We Don't Need No Stinking Dogs...

I didn't get to go no the Slo'Bros ride, which means that, next week, when the three of us are riding,

I'll hear about the 57 people who attended this week.

Still, I had a great route planned out for a ride today…

Well, I had most of a great route planned out for a ride…

Okay, so I had a piece of a route planned out and I figured I’d wing it after that, which probably explains why I ended up getting lost.

I would like to say that, despite what Don Bluth would have you think, I do not believe that all dogs go to heaven.  Some of the dogs I encountered on this ride are surely bound for somewhere else.

So the goal today was 30 miles.  I figured I would ride to a certain point and measure the distance.  That turned out to be ten miles, so I would do a 10 mile loop, return to that point and ride the ten miles back home.  Easy.  Until I got lost.

The beauty of this route is that it would avoid a particularly hilly seven mile stretch of road near my house and would have me riding in a part of the county where I haven’t ridden for quite a while.

Did I mention that I got lost?

There was a distinct paucity of street signs on the roads I was riding, so I was operating by dead reckoning, and I must have reckoned wrong.  Eventually I sort of figured out where I was, but by then I was clearly way off course, and there was no way I was going to get back home the way I came.  The best I could do was to point myself toward where I thought home was and hope.

This crazy notion ended up with me riding along a highway for a mile or so before I could turn off it, and then guess where I finally ended up……on that hilly road I had been trying to avoid.  Oh, and forget the seven mile stretch, I ended up all the way at the end of the road, which meant I had 10 miles of it to ride, right into the teeth of the wind.

You know, until that point, I was really riding strong.  I felt as good as I have ever felt on the bike and was just flying, no matter which way the road turned.  Then somebody flipped a switch and I just ran out of gas.  Those last ten miles were a grind, up and down, but mostly up, and then my legs simply ran out of up.  I would have been okay on the flat if there had been any, and I could always be lazy and simply coast downhill, but I just out of up.  Unfortunately the road wasn’t.

How windy was it?  I coasted downhill and actually lost speed.  I call that a headwind.

Also, there were dogs.  I think I encountered every unleashed, bicycle hating, spittle drooling, super sprinting dog in the county.  It got to the point where I was just so disgusted by them that I was yelling at the universe about it.

The best was an Australian shepherd who just wanted to race me.  He stayed on the grass and stopped at his property line.  The worst was a Rottweiler who suddenly burst out of the grass next to me growling deep in his chest and came into the road after me.  There was a little hill ahead of me, and as I gave a kick to get up it, my calf cramped up, but I had to keep pedaling anyway.   Having a slavering Rottweiler on your back wheel will give you a surprising amount of motivation, but this part of the ride was not as much fun as some other parts.

Still, I ended up with 33 miles, my longest ride recently, and, despite the last ten miles, I ended up with a decent pace.  Who knows, there may be some actual fitness in my future.

Going Out of my Way

Today was a day of people encounters.

To the guy in the white pickup truck who thought it would be fun to lean out the window and shriek at me as the truck passed me:  Since I couldn’t actually understand anything you said, I’ve decided that it was something along the lines of:  “You are the epitome of cycling perfection.  I wish I could be just like you.”

To the person who shouted”  “WOOOOOOOOOOO!  You go!” as I rode past your house:  You actually sounded kind of sarcastic to me, but I’ll take your words at face value.  Thank you very much.

To the lady in the van who stared right at me as she pulled out in front of me and cut me off:  Since this is a family blog, I will restrict myself to saying that you are a boo-boo head and let it go at that.

To the boy sitting beside the lady in the van who was clearly pointing me out and remonstrating with the driver:  I like you.  If that was your mother, I’m sorry she’s a boo-boo head, but I won’t hold it against you.  Have a nice day.

To the three scary looking dogs I saw standing at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere watching me like I was a carry-out dinner that had been delivered to their doorstep while the ringing of distant banjos filled the air:  Thank you for simply staring at me as I rode past you and not actually chasing and devouring me.  I appreciate it.

I have been back on the bike for only a few weeks now, and circumstances kept me off of the bike for a week.  Not a good scenario.  In case you’re wondering, when you take a week off after only being back on the bike for a few weeks, you suffer.

