NOTE: This post is
rated PG-13 for mild strong language and frontier violence.
Introduction
You might not have known this about me, but I’m one of those
big-shot bike racers on an elite racing team. Wait, that’s not quite right. More
of a shot, baggy-eyed bike geek in a book club. Wait, that’s too harsh. I’m somewhere
in the middle: an ageing former racer on the East Bay Velo Club. EBVC is a
group of classy old veterans, some of whom still race and make the podium
regularly, and all of whom love big food, good coffee, biking, and race reports
(roughly in that order).
Well, I did race once this year but that was off-road and probably doesn’t count. So in lieu of a
glory-filled tale of my peloton-crushing exploits, here is my food-filled tale
of crushing myself on an epic mountain ride in the Lake Tahoe region with my EBVC pals Craig and Ian.
Executive summary
It was brutally hot. The climbs were brutally hard. Ian,
Craig, and I are brutally old. We ate brutally well. Hydration was a problem. Mother
Nature treated us brutally. Verdict? Epic PASS. We got in touch with our inner brutes.
Short version
- Ride stats: 117 miles; 8 hours 3 minutes ride time; 12,080 feet of climbing over 32 categorized climbs (at least, as categorized by Strava), including Monitor Pass (category 1) and Ebbetts Pass (HC)
- Pre-ride dinner: huge plate of pasta, BBQ chicken & peppers, French bread, salad, one “hydration” beer (Stella Artois)
- Breakfast: bowl of cereal that was organic but 90% sugar; bowl of fake Cheerios; 1% milk; banana; 1 NoDoz
- During ride: 2 or 3 energy bars, 1 gel (2x caffeine), 3 sleeves shot blox, 2 Hostess cupcakes, 1 20-oz. Coke, about 10 bottles of water
- After ride: 3 “Greek” wings, pita bread, baba ghanoush, ½-pound lamb burger with feta, big pile of seasoned fries with aioli, 3 huge glasses of water
The average temperature was 90 degrees. For long stretches,
it was well over 100. The campground 2/3 of the way up Ebbetts Pass, where we’d
planned to get water, was oddly dry. Nevertheless, we avoided heatstroke and completed
the ride, though we were pretty well hobbled by the end. High spirits and
sophomoric humor dominated the proceedings.
Long version
Who are Craig and Ian, anyway? (Since this post is destined
to be a cult classic like Deliverance,
The Osterman Weekend, and The Blair
Witch Project, I suppose I should develop my characters.) Craig is a big friendly giant, who used to play football and
now drags us around in his slipstream across the flats, never bothering to
draft us because that would just slow things down and anyway he never needs to
rest. Craig can climb like the dickens, which has never made sense to me given
his size.
Ian, on the other hand, is not a giant, but he’s from
England and has that cool accent that makes him sound all intellectual and
authoritative, and he has that overseas vibe that makes you feel automatically
inferior as a cyclist. Vague impressions aside, Ian holds a 5th-place Strava KOM—just behind four-time national champion Freddie Rodriguez—on the legendary
Lomas Cantadas climb. Needless to say, I went into this ride very worried that my pals would
hate me by the end for slowing them down so much.
I should also point out that my normal road bike was out of
commission for this ride so I was riding my backup bike, which is pretty decent
except the oversized aluminum tubes transmit all the road shock right the way
up to make my ass and hands super sore, which causes whining. On the plus side,
this bike has a really cool head badge. (I pointed it out to Craig, who said,
“Oh, a photo of when your kids were younger and still loved you!”)
For a summary of our route consult Appendix A. The climb up
Luther Pass was a decent warmup. It’s not that hard a climb, gaining 1,359 feet
to a summit of 7,740. It was a beautiful day, with no rain forecast (a pleasant
change from my last would-be epic ride).
After a short descent we made our way up Carson Pass,
braving a headwind. I’m not complaining, mind you—the wind actually made it
easier to suck Craig’s wheel.
It was weird doing Carson so early in the ride … every other
time I’ve ridden it was toward the end of the Death Ride, when I was already
worn out. The temperature was perfect at this point. Still a fair bit of snow
at the higher elevations. In case you were wondering, this pass is named for
Kit Carson, an illiterate trapper and frontiersman whose idea it was to pioneer
this route through the snow (against the advice of local Washoe Indians),
causing the expedition to have to eat their dogs, horses, and mules for lack of
game.
