Texas Toast

Georgetown, TX. Today, I completed the Red Poppy Century Ride across the rolling hills of central Texas. The Lone Star State challenged me with headwinds & heat, and I countered with gears and Gatorade and gumption. The day was mine!

The temperature only reached 85 today, and there were clouds for much of the morning. But by 2PM on a late April afternoon, the dry heat down here can knock the stuffing out of you. But the real challenge was the 30 mph wind from the south, enough to make the flags stand on end. The route was a loop with about 20 miles into the headwind, and those legs were pure torture. Even in a crosswind it was difficult to control the bike. And, the combination of heat and wind made hydration a huge challenge. In fact, the temptation to take a short cut was about as much as the Wicked Witch saying, over and over, "poppies! more poppies!".

But, I did it! I did not finish at any great speed, and I took several "granny stops", but I'm happy to say I rolled in to Georgetown High School under my own power. On the headwind segments, I geared way down and just crawled along. By the afternoon, I refilled my 100-oz hydration pack with Gatorade and ice twice. It all worked because one of the EMT techs at the final rest stop (92 miles!) said I was one of the few who had a smile on my face at that point.

I can't go without saying that Texans are great people. I don't remember getting 'buzzed' by one car. I got a lot of waves, and a lot of friendly smiles. The rest stops were stocked well, and all kinds of help was cheerfully provided. I appreciate the woman who cheered everybody in to the 40-mile rest stop. (She must be hoarse by now!) And the nice lady who offered to make me a PB&J sandwich at the 82-mile stop. And, of course, there was the woman who filled my water bottle while I was elsewhere engaged, and I didn't realize she had put ice in it until later. I tried to say thanks to them all.

And, yes, there were red poppies. Late in the day, it was easy to stop and take pictures of the fields of bluebonnets and poppies. 

It's a great feeling coloring in Texas on the map. It's such a big state!

A Century Should Be Fun

Last Saturday, April 21, I finished the Lake Anna Century Classic. Lake Anna was formed in 1973 when the North Anna River was dammed to provide cooling water for the North Anna nuclear plants. The irregularly-shaped lake is the third largest in the state. This ride circles the lake, and uses all but one of the bridges over the its estuaries.

It was a delightful day -- sunny and a bit breezy. We passed some beautiful homes and yards, there were many views of the lake. And, for those who kept their heads up, there were many memorable tranquil scenes reflected in water -- an old mill or a peaceful copse of trees. The terrain was not particularly challenging, but I didn't experience any of the advertised 'long, flat stretches'. We were either climbing or coasting on shallow grades. In fact, the grades so dominated the ride that I don't think I really noticed the blustery headwind. But, when we turned into the final 30 miles, the tailwind put a smile on everyone's faces.

We were particularly fortunate with the weather: the following two days were cold with an all-day rain. The nearby Appalachian Mountains even had snow! We grabbed one of the best weather days of the month.

This region of Virginia has an interesting mix of cultures. The quiet affluence of the lakeside homes stands in contrast to the rural farming communities in the adjacent counties. There were many courteous drivers who would wait behind cyclists for oncoming traffic to clear. And, there was the occasional guy in an old pickup truck who needed to voice an opinion as to whether we should be on 'his' road. When you pass through a town called Bumpass, you probably should expect a bit of that. The friend-to-foe ratio was about twenty-to-one, which is as good (or bad) as it is country-wide.

I've ridden on these roads before, as early as the 1980s. It's interesting to see the Virginia Department of Transportation in transition. Long ago, there was absolutely no accommodation for bicyclists. Now, some of the roads have shoulders. But, maddeningly, the shoulders have a tendency to disappear -- sometimes just as you're climbing a hill with traffic coming in both directions. Instilling rationality in road design is one of the reasons I've become involved in bicycle advocacy with our local government. 

For some odd reason, this 'century' went only 95 miles. This makes no difference to my quest, as I've long since colored in Virginia. I have to wonder, however, if there isn't some way to gather up an extra five miles of the rolling Virginia countryside.

But, as I did this ride, my thoughts centered around how pleasant this whole experience was. That includes the anticipation and the mapping ahead of time, as well as the post-ride chatter with fellow riders. On some rides, I want to put on earphones and listen to something to make the miles move faster. The scenery here had so much variety that I was well into the final stretch before I pondered adding a soundtrack.

Interestingly, century events seem to come in distinct sizes. This was a 'small' event, with about 200 riders. The Tristate Century earlier in April was similar in size. There are many events with thousands of participants. It's sometimes hard to tell ahead of time what the scale of a given event will be. I'm expecting that soon enough I'll be riding with a bigger crowd.

Perhaps next weekend: The Red Poppy Ride in Georgetown, Texas. And, after that event, I'll get to visit my grandchildren! Life is good.

I've updated the links at the right to show the rides I'm registered for on the rest of the year. You may have noticed a theme: I gravitate toward those rides with "flat" in the title, or that advertise the avoidance of hills. After all, a century should be fun!

Tri-States Century

Dothan, AL. I just completed my first century of the season. I rode 102 miles through southeastern Alabama, northern Florida, and southwestern Georgia. Thus, I'm now able to color in the entire southeastern corner of the map.