My legs asked me what the heck I thought I was doing.  They told me that the week off had convinced them that I hadn’t really been serious about getting back on the bike and they threatened to go on strike, but, after a while, they decided to play along and pedal after all.

The sky was a mass of dark clouds, and it was definitely windy – one of those annoying winds that swirls around, changes direction, changes speeds and makes it very difficult to fall into any kind of a rhythm, and it looked like rain – but I decided to do 20 miles anyway.

Then, about 6 miles in, I hit the detour sign.  The road I wanted to go down was not only blocked by barricades, it had been torn up.  I wasn't feeling any cyclocross urges, so I turned around and tried to make up a new 20 mile route on the spur of the moment.  Good thing my computer's working again.

I had two target ride times in mind:  one which would let me shrug my shoulders and say, "Yeah, that's alright," and one which would make me say, "Woohoo!  I did it!"  As I was nearing the end of the ride I looked at the time on my computer.  Remember that time that would make me say, "That's alright"?  Well, I was 9 minutes slower than that!  Booooooo!  Then I checked my distance.  Whoops.  My 20 mile ride was actually a little over 24 miles.Wait a minute.  That means I have to recalculate my target times, and that means, "Woohoo!  I did it!"

Excellent.

The Interview

And now, it’s Lunicycle Questions and Answers, where we here at the blog answer questions sent in by our loyal reader. 

Q:  Don’t you mean readers?

A:  No.  Next question please.

Q:  So you completed your 15 miles ride today.  What was the hardest thing about it?  The wind?  The hills?

A:  The chili.

Q:  Excuse me?

A:  The hardest thing about the ride was the chili I had for lunch today.  You'd think I would know better after that experience several years ago on a club ride, but, no.

Q:   Do you want to tell us about that experience?

A:  No.  Move on. 

Q:  We hear you had a dog encounter on this ride.  Care to tell us about that?

A:  Oh, yes.  About two and a half miles of road, a couple of little hills on it and a screaming wind that just couldn’t quite make up its mind.  It’s a crosswind.  No, it’s a headwind.  No, it’s a little of both.  I don’t know what you call it…

Q:  Maria?

A:  Really?  That's your idea of a joke?  Anyway, as I’m pulling into this wind and going up a long shallow hill, I hear a dog barking at me.  It sounds like a little dog, and it’s some distance away, so I ignore it.  Then I realize it’s getting closer.  I glance over and I see this long little ball of brown fur running across the yard shouting insults at me and apparently expressing a desire to see the color of my insides, and I smile because I know that little dog isn’t going to catch me, even if I am going uphill into a headwind.  The dog hits the road behind me and just opens up a run I could not believe.  That little guy looked like his legs were only about three inches long, but he could sprint at over 17 mph.  I thought for a second that he actually was going to catch me, but I distance him in the end.  Never underestimate the little fellow.

Q:  Are you talking about you or the dog?

A:  Oh, ha-ha.

Q:  So, iPod or no iPod?

A:  Oh, a controversial question.  No iPod.

Q:  What do you have against music?

A:  Nothing.  I love music.  What do you have against riding?

Q:  I love riding.

A:  So why would you want to distract yourself from the ride with music?

Q:  Um…I’m asking the questions here.

A:  Oh, sorry.  Carry on.

Q:  So, having gotten your lazy backside off of the couch and back onto two wheels, and, let me tell you, it took you long enough.  I mean, if I were you…

A:  You are me. 

Q:  Well, yes, I know that.  When I say “if I were you” I don’t mean that I’m not you, I’m just saying figuratively that, even though I am you, if I were you…I would…um…

A:  Confused yourself, didn’t you?

Q:  Yeah.  Sorry.

A:  Aren’t you supposed to be asking questions?             

Q:  Well, yes, that was sort of the point.

A:  Well, why don’t you ask one, then?

Q:  Well...um...can you think of another question?

A:  Oh, say goodnight, Gracie.

Q:  Goodnight.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of my two wheeled friends!

In a recent post, I referred to geocaching. I meant to make the word geocaching a link to a geocaching website so that anyone who didn’t know what geocaching was could visit the geocaching website to learn about geocaching.

But I forgot. Sorry about that. I think I may have rectified that now. And now, back to our blog about cycling.

