...winter chased by springtime...Pushing pushing pushing. Everybody says "Join our religion and get to Heaven." I say "No thanks. Why, bless my soul! I'm already there."
You can keep your zombies and your Popes. While I like the imagery and the fancy clothes and the smoke and the mirrors, the cost is prohibitive. I'll take my Glorious Suffering in personal doses and inflict it on myself. And of course, those immediately around me...
Pinnacles Weekend 2010. So and so's Birfday Ride. A lot of us started. From Santa Cruz to the Pinnacles National Monument. 90 miles the hard way. Roads,
railroad tracks, thorn-filled meadows, and dirt roads.
Whiskey stops.
Flat stops.
Flat stops.
Flat stops. Ok, so all these were from the same flat stop, because I got tired of pulling the phone out to "document" flats. Several people had multiple punctures per wheel at this stop, which was immediately following the bad idea to ride cross bikes on railroad tracks. You'd think it was the sharp ballast stones that gave the flats, and you'd be right. But you'd be righter still if you thought it was the thorn filled exit from those tracks that really did the trick. It soon became ridiculous. We tried to roll out several times, only to have another cry of "Flat!"
Ridiculous.
Alls I know is, if you are amongst a peloton of flat receivers and you yourself just stand there smugly not checking your own tires: you will find after everyone else has fixed their flats because they did check their tires that they will not wait for you while you fix your front flat. The one that you get 5 minutes down the road. Especially if your tube of glue blows out at the seam, and your patches are old and dried out, and you use your only spare (after that very morning reflecting on your County Line experience with this same general bunch and declining to pack more than one extra tube. Like an IDIOT.) and then you find your rear has 2 more goat heads in it, and you have to borrow a tube which has already been flatted/patched from someone else...
LESSON: pack 2 extra tubes.
LESSON: check your tires for thorns if everyone else has thorn flats!
So it was a Good Thing I bought those 2 extra tallboys after we got lost and missed everyone in San Juan Batista. Because it was dirt:
on the San JuanBatista de Anza Trail
and then a lot more road until the dreaded La Gloria. I'd forgotten much of last year's event but I did recall the long, hot,slow climb up La Gloria and it's washboarded jackhammer of a backside.
2010 saw a cool day get colder, so heat was not an issue. Long and slow apparently are constants. At least for me.
The back side was cold and bittersweet. I felt as though I'd ridden right up to my limit and kept it there for some time. That's a Good Feeling.A lot of broken dreams were left in tatters on that ride. Temporary alliances formed and melted. People were offered lessons in how to ride in a paceline. Some learned, some did not. Moves were made and emotions got the better of many. Desperation pedals in squares, while anger smoothly pushes circles. The finish lies deep in the night...drunk, next to the campfire, with it's shoes off if it's smart.
One of the really nice things about this debacle is the non-riding folks who show up and camp out. Families and sweethearts are not excluded. The Pagan celebration of the Magical Egg-laying Rabbit came early the next morning. Very early for those who had competed to the bitter end and only hours before stumbled to their inside-out sleeping bags.
I guess there's all kind of ways to celebrate.
3 comments:
I like you. You make me smile.
makes me want to convert the xcheck back into dirt mode and go a rambling.
Desperation pedals in squares, while anger smoothly pushes circles.
well said. on that ride, i witnessed a lot of squares being pushed by me, if for no other reason than reasons for anger were so few and far between. opportunities for desperation, on the other hand, were obvious and abundant.
well, i guess i didn't have any flats.
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