The local bike club has put on this ride for ten years, now. Proceeds go to the Pediatric Cancer Unit at Birmingham's Children's Hospital. Our ride included 17 wounded warriors, who were so fast that I did not see them all day.

Now, the truth has to be told: I was the last rider to finish. The way I see it, a bicycle ride is a journey, not a race. I feel like I got the most out of the ride: I spent the most time in the sunshine of a beautiful day. Lots of great volunteers staffed lots of rest stops, and really expected the last rider to finish later. So, when I got in, everybody got to go home early!

Dothan has a number of cycling events in conjunction with its CityFest. In fact, the Mayor wished us a good ride at the start, standing with a bullhorn and fully decked out to ride (helmet and all!) Thus, motorists are used to seeing bicycles on the roads. I found the good people of this rural region to be among the more congenial drivers I've encountered.

And, I was impressed with the enthusiasm of the volunteers. At every rest stop they would cheer or wish me well. The would not hear of my apologizing for being slow. We laughed about all the hills left to go (most of the hills were in the last 20 miles). But the course was spectacularly well-marked. In fact, they had spray-painted words of encouragement on many of these last few hills. "You LAUGH at hills!" was one of my favorite. And, I did.

You know, I finish a lot of centuries on my own. By the time I get back, almost everybody has packed up and gone. I've gotten used to it, so it's not a big deal really. But, when you arrive at the finish line to a small crowd of cheering people, high-fiving you, shaking your hand and asking, "How many states is that?", it is one of life's delicious moments.

So, for all that amazing southern hospitality, I've put the Tri-States century on my list of "go backs". When I finish this project, over the coming years, I'll keep an eye out for the early April running of future "TS-100"s.

New Zealand Bicycle Tour

I just completed a ten-day, 330-mile bike tour of New Zealand with Backroads Touring Company. My original intention was to blog occasionally during the trip. The good news is that there was too much time on the bike and too much to see and do. So here I sit in the airline transit lounge collecting my thoughts and working hard to remember the best parts.

I’ve been wanting to do this trip for several years. I was one of the six percent of people (according to a tourist office survey) who said that the Lord of the Rings movies motivated me to want to see New Zealand. That, and a late-winter trip helps launch my century season. I was accompanied by eight other Americans – three couples and two women traveling solo. With our leaders Brad and Kevin, we were our own happy fellowship, all enjoying vacation, retirement, or a great gig as a New Zealand bike tour guide. Some of my companions were using this trip to train for their own athletic challenges – mostly marathons and triathlons.

I may have been among the slowest of the group, but I spent a lot of time taking pictures. In fact, I filled my camera card with eight hundred pictures. The best I will post online at webshots. (Readers, do let me know if this does not work!)

Much of New Zealand’s allure comes from its extensive undeveloped regions, some of which are completely undisturbed wilderness. We toured entirely on the South Island from Christchurch, making our way south along the West Coast, traversing the Southern Alps and ending in Queenstown. Much of this area is a temperate rain forest, sprinkled with a few, very small settlements that are separated by dozens of miles of heavy, primordial brush. The road through this region was not completed until the 1960s, and it was another several decades before it was paved.

Despite the fact that the voyage was coastal, you will see precious few pictures of the beach. West Coast beaches are uninhabitable due to the powerful undertow and the ever-present sand flies. These aggressive, biting insects made it difficult to even take pictures along the shore, swarming around any exposed skin and announcing their attachment with stinging bites.

Even though February is summer in New Zealand, this was a wool-and-Gore-Tex trip. We had hard rain for four of the nine days. Much of the rest of the time the landscape was shrouded in a grey mist. I found myself stopping any time the sun came out in order to gather some memorable pictures. And, near the end of our trip, we woke up to find the mountain peaks dusted with an early snowfall.

There was a lot on the balance sheet to counter the weather. The rain made everything green, including trunks of trees and road-side rock faces. The West Coast has little farmland, and there were long stretches when there was absolutely nothing. At several points we passed signs like, “Last Gas for 90 km”. The Kiwis themselves are wonderfully eccentric and care-free. In fact, you really have to remember that they expect you to look after yourself in these parts. I had to remind myself that this was, sometimes, a country with no guardrails.

And, the food! Lamb that melts in your mouth; delicious salmon; great-tasting beef, fish, cheeses and baked goods. We all bicycled hundreds of miles and gained weight. Every meal was a memory. Many of us, when asked, thought that the lunchtime visit to a salmon farm gave us the best meal of the week. Perhaps it was because we were chilled from the rainstorm, but the salmon chowder just hit the spot in such a way that we remembered for days.

First Century of 2012

Last month I finished the Phoenix Metro Bike Club’s Casa Grande Century. This loops through the desert from the southern suburbs of Metro Phoenix through Florence, Coolidge, and Casa Grande. It’s flat, but the desert can deliver some potent headwinds. Today was no exception. The early hours of the day were calm, but by the time we reached mile 55, a serious breeze was blowing from the northeast. Thus, the final half of the ride was an upwind grind. I’m happy to say that I was able to pour on the coal for the final 15 miles, maintaining about 13 miles per hour into the wind along Arizona route 87.

