Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2025 Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 7

Introduction

Bicycle road racing has gotten harder to watch. Part of this is due to the poor TV (or shall I say Internet) coverage in the U.S., with various pay-for-me networks, each carrying only a few races. But the bigger problem is boredom: a few riders are so dominant, the victories tend to be blowouts. Particularly troublesome is Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates XRG), who seems to win everything in sight: stage races, classics, the World Championships … he wins all season long and he makes it look easy. Thus it is with great trepidation that I cover today’s queen stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné. I promise I will do my best to make this entertaining, even if that means bagging on riders I don’t like, and on their equipment, and even on myself if necessary. Hence the “biased” blow-by-blow.

(If you haven’t been following this Dauphiné thus far, fear not: I will recap the first six stages as well.)

Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 7 - Grand-Aigueblanche - Valmeinier 1800

As I join the action, it’s 5:40 a.m. Pacific time and my kettle hasn’t even boiled yet. The riders are cresting the Hors Categorie Col de la Croix de Fer. There’s a breakaway with only about 20 seconds over a depleted peloton. I’m not going to bother with the riders’ names other than a couple standouts: Sepp Kuss (Team Visma - Lease A Bike) and the French favorite Romain Bardet (Team Picnic PostNL). Kuss is American, so I naturally favor him, plus today is Flag Day in this country (so I hope you hoisted Old Glory!). Bardet, meanwhile, is in the last bike race of his career, obviously looking for a stage win to go out on a high note. For more on Bardet, including his saliva, click here. What, what? Saliva? Yes! As Google’s AI Overview helpfully explains, albertnet “includes observations on other aspects of races, such as rider’s saliva issues and podium presentations.”

Speaking of AI, here’s a fascinating hallucination. While watching the time trial a couple days ago I thought I saw last year’s Dauphiné winner Primoz Roglic (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe), but only fleetingly. I checked the results later and didn’t see him listed. So I asked Google if he dropped out. Here’s what the AI Overview had to say:

What’s remarkable is that Roglic didn’t even start the race, as he’s still recovering from injuries he sustained in the Giro d’Italia. It’s also worth pointing out that nobody has won the overall 2025 Dauphiné classification because the race doesn’t end until tomorrow. Granted, it would be permissible for AI to declare that Pogacar has already won, since nobody can stop him, but Roglic? No. He has about as much chance of winning this race as I do.

The Peacock coverage today started too late for me to see these guys go over the first two climbs, starting with the Hors Categorie Col de la Madeleine. “Hors Categorie” is French for “Whore’s Category,” which means the climb is a total bitch. Naw, just messin’ with ya. It’s “beyond category” meaning, “This climb is so hard, there is no way to categorize it. The human mind cannot conceive of a category like ‘hardest’ or ‘even harder than what we’d