If your first ride of the year is an omen of things to come, I don’t know if I should be happy or sad, because my first ride went both badly and well.

It went badly because I intended to join the group ride this morning, but circumstances beyond my control (really!) kept me up too late and I didn’t get up and out of the house in time. When I did get out, I headed toward the start point. After all, it was possible that they would ride in my direction. (Hey, there are only 360 degrees on the compass, so it might have happened. It might have, but it didn’t.)

So I ended up riding alone. I don’t know about you, but I find riding alone when you were expecting to ride with a group to be demoralizing, so, demoralized, I still decided to do thirty miles (which was the length of the expected group ride.)

My ride ended up being 37 miles, mostly because I got lost. Just as I was calling my Lovely Lovely to let her know that I had absolutely no idea where I was, I noticed a sign for a school crossing ahead. Figuring that a school was a pretty good landmark, I pedaled over to it and found that it was a school I had heard of. It was also a school that I had never known the location of. Well, I knew the location now – it was where I was, after all – but that knowledge didn’t help me get anywhere that I knew. All of which is a very complicated way of saying that I was still lost.

Then the universe began to play tricks with me.

I saw a sign for a town I knew. Three miles that way. (There was an arrow pointing. The sign didn’t actually have the words “that way” on it.) I followed the sign. A mile later there was a sign saying that the town was now two miles away. Excellent. I kept pedaling. A mile later there was another sign saying that the town was two miles away in the direction I had just come from.

What?

Well, going back didn’t seem to make much sense, and, somehow I didn’t feel like continuing in the same direction, so I took the first turn I came to. About ten minutes later I found a sign for the same town and it was – did you guess it? – two miles away, this time in a totally different direction.

It was at this point that I decided to ignore all the signs and simply ride until I spotted something I knew. The something I knew finally turned up in the form of a church that I had ridden past with Scott on previous rides. I was on firm footing once again (so to speak, since I was still riding my bike) and could actually point my bike toward home.

I called my Lovely Lovely who was relieved to find that I now knew where I was. I didn’t have any idea how I had gotten there, mind you, but I knew where I was. I was rather farther from home than I had intended to be by that time, but that’s life on the bike.

I was pursued by dogs every direction I went. It was definitely a dog day morning, but, since none of them actually caught me, that was okay. There’s nothing like a large slavering dog, by the way, to make you realize that you weren’t as tired as you thought you were. All of sudden, you do indeed have the energy to go faster than you were going.

So, anyway, I got a nice long ride in to start the year, which is always good, even though the ride didn't turn out to be much like I had expected it to be.

I hope we all have a great year and get lots of miles.

See you on the road.

Flyball

This is not a cycling related post. Why would I put a noncycling post in a cycling blog? Because I am a well rounded person. (Actually, if I don’t get some more miles in, I will be a well rounded person, but that’s another post entirely.) This post is about flyball.

Not, by the way, fly ball as in a ball hit up into the air to be fielded but flyball as in a sport for dogs – kind of like doggie drag racing (without the cars, of course – that would just be silly.) If you have six minutes and 24 seconds to spare, this video does a good job of explaining it:

(Actually, even if you don't have six minutes and 24 seconds to spare, this video still does a good job of explaining it:)



I had the chance to watch flyball live recently, and it was a blast. There were several events going on at the fairgrounds, and the flyball tournament was waaaaaaaay away from everything else. I don’t know if that was for the benefit of everyone else there or for the benefit of the dogs.

We walked in, and it was loud. Imagine fifty dogs all happily barking away. There were also whistles from referees and people talking and other people shouting encouragement, all in a building with a concrete floor and walls and a ceiling that might have been designed to magnify noise.

But I forgot all about the noise as I watched the dogs. That was a treat.

I had wondered if it would be boring, watching race after race, but they were all different, thanks to the dogs, each with his or her own personality.

There was the large Jack Russell Terrier who didn’t want to play. He ran last on his team…well, he was supposed to run last on his team, but he simply wasn’t interested. In his first heat he jumped over two hurdles and then wandered off. In his second heat he jumped over four hurdles and then wandered off. They didn’t let him compete in the third heat.