The PMBC runs a nice century. It starts at a civilized hour of 8AM, but one should arrive early to avoid the lines at the check-in table. This is one of the only centuries in the country in January! One should also bring something warm for the morning chill. While Arizona temperatures reach the upper 60s in January, the mornings can be a bit chilly – especially on the hands.

At first blush, there’s not much to day about riding in the desert: cactus, sagebrush, crows and buzzards. In reality, if you’re paying attention, there is a lot going on. There is significant agriculture out on the Arizona desert. I passed numerous irrigation canals, pumps, waterworks, and sluice gates. In one area around Coolidge, cotton was a major crop. It was so prominent that balls of cotton lined the road everywhere. Remnants of this year’s harvest could be found for miles, including along the roads leading into the large town of Casa Grande. At one point they looked like little piles of snow.

And there was cattle. Every now and then we would pass a cattle feeding pen, or get passed by a cattle truck. At times like these the wind became a bit more friendly, carrying the unique smell away quickly.

There were orange groves as well, ripe with un-harvested fruit. And, citrus fruit stands sprouted along several intersections.

For a cyclist, development and growth in Phoenix is a good thing. The road designers have been pretty consistent at establishing bike lanes along the major arteries of suburban Phoenix. On this ride, we were able to use bike lanes only in a few areas, but they were a welcome respite to the shoulder-less roads of the old days. The ride organizers advertised the use of ‘low-traffic’ roads, but this Sunday in January seemed to draw a lot more traffic that I had pictured with such a claim. Doesn’t anybody watch the NFL playoffs in Phoenix?

As the Year Ends...

As the year comes to a close, I have been able to complete one more century, and bring my December total mileage to my second highest month of the year! I traveled to Sebring, Florida – the home of the Highlands Bike Festival two weeks ago – to partake of the quiet, flat roads and the sixty-degree temperatures. On the week after Christmas, I packed in nearly another 200 miles.

So this makes 2011 my best bicycling year in decades – and probably the best of my entire life. It bests all the years since 2002, which is as far back as I’ve kept any records. I’m not sure how much bicycling I did in the decade after I left the Navy or in the 1990s. I think if I had done over a dozen centuries, I might have remembered it! (I remember doing one or two a year in the 1980s, but there may have been lots more long rides.)

A cyclist friend of mine mentioned that resting in winter time is a good way to avoid burnout. It’s always a balancing act, because one does not want to lose all the fitness that was gained in the previous season. As it turns out, our winter here on the East Coast is looking to be quite mild. There will be several weekends in which we can enjoy at least a short ride.

One of the nicest outcomes this season is the acquisition of a new bike. The crack in the frame of my Gary Fisher hybrid led to a replacement hybrid bike: a Trek Dual Sport 8.4. I like the hybrid arrangement because it allows me to ride the roads and the trails. The tires are a bit rougher, and one can’t really generate huge mileage on these bikes, but they take you places that are a lot more interesting.

Cold weather, I’ve discovered, also cuts down on speed and mileage. In the winter, even if you’re all bundled up, when you look down at the GPS you’ve gone slower and shorter than you expected. Add in a little chilling headwind and the pace drops even more.

A Wet Century

Sebring, FL. Over the course of 35 centuries, I have seen my share of heat, hills, headwinds, and, of course, rain. This past weekend I got some minor headwinds (minor for Florida), and a big dose of rain. I was enjoying the company of Florida cyclists at the Highlands Bike Fest, held annually at the venerable Kenilworth Lodge in Sebring. This is the "land that time forgot": the urban landscape, the street network, the architecture, and the whole 'feel' of the place seems like Florida in the 1950s.

This three-day festival takes advantage of a quirk of Florida real estate: the first part of any new housing development is the access boulevard. This means that the city is surrounded by long, lonely, well-paved and lightly traveled roads. The roads pass through what may someday be houses, but is currently scrubby wilderness (or cattle ranches or orange groves). On the map there are dozens of side streets, and it looks like a crowded residential gridwork. On the ground, however, there is nothing but straight, flat, smooth highway.

There's not much to say about the rain. It was not in the forecast. It danced around a bit in the morning, but began in earnest at about mile 60. For the final forty miles, I was soaked. The temperature hovered around 70 degrees, so it was not that uncomfortable. It helped that the road was smooth -- potholes hidden by puddles can be a big problem. On the other hand, I believe rain significantly reduces rolling resistance, and can add a few points to your speed.

I felt pretty strong at the end. In fact, I was able to maintain over 15 mph on the last long stretch. On the final straightaway through Sebring to the hotel I had enough juice to put on the afterburner.

I enjoy this warm weather break at the end of the cycling season. I did Highlands Bike Fest last December (when it didn't rain!). In fact, I came back to Sebring again to escape the ice, snow, and cold of Northern Virginia. You can walk around in shorts and short-sleeved shirts. You put away the chap-stick and get out the sunscreen. It's a great way to keep your bicycling fitness up for the coming season.