57 on Saturday

Hunkered down with a pint of strong latte at six AM. The gray Sunday morning resounds with bird song and the first hesitant raindrops patter the crab apple tree.

I should be speeding swiftly north in the team car, headed to the starting line of the Tour de Haunch in the hills west of Brattleboro. But I am not.

Dubstoevsky earlier in the week

I, Dubstoevsky, marauding Amur tiger of the Russian taiga, have been reduced to tabby stature by the ignominy of a few showers. Or downpours. Even by the threat thereof. Appalling.

Dubstoevsky reacting to the news of showers

Shad fans are rightfully disappointed by team management's decision to withdraw from the grand Heifer ramble. But these things happen in the shadowy world of Big Time amateur cycling, and sometimes the sensible decision comes across as folly or weakness or calculated evasion. There's nothing to be done about it. The races and the challenges go on. The cowering tiger cub tastes fresh meat and learns how to snarl, learns how to hunt.

Once the decision came down to abandon the quest for a Triple Crown this season, the logical response was to seize the moment and ride. Saturday, after all, was a jewel of a day, the kind of clear, bright, not-too-hot day that cyclists dream of.

A mountain summit seemed the logical goal, with a punishing but rewarding route to the base a prerequisite. So, flogged by the lash of guilt over abandoning the Heifer, I checked to make sure my claws were still attached to my paws, climbed aboard the aluminum shad, and set out for Mt Wachusett.

The summit in the distance

Ah, the sweetness. The sharp, pleasant morning air, the landscape pulsing with green. You could almost hear the photosynthesis, the expiration of oxygen by every tree, shrub, roadside weed. And where just a month ago you could look deep into the forest and clearly make out the landscape's folds and ridges and rocky quirks, today all is a tangled thicket of Green. The long dun views through the naked trees are gone until autumn.

Which is fine. We are now fully in the season of verdant extravagance.

View from the last climb before the summit

But while the landscape disappears into the Big Green Embrace, the close observer is often rewarded with glimpses of wild critters going about their springtime business. So it proved to be Saturday morning. In a wide, still dew-dampened expanse of shaggy field, beyond the red-winged blackbird perched & signing on a conservation land sign, a large white tail deer grazed at the meadow's edge. She looked up and briefly gazed at me across the hundred yards that separated us.

Not too further along, a gray shadow loped swiftly and silently across the road, from one fern-strewn berm to the other, and disappeared into the tangle. A gray fox! I breathed a silent OM, grateful for having glanced up at the key moment to see this elusive hunter.

Along rt. 62 in Princeton, on the long climb towards the turn onto Merriam Rd, a large red-tailed hawk leapt from its perch above the road as I passed underneath. For a few brief moments we rode together and I snapped this picture; look closely and nearly in the center you'll see its inverted v-shaped winged majesty.

Red-tailed hawk on the wing

But the day was more than a wildlife lark; there was the business of the summit and the need to punish myself for my abdication. I hit Gregory (Corso) Rd and powered up the steep slope to Mountain Rd, the last stretch before the mountain's base headquarters. A couple of struggling rabbits lurched slowly up the long straight climb ahead and I overtook them with ease, adding them to my soup pot of dominance.

The summit road is now open to vehicle traffic but being still relatively early in the morning there were no cars yet and not many hikers either. As I cranked upwards on the initial long ascent, I glanced behind me to make sure that I hadn't unknowingly become a rabbit to some stealthy predator. No one behind. And no one in front either. So I set my ferocious forelegs to work and, badger-style, clawed my way to the summit.

Dubstoevsky and the Leaning Tower of Shad

But reaching the summit is only half the ride; there's always the small matter of the return trip and despite the plethora of descending, more than a few inclines remain to offer their own challenges. From Princeton to Holden is mostly all descending, but from Holden back to Woo City one encounters a series of small climbs of varying lengths and steepness. The challenge is being able to assault the climbs with stoic conviction and not succumb to the lethargic plod.

Many of the climbs and stretches of the day's ride have been charted out as intervals on Strava. One in particular, the 'Climb out of Tatnuck,' is a short, steep climb of 50 yards or so out of the little enclave of Tatnuck. For some reason, I've managed to hit this climb just right a couple times in the past and ended up among the top twenty riders overall for this interval. To put that in perspective, for almost any other interval that I normally do, I am firmly nestled in the middle of the pack. If 500 cyclists are on record for an interval, it's safe to assume I'm somewhere around rider 295.

Today however, despite arriving at this climb after 55 miles & a grueling three and a half hours, I hit it in stride, got out of the saddle, and hammered up it. I felt good, but I had no idea how good. Only later, after uploading my ride data to Strava, did I find out that I'd ridden myself into the top five overall (small caveat; I share the fifth spot with five others, all of us with the same time).

Parting Shot

One of Dubstoevsky's many fans