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