At the summit we fared better than that expedition had. Though
there was no running water, the visitor’s center sold us bottled water for the
low, low price of $0.50. I feel bad for all the wasted plastic but I guess it’s
better than eating our pets.
Here’s the requisite glamour shot. The real point of this
photo is the elevation sign over my shoulder. It’s a little too small to read,
but the summit elevation is 8,574 feet. I’d have liked to get a better shot of
that sign, but Ian and Craig seem to have some problem with standing out in the
middle of the road and getting run over. These signs meant a lot to me during
the ride, because they were my only indicators of progress: my backup bike has
no computer and I wasn’t even wearing my watch.
After Carson we descended for a glorious 15 miles, then had
some rollers through Markleeville. Is there anything interesting to be said
about this little town? Well, it’s named after Jacob Marklee who lived there for
many years before dying in a gunfight. Also, according to Census data, 100% of Markleeville’s
population live in households, 0% live in non-institutionalized group quarters,
and 0% are institutionalized (at the moment). That photo of my bike (above) shows
this town in the background. (Yes, that’s pretty much all there is to see.)
It started getting really hot as we headed south on Highway
89 towards Ebbetts Pass. Ian’s bike computer registered 104 degrees, Craig’s
106. I think we had a bit of a tailwind as well. My energy bar was sweating in
its package and came out covered in a snot-like film. Melted frosting, maybe.
Not that I minded. What I do mind is how so many modern energy bars are full of
seeds. My kid has swiped all the basic flavors from our stash, leaving me with the
weird ones, like “Berry Pomegranate Chia” which is mostly chia seeds. Worse, I have all these “Nuts & Seeds” bars
that have actual pumpkin seeds in them, as though people actually eat those other
than after carving Jack-O-Lanterns (in which case most of the seeds end up on
the floor anyway). After eating one of
these modern bars, I spend the next five miles running my tongue around
dislodging all the seeds from my teeth.
A tired, sore tongue is just that
much more suffering I don’t need.
See that sign in the distance? That marks where Highway 89
heads east toward Monitor Pass, which we’d hit later. But first we went
straight to take Highway 4 up Ebbetts Pass, our hardest climb of the day. Ebbetts
Pass is named for John Ebbetts, another pioneer, who naively recommended this
route for the transcontinental railroad because he mistakenly thought it didn’t
get much snow, based on his one visit there. He planned a second trip but was
killed in a steamboat explosion before he could go. I get the impression lives were more exciting, and
shorter, in those days.
Ebbetts Pass is a beautiful and very hard climb. My backup
bike lacks a compact crank; I thought the ensuing boost to my mojo would help me handle the grade, but it
did not. (At least both my legs were working right … last time I did this climb, I was recovering from a broken femur and dealing with asymmetrical power delivery.) At times my gearing limited
how easy I could take it on a steep pitch, thus this photo.
For the most part I couldn’t keep up with Ian and Craig, but
could at least keep them in sight. Here, I’d planned a scenic photo with my
pals in the distance, but by the time I got my camera out, they’d rounded the
bend.
There’s a campground about 2/3 of the way up that we were
counting on for water, but none of the spigots worked. We asked a couple of
campers about it and they said, “We know nothing. We’re so stupid we don’t even
know our own names. Please bother somebody else because we’re about to cry. We
just don’t know what else to do.” (I’m not sure I heard this right, but it’s
the gist of their response.) We found the camp host, who was hiding in a giant
RV and pretended not to hear Ian’s salutations, despite his commanding accent. Finally
the host mumbled, “No water, go away, I hate you,” or something to that effect.
He had this giant water tank but offered us nothing because his misanthropy and
selfishness were limitless. Note: we were not bitter.
Near the summit of this pass is a beautiful lake, Kinney
Reservoir to be precise. This reservoir was dug in 1896 by frontiersman Joseph
Kinney, who never got to see it filled, as he was fatally garroted with fishing
line by his six-year-old nephew in a freak fishing accident. (Okay, I made that
up.)
We thought about filling our bottles in the lake, but it’s
full of filthy, drooling, peeing fish such as brook, rainbow, and cutthroat (!)
trout.
