I want to talk about Fiddler's Elbow some more.
It's been fun telling the story to people who've been there. Tom has been having fun with it too. What we've been hearing a lot of is, "You're crazy." And when we tell them we didn't make it, we hear, "About a hundred feet from the top?"
Turns out this is where most people run out of steam. Even the greats, like John P., have been stymied by this hill. "I've been up there about ten times," he told me, "and I think I've made it up four of those times." He said that he's done it in the rain, standing, with his back wheel spinning out under him. "You've got to stand and pull the bike up the hill with your arms," he said.
Chris, who hasn't been there yet, but who would pedal his mountain bike up a wall if it were covered in snow at Mercer County Park, told me, "The trick to getting started again is to shift into the middle ring just long enough to get your feet in, then shift down."
John P. told me and Tom yesterday that one piece of advice racers are given is to use mountain bike shoes and cleats, and "run up the hill. It's faster." Tom agreed with this. Pedaling, we were at about 3.5 mph. Just walking, he was at 2.5.
Jim and Ed and Cheryl and Theresa each more or less said, "Thanks, but no thanks." Jim had a good argument about putting himself and other riders in danger while veering all over the road. Many others said, "I don't have the gearing for that," to which I replied, "Neither, apparently, do I." Which isn't quite true, now that I've thought about it. I have the gearing. I don't have the strategy.
Anyway, if I never get back to that road again, so be it. If I do, I know what not to try. "Yeah, but," John said to me and Tom, "you don't wanna be 0 for 2."
In the end, not succeeding makes for a better story. I surprised myself by being determined to get back on the bike. I thought I'd just be walking. But in the middle of my falling and dabbling and zigging and zagging and falling again, there was a quick flash in my mind of myself at work. Hoc possum. One of my colleagues teases me about how often I use cycling as a metaphor for life in the lab. It must work both ways.
I nabbed some pictures from Tom's post.
Here's where I passed him as he stood at a relatively flat spot (8% grade) early on, camera out, to get yet another picture of me being slower than he is:
After I passed him he caught up and stopped again to get another shot of the start of the 20+% grade. He's got me in there for scale. I'm pretty sure that this is where I was thinking, "All right. There it is. Just keep it easy. Nice and easy." I hadn't yet popped a wheelie. Just out of sight, I think, is where I must have stopped. In my picture, Tom is a little dot at the bottom.
Here, he's already at the top and has had plenty of time to catch his breath and position himself for my eventual arrival. JeffX is probably just out of the frame. When I got up to them, I looked at Jeff and said, "You made it up without stopping, didn't you?" He replied, "Of course."
So that was last week's crazy. Yesterday was something altogether different.
It was our second annual Ride for McBride. We were less anxious about the event this time around. We figured we'd worked out the kinks from last year (buy more burgers!). Everything fell into place pretty well. There were no hurricanes washing out roads. The t-shirts and insurance forms arrived a little late, but in time. The only thing that looked iffy was the weather.
We started at Tall Cedars with Bruce, John B., Ron S., Ron M., Chris, Tom, Dave H., Dr. Lynne, and Jack H. Without Jim to sweep (he was still home with some version of the plague), we had to do our best to keep ourselves together.
*****
We interrupt this post to bring you nasty, kinky, spider sex.
We have an orb spider living just outside of our front door. I first tried to photograph it with my cell phone using my flash. That didn't work so well.
The web is clear. The spider is a ghost.
Half an hour later I tried again, forgetting to turn off the flash.
As I was turning it off, another, smaller spider, one that looked to be of the same species, repelled down towards the web. Before I had a chance to get them separately, the two of them literally hooked up.
They were like this long enough for Jack to come to the door and ask what I was doing. "Photographing spider sex, evidently," I replied. This wasn't easy. If this web's rockin', don't come knockin'. This is the best I could do in post.
A few minutes later, the big one, the female, was hauling the male back to the center of the web. She'd wrapped him in silk. There she sat, in the middle of her web, eating her mate.
This is perhaps my twisted answer to one of Jim's recent posts: You go, girl.
*****
Little Joe and Dave C. decided to ride with Ira, whose group was starting at 8:30. Given the forecast of increasing chances of rain as the day wore on, I'd called for an 8:00 a.m. start.
The air was sticky, the sky cloudy, and we had a decent headwind. Less than twelve miles in, Dave got a flat tire. We didn't wait long.
We were on Holmes Mill Road when the rain started. It was just a drizzle. We didn't stop.
"Flat!"
Dave again, the front this time.
As we were waiting, the rain picked up. We heard thunder twice. There was no lightning.