There was a sheltie named Rachel. She got the ball but, as she started back, she dropped it right before jumping over the first hurdle, and then she froze. She simply stood there like a statue. You could almost hear her mind working. “Let’s see…I was supposed to get the ball and run back over the hurdles. I got the ball, but now I don’t have the ball. Where’s the ball? And what am I supposed to do now that I don’t have the ball? If I had the ball I would run back over the hurdles, but without the ball…hm…”

She did finally hear a voice behind her telling her to get the ball. She turned around, saw it, picked up and finished her run.

Rachel’s team lost that heat.

Most of the members on every team were excited. When a team's start dog came in and got ready to go, the other dogs on the team would look at him and then start barking at him, for all the world as if they were encouraging him. Go, dog, go. (I think there might be a children's book in there somewhere.)

It's a pretty high speed sport. Most of the runs took about twenty seconds or a little more, although one team was always under eighteen and usually under seventeen.

There were yorkies, shelties, poodles, boston terriers, German shepherds, labs, feists, salukis, and, of course, Australian shepherds and border collies galore, and every single one of them was friendly and happy. You’d see them between matches, and they were always ready to be petted or to lick someone. They were clearly having a great time.

I have to admit that I most enjoyed the border collies. They were ready to go, and they have a fluidty when they are in motion that is a joy to see. One team had both a border collie, who was a paragon of intense focus, and a springer spaniel who looked about as happy go lucky as a dog could look, leaping over the jumps with his ears flying foolishly about his head and a big grin on his face. They both seemed to have a good time, though perhaps in slightly different ways, and I couldn't help but imagine the conversation they might have had.

Collie: You need to be more focused.

Spaniel: Huh?

Collie: I said, You need to be more focused.

Spaniel: Okey-dokey. Do you think that guy over there will pet me?

Collie: Focus. You're here to get the ball.

Spaniel: Flyball. Yep. Yep. Yep. What's a ball?

I want to play flyball.

Well, I want to have a dog to play flyball. I'd look rather ridiculous doing it myself.

Of course, I'm used to looking ridiculous. You should see me on the bike, after all.

See you on the road.

Where Am I?

Wow. Fried by the sun and beaten to death by the wind all in the same day. Is this a great sport or what?! It was hot today. Everything was hot. Even the wind was hot.

At first I was going to say that it was like wind from Death Valley, but I suppose that a Death Valley wind would be dry, so, on second thought, this was more like a swamp wind. The wind blowing in your face (and it blew in my fact a lot today) was like having someone put a hot wet blanket on you. It was unpleasant is what I’m trying to convey.

Of course, where I ride isn’t actually swampy at all. You don’t hear the distant sound of a whippoorwill or the roar of an alligator. Around here, surrounded by corn and tobacco, by old shacks on the verge of collapse, apparently held together only by the kudzu, you’re more likely to hear the sound of a distant banjo being pluck by a young boy.

Ding-a-ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

Ride fast. Ride very fast.

I set myself a minimum pace to ride at, and I did finish the ride above that pace, but it was tough.

I passed a man who was all in brown – brown pants, brown shirt, brown hat, even his skin was brown. He was wearing green tinted sunglasses and had a big plastic tank on his back with a hose coming from it. As I passed him, he was vigorously pumping a handle attached to the tank. We each looked at the other curiously. It was a little weird.

I passed a subdivision which was clearly the place to find your thrill. If you’re old enough or your taste in music is varied enough, you now know the name of the place. If not, you’re probably confused by what you just read.

I got chased by a medium sized black dog. I was doing about twenty when the dog spotted me. Without even a second of hesitation, and paying no heed to the voice calling him, the dog took off after me. He was at a distant corner of the yard, so I wasn’t worried. The advantage was all mine.

Or so I thought.

From his first kick that dog started gaining on me., and I really had to lift the pace to leave him behind. I barely made it. The dog came out into the street after me, put his head down, and ran. I went up through the gears and pedaled as hard as I could, and I just managed to gap him. Once I got a gap, I was able to extend it and then the dog gave up, which is good, but I wasn’t going to be able to keep that pace up for any time at all.

And I got lost. Did I mention that?