At the summit of Ebbetts we encountered a friendly biking
couple in their 60s who had parked their car at the intersection of Highway 4
and 89—that is, the start of Monitor Pass, our next big climb—and offered to
meet us there (after we all descended Ebbetts) to give us water. The nice
couple also snapped this photo.
Zoom in all you want, you still can’t read the elevation on
that sign. It’s 8,730 feet, which is higher than the summit of the Col du
Galibier, the highest point in this year’s Tour de France.
Ebbetts is a glorious descent. I must say, it was really
nice riding these roads without all the Death Ride throngs: safer, and quieter,
and less chaotic. Of course I wasn’t able to get many photos—just this one.
Along the way down we stopped to fill up bottles at a
fast-running section of the creek. That is, Ian and Craig did. I am far too
afraid of waterborne parasites to drink anything that doesn’t come from a tap. With
creek water there’s a giardia risk, of course, and I particularly had in mind
this description by Anthony Bourdain of the aftermath of ingesting an amoeba:
It slammed me shut like a book, sent me crawling to the bathroom shitting like a mink, clutching my stomach and projectile vomiting. I prayed that night. For many hours. And, as you might assume, I’m the worst kind of atheist.
I should point out that when fact-checking this, I
discovered that it was a bad mussel that made Bourdain sick, not an amoeba. But
that doesn’t change the fact that during this ride I was more willing to risk
dehydration than waterborne illness.
Monitor Pass was a mother. The heat, which had subsided
somewhat on the higher elevations of Ebbetts, was back into triple digits. A
long, straight section of 10% grade felt like it would never end. What with my
tired legs and old school gearing, I had to weave quite a bit. Fortunately,
there’s absolutely nobody up there, so you can hear a car coming from a mile
away. (Okay, maybe not actually a mile, but a right fur piece anyway.)
This section of highway is one of the newest in the Sierra
Nevada mountains, having been paved in 1954. According to Wikipedia, “The
highway project was promoted by Robert M. Jackson of Markleeville, who worked
for the Alpine County Public Works Department for more than 30 years until he
perished in a grisly wood chipper accident.” (Yeah, I embellished that.)
The summit of this climb marked a milestone for at least two
of us: we were now 80 miles into this ride, making it the longest we’d done
since the 2014 Everest Challenge. This gave us a sense of accomplishment, sure, but also dread, as we had 37
miles left to go.
Craig got a front flat. His tire had developed a hernia. We
had to boot it, using a rubber boot I had and a duct tape one from Ian. To be extra safe, Craig put only 70 or 80
PSI in his tire. The point of this photo, of course, is the sweat salt on
Craig’s jersey.
Craig kept dragging us along. Even 90+ miles into the ride,
I honestly don’t think he’d drafted either of us once. Drafting him all day must
be what it’s like to be Chris Froome ensconced perpetually in the womblike
slipstream of Team Sky (except I’m not jacked up on performance-enhancing
drugs).
As we rolled along I had an in-my-body experience: this
sudden full realization of living my life right now, moment by moment—that what
I was seeing before me wasn’t a dream, a memory, a flashback, an illusion, or a
vision of the future. Gone was the sense
that my life is all cerebral and abstract; I was aware during that moment of
being a living organism processing and reacting to immediate stimulus. I know
this all sounds obvious, but actually this real-life sensation, this sense of
bearing real-time witness to my own currently unfolding experience, is for me
the exception and not the rule. I experience
this feeling from time to time, and find it exhilarating. (I’ve talked to at
least one person who finds it terrifying.)
We stopped in Markleeville again for water and goodies. At
this point I still had an energy bar on me, but it was a “Cloves, Peppercorns, Grape
Nuts & Gravel” variety and I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I also had a
gel, but it was an expired tangerine flavor that is the wrong kind of sour and
should really be called “Tangerine & Stale Cigarette.” I was really craving
a Hostess fruit pie (which packs like 600 calories) but the general store
didn’t have any. Fortunately, I got something almost as good.
The first ingredient in these Hostess cupcakes is sugar, but
don’t worry, they also contain high fructose corn syrup, along with “vegetable
and/or animal shortening.” These cupcakes are sold as “Pingüinos” (i.e.,
penguins) in Mexico. Could these actually have penguin fat in them? Possibly.
