounted my trusty seven year old Specialized Allez Comp (with carbon fiber forks), and off we went, the summit of Mt. Wachusett our target.

The way I devised to the mountain led us on a circuitous route through Paxton and Rutland over classic central Mass terrain - rolling hills, ridges, hardwood forests, farmland, reservoirs, sparsely-traveled country roads. Plenty of climbing, plenty of newly-paved surfaces, a veritable sylvan dérive over farmland and rural byways. But here's the thing - because he wanted to get in some serious mileage, he rode solo earlier this morning ; he put in twenty miles before he even came to Team Shad HQ. Virginian-esque, a real cycling animal.

Uncle Steve, the cycling animal

We rocked it. At one point, we espied a white-jersey'd cyclist far ahead of us. A quarry, I thought. Gradually, doggedly, we roped him in. Steve caught him first (because he was already powering 10 yards or so ahead of me). I reached the guy's rear wheel, rode there for a minute or so, then pulled alongside him.

He looked across at me and said "I have that jersey, I almost wore it today."

Steal your face.

"When was your first show?" I asked, knowing immediately he was on the bus.

"1974" A fellow head, and a real veteran.

We rode as a threesome for a while, racing at considerable speed down Hillside Rd and Causeway Rd. When we hit 122A and asked him if he wanted to accompany us to the mountain, he opted out saying that he had to turn toward home. Adieu, Jack Straw!

My Steal Your Face jersey elicited many comments over the course of the ride, from the guy who leaned out his pick-up truck window driving toward us and shouted 'Dig your shirt!" to the several cyclists on Wachusett Mountain who commented on it and asked where I got it.

It's interesting. Occasionally I encounter the total dickhead driver, like last evening for example when, toward the end of a euphoric 43 mile ride, I was beeped at and swerved at by an asshole in a pick-up truck. This kind of harassment doesn't happen to me often, but it does happen.

Steal Your Face, Mount Wachusett Summit

Though never when I'm wearing the Grateful Dead shirt. Every comment or acknowledgement I've ever gotten by a passing motorist or fellow cyclist has been positive. Today proved no different when, filling our water bottles at the park HQs after climbing to the summit, several different cyclists expressed their connection to and approval of the Dead. It's an informal club of comfortable familiarity.

Uncle Steve and I climbed the mountain, he on his feather weight marvel and me on my aluminum idea of lightness. I followed him as best as I could and in a final surge after turning left at the Summit marker, I hove alongside him then pushed ahead, powering on to the lookout tower summit.

We could see Woo City miles away across the clouded horizon and knew that much of the way back there would be downhill, the descent from the mountain first and foremost. We zoomed downward, cautious of hikers but wildly exceeding the universal speed limit (for cars and bikes) of 20 mph. We killed no one.

And then plunged further downward on old familiar roads from the days when Team Shad was based in Lemonstar - Pine Hill Rd, Mirick Rd, rt. 62. Eventually, we picked up Mason Rd and enjoyed that long, bucolic stretch of car-free spinning. Uncle Steve is used to riding out of Elizabeth, NJ, a busy, urban environment, so a stretch like Mason Rd is a cyclist's glory.

Uncle Steve and the Mason Rd Glory

Notes: Cardinals, crows, chipmunks and squirrels, sparrows, blue jays, turkey vultures; we heard birdsong everywhere, we inhaled the abundant scent of lilac throughout the ride, we smelled the freshly-lain red mulch in the mega church's landscaping, at one point several Baltimore orioles burst across our path rapturously orange-y gold.

Fox on the prowl in Rutland

And on a ride yesterday afternoon/evening up into Rutland, I noticed a red fox in a green and sunny field. I pulled over to watch it as he lay like a cat in the grass, almost fully hidden, except occasionally he sat up to look stealthily around and sniff the air. Surely he was hunting mice and moles

But the sad thing is that spring, as much as it's a time of rejuvenation and rebirth, is also a time of slaughter. Wildlife slaughter by automobiles. Small mammals, snakes, songbirds, these account for the lion's share (no pun intended) of the road kill. Turtles crawling across the roadways to reach sandy berms are routinely crushed, though I haven't seen one yet this year. But yesterday I came upon a chipmunk still flapping from the impact of the car wheel that had crushed its back half. Last week I whooshed past a three foot water snake that had just been run over. I circled back to remove its body from the roadway for the sake of its animal dignity and to my horror its front half lurched upwards, mouth agape as if both snapping and gasping for air. It was still alive! But doomed and dying, it offered no resistance when I lifted it with a stick from the tarmac and laid it in the shade on the roadside.

OM AH HUM

Parting Shot

Racing down the row of oaks on Jefferson St