Now, had Big Joe been with us, he'd have taken off like a bat out of hell straight for Tall Cedars. Joe was always at his fastest when there were thunderstorms nearby. Joe wasn't crazy.
But we were. Ron M. checked the radar from his phone. The rain was coming up from the south at a decent clip. Our route was heading south. If we were to turn around, we'd be guaranteed to be riding in the rain all the way back. So we continued on towards New Egypt.
On Polhemustown Road, the rain was coming down so hard that it hurt.
My definition of wet is when my feet are soaked. Tom and I came to this conclusion at the same time. "I'm pedaling puddles," he said. How hard it was raining no longer mattered. On to Hill Road.
Joe disliked riding in the hills only a little less than he disliked riding in the rain. And here we were, ten of us, on a tribute charity ride in his name, sloshing up seven hills, in a thunderstorm. Joe was an atheist. So am I. But I like to think that if he were watching he'd have been laughing his head off and calling us fools.
By the end of Hill Road, the rain had let up enough for me to pull out my camera.
Across the road, Dave waited for the riders to regroup. We were missing one. Bruce had turned back.
Ron M. took a drink as the rain poured down behind him.
Ron S. rode through a puddle on his new matte black Canondale synapse.
We decided that if it were still raining when we got to the rest stop we'd head back on the 25 mile route. If the rain had stopped, we'd continue on the 50. From Hill Road to New Egypt we were in the rain on and off. By New Egypt we'd started to dry out.
"Next year," I said to the volunteers serving us snacks, "we have to remember to bring towels for the riders."
BOOM!
BOOM!
"What is that?" It wasn't thunder.
"Artillery." We were close to Fort Dix.
I checked the radar again. The tail end of a line of rain was making its way north. We decided to continue on.
The road from Cookstown to Browns Mills was dry. There was no thunder, just artillery.
A few guys got a little ahead. Not much, but just enough that when John whistled out for us to stop, they didn't hear it. John had a flat. It had been a slow leak that he could no longer ignore. He was just about finished when my phone rang. It was Chris. He was stopped with the others, ahead of us. Ron M. had a flat. We caught up to them as they were finishing Ron's repair.
Four flats in one ride is twice as many as one would usually see on a high-flat day. I blamed it on the wet roads.
We turned west, along the north shore of the lake in Browns Mills. Tom and I were at the front of the pack, talking about I don't remember what, when I looked up to see a gunmetal sky. I gestured. "I know," Tom said. "I see it." The gray light on the lake was dramatic. It would have made for some excellent pictures. But we didn't stop. We rounded the corner onto East Lakeshore to make our way back north on Browns Mills-Cookstown Road. The heavens opened up.
Jack, Chris, and Dave got a little ahead. It wasn't much, but it was enough that, by the time I caught up to Dave, he was off his bike. Jack and Chris were gone.
"I hit a pothole," he said. He felt his front tire. "Flat." He felt his rear tire. "Fuck!" They'd both blown. Flats number 3 and 4 for him, 5 and 6 for the group. At this point, everyone else had caught up. Out of tubes, Dave took donations from the crowd.
I rested my bike under the trees and pulled out my camera. It's been a long time since I've taken pictures in the Pinelands.
Dave, Jack, and Tom were conversing. Jack took off when he saw that there were enough tubes. Chris was long gone. The rain let up.
Next thing we knew, Dave had given up. In their haste, they'd pinched both tubes trying to fill them up. Flat numbers 5 and 6 for Dave, 7 and 8 for the group. Someone dug out a cue sheet. I called back to Tall Cedars, to Judy's phone. "Let me hand you over to someone who knows where you are," she said. "Hold on."
It was Little Joe who picked up. If Ira's group was back by now, they probably hadn't gone far before the rain turned them around. "We're at mile 39 on the cue sheet," I told him. We gave him Dave's cell number and left Dave there in the drizzle. He'd probably get back before we did. Dave said, "Tell them to save me a fucking burger."
We didn't have much farther to go. Overhead the clouds were moving out.
We were four miles from home when Ron M slowed down.
Flat number 9. It was a slow leak. He didn't bother with a new tube. Instead he just used Tom's pump to get the pressure up to 100 psi, good enough to get him home.
I took pictures while we waited.
By the side of the road, a stalk of corn grew inches from the asphalt. My gloves were still wet. I must have brushed a finger against the lens.
I kinda like the hazy effect, though.
I let everyone pass me on Harker Road so that I could try to get a shot of the storm front moving out.
Dave H arrived at Tall Cedars only minutes before we did. It was Dave C who'd driven out to get him.
We told everyone we saw about our record number of flats. Little Joe said, "It's the wet roads. Stuff sticks to the tires and it gets ground in."
There were enough burgers for everyone.
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