But the point is, they’re light and fluffy and really easy to eat, unlike a
standard energy bar, which is hard to chew when you’re 100 miles into a ride
and knackered.
Craig ate an energy bar and a small bag of potato chips, one
or both of which, as we headed toward Luther Pass, started to mess up his
stomach. (I momentarily wondered if it was the creek water, except Ian’s
stomach was fine.) The upshot of this was that Craig no longer felt like
dragging our asses along into the headwind we found ourselves facing. Fortunately,
I finally started to feel pretty good. Clouds had appeared and it was a bit
cooler, and I think I’d hit that perfect level of dehydration: not enough to
affect my power, but enough to cut my weight by several pounds, improving my
power/weight ratio.
My gearing still wasn’t as low as I’d have liked, so I had
to dig pretty deep in the long run-up to Luther Pass. Strava calls this stretch “Death Ride Carson
Pass Part 1” and reckons it a category 2 climb. I guess that’s about right, especially
since we had a headwind. It was a real slog, but my legs did this odd thing
they sometimes do really far into a ride:
they just kept turning, as if unbidden, surprising me with their
tenacity. Their motion was utterly
without pause, as if the turning of the rear wheel was dragging them along
instead of the other way around. I was kind of mesmerized watching them go,
wondering things like “How are you doing that?” My legs didn’t even hurt that bad, though my
butt, feet, and hands were in agony.
After a subdued final descent (subdued owing to the low
pressure in Craig’s front tire) we reached the car, triumphant because we’d
conquered a seriously hard ride without having really trained for it. Yeah,
we’re fricking old, but maybe we’ve still got some heat left in our coals. Here
I’d thought winging it was the privilege of the young ... but it turns out the
cussedness of age is highly compatible with reckless ambition.
Here is the requisite “after” shot. The point of this photo,
of course, is the pair of ridiculous dents in my forehead from my helmet.
Look , I know this report would be more exciting and fun if
our ride had been a disaster, like this one, but things turned out really out well, especially when it was time for
dinner. Due to poor planning, we had no bike lock for the car rack, so were
restricted, when choosing a restaurant, to a place that looked out on the
parking lot so could see our bikes. Fortunately there was a Mediterranean place
with a picnic table out front, which was doubly handy because when Ian’s
hamstring cramped and he cried out in pain he didn’t scare anyone. Check out
these kind vittles:
On that note, I just realized I’m starving, having been on the
South Beach diet for two weeks (excepting this Tahoe weekend, when I ate like a king). Time to
go eat some squash and other assorted vegetable nonsense.
Appendix A – route and
climb stats
- Parked at the junction of Highway 50 and 89 (elevation 6,381 feet)
- Rode up the west side of Luther Pass (a category 3 climb, summit elevation 7,740 feet)
- Turned right on Highway 88 and headed up Carson Pass (cat 2, elevation 8,574)
- Turned around and descended to Woodfords, where we turned right to stay on 89 and headed to Markleeville (elevation 5,489)
- Continued on 89 and then Highway 4 and climbed Ebbetts Pass (huis categorie, aka HC; elevation 8,730), failing to get water along the way
- Turned around and dropped back down to the junction of 4 and 89, elevation 5,827 feet
- Turned right and headed east on 89, climbing the west side of Monitor Pass (cat 1, elevation 8,314)
- Turned around and descended back to Markleeville, then retraced our route along 88/89 to the Luther Pass junction (this bit is listed as a cat 2 climb)
- Turned right on 89 and climbed the east side of Luther Pass (cat 3, elevation 7,740)
- Descended back to the car
I say “almost” because our ride was almost as hard as the
Death Ride. And it was better because we didn’t have to fork out $125, share
the road with thousands of others, and endure all the fuss of registration,
etc.
In case you haven’t heard of it, the Markleeville Death Ride is a popular century ride (not a race) that traverses five mountain passes over its 129-mile
length. I’ve ridden it 12 or 13 times, and (as described here and here) always very much enjoyed it. These days, the main purpose of the Death Ride
is to make people like me feel old. I first rode it in 1993, half my lifetime
ago, and last rode it in 2005, a quarter of my lifetime ago. Where has all the
time gone?
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