I wanted to get at least thirty miles in, so I decided to explore a bit. I ended up exploring a lot and got well and truly lost. I had a vague idea which direction home was, so I started picking roads that looked like they might go in the direction I wanted, and I was eventually right, but only after an solid hour of wandering around with no clear ideas about where I was.

Why is it that riding roads you don’t know is harder than riding roads you do know?

I was tired by the time I finally got back home, but I felt great for having gotten some miles in.

Maybe I’ll manage to get some more tomorrow.

See you on the road.

Free to Ride

I woke up at 6:40 am. I didn’t want to wake up at 6:40 am, but there it was whether I wanted it or not. So, what do you do on your day off when you wake up way early and can’t get back to sleep? You get up and go for a ride, of course. I picked out a nice forty mile route full of hills, and I was actually looking forward to it for some strange reason. Glutton for punishment, I guess..

When I hit the road, my legs did not actually feel very good. I rode through my neighborhood, which includes a couple of leisurely hills. I blamed my poor legs on the wind (and on the fact that my legs are just poor) and then, as I got out of the neighborhood I happened to look down and ask this rather pertinent question: “What the heck am I doing riding in such a high gear?” Huh. It turns out my legs were better than I thought, but my brain was apparently not so good. Perhaps it was still asleep.

Actually, I ended up feeling really good, wind or no wind (and there was definitely wind) and I was largely able to keep my pace up where I wanted it, though there did come a point about thirty miles in, when it began to occur to me that some people have the gift of pushing themselves even when they ride alone, and some don’t. It’s easier for me to push myself if someone else is going hard and I’m trying to keep up with them, but I was determined to keep the pace up today, and I did it.

I encountered various things on this ride: Yard sales. Lots of yard sales, some of them even in yards, and some of them in parking lots, making them, I suppose, parking lot sales. I even saw a sign that said, “Free Yard Sale. Everything must go.” Free yard sale? I didn’t even try to figure that one out.

I did notice that most of these yard sales featured a variety of bicycles. Where do these bicycles come from and why aren’t people riding them?

I came perilously close to encountering an eighteen wheeler that was apparently driven by a man who didn’t know the meaning of that double yellow line down the middle of the road.

I encountered a couple of loose dogs, but they were relatively polite, chasing but not barking, chasing but never coming into the street. The two dogs who chased me last time weren’t ready for me. They didn’t see me until I was past their yard, and I was moving well, so they barked but didn’t bother to chase much.

I encountered another cyclist coming toward me. It always makes me happy to see other cyclists out riding the roads, and I always wondered if it was just me. That question was answered, because the approaching rider grinned and waved at me. I warned him of the loose dogs that he was headed toward.

Aside from the aforementioned semi and one van, the vehicles passed me politely, which was greatly appreciated. I started out gently, not killing myself on the first hills, but there is one hill at about the fifteen mile mark on this route that really used to take the starch out of my legs, and the last time I rode this route, I resolved to hit that hill hard, and I did. I determined to do the same thing, and I fairly flew up it, but I ended up slowing down at the top because the road was really rough and because I trying to catch my breath and my breath was going too fast for me to catch it.

All in all, I hit the entire route hard and did really well. I was feeling it by the end, mind you, but that’s okay. That’s rather a nice feeling because it lets you know you did something. I’m hoping to squeeze in another ride tomorrow morning.

See you on the road.

Half and Half

Today I took a newbie on a ride. He is…how shall I put it…athletically inclined. (I, on the other hand, am not. I am, in fact, a card carrying geek who lived as a couch potato (well, computer desk potato) until the bright idea of buying a bicycle occurred to me and I found an athletic practice that didin’t require depth perception, coordination or grace.) Because he is athletically inclined, he wants to be good on the bike. Because he is a teenager, he doesn’t want to be shown up by someone who his nearly thirty years older than he is. Both of these things are perfectly understandable.

He’s ridden a few times – one or two miles around the neighborhood and then a reported twenty miles out by himself one day. We headed out bright and early while it was still cool and there wasn’t much traffic.

I did all the things that one does with a new rider – I sprayed instructions and advice like a fount of wisdom, which is probably just as annoying as it sounds, though he, in fact, followed most of the advice. (The one piece he ignored was to shift up and trying spinning at something less than 125. Apparently he likes to keep his legs moving.)

I also chose a flat route, kept the pace low, reminded him to drink, let his draft off of me nearly all of the time, that sort of thing. When we arrived at the volunteer fire station which is five miles from the house (comfortingly close, don’t you think?) I told him we had gone five miles. His quads were hurting him, so we pulled over and let him stretch, checked his saddle height, talked about riding posture and then turned around to ride the five miles back to our starting point.

He still had some fire at the end of the ride, because he pushed himself to go hard up one last hill. Nicely done. I dropped him off and then headed out to get some more miles on my own – hard ones with hills because I’m a glutton for punishment. (Actually, it’s because I know I need to ride stronger than I do, so I might as well push myself.)

That ride was hard but good until the two dogs came out after me, one of them baying like the hound of the Baskervilles and apparently out for blood. I was heading up a (fortunately for me!) not very steep hill and I had to hit thirty mph before I dropped them. (Only one of them came out into the street after me and ran at my heels, but one was enough.) The really bad thing was that I had to go back that way to get home again, and there was quite a steep hill not far past their house in that direction.

Going back that way meant risking life, limb and skin, but I had no choice.

I pulled over and picked up some rocks to put in my pocket.

On the way back I had some rocks ready to hand and then here they came, both of them running out into the street this time. I tossed a rock at the first one, and I missed, but apparently it was enough to make him remember an appointment that he had somewhere else, so he left.

The vicious one – the one that made me think he wanted to see the color of my insides – came hard after me. I threw a rock at him. Missed again. It apparently scared him, though, because he moved over to the other side of my bike. I threw another rock. Missed again. (I did mention that sports are not my strong suit, didn’t I?) but apparently the fact that rocks could come at him no matter which side of my bike he was one was enough to make him change his mind about the chase and go find something else to do, and they left me in peace rather than in pieces.

The rest of the ride was uneventful but fun, and I am definitely ready for me.

See you on the road.

Close Call

I decided that, on my commute to work this morning I would count how many cars passed me. I did this because it makes my Lovely Lovely nervous when I commute, and I wanted to show her that the traffic wasn’t as heavy as she was afraid it was. Then, since I was counting anyway, I decided to count not only how many cars passed me, but how many passed me safely. I got up to 9 of 11 when I lost count.

You may think that this either means that I can’t count very high or that I have a very poor memory, but the numbers were wiped out of my mind by a burst of adrenalin as a woman in a silver pickup truck apparently decided to kill me. She was in a driveway waiting to come up, so I did what I usually do – I made eye contact with her. I’m quite sure that she saw me. She just decided that she was in a hurry, that’s all.

What’s the life of a cyclist worth? Well, to this lady it is apparently worth about five seconds of saved time.

As I was approaching her, she gunned her engine and shot out in an attempt to cut me off. I didn’t know that I could slam on my breaks hard enough to make my tires squeal. It turns out that I can. The driver of the truck swerved around me and then took off down the road without bothering to say “Sorry” or even slow down to make sure that I was okay.

Another car came up behind me a few seconds later. After that, there was absolutely nothing. The driver of the truck would have been scant seconds slower had she decided to wait and do things safely, but, hey, it’s just a guy on bike, right?

Aside from that, it was a pretty nice ride. As I was filling my bottle this morning, my daughter asked, “You’re going to ride?!” (Only an eleven year old can sound quite that incredulous.)

“Yes.”

Then she decided to be nice and warn me. “It’s sixty something out.”

“That’s okay.”

Out the driveway and up that first hill. I hate that first hill. It starts about fifty feet after I leave the driveway, and my body is seldom ready for it. A short way down the road is the yard with the three dogs (only two of whom were out today.) The large dog barked at me, then the small dog chimed in.

It sounded for all the world like a big guy talking and the little weasely guy who hangs around with him repeating the key words because he can’t think of anything of his own to say.

Aside from that, there was no excitement at all on the ride, and I was okay with that. My friend in the pickup truck has given me quite enough excitement for one day, thank you very much.

The great part about being able to ride in this morning is that I have an errand to run at lunch time, so that’s more time on the bike. It’s a great day – 71 degrees out, not a lot of wind, although both of those things may well have changed by the time lunch rolls around.

My day has started well. I hope yours has, too.

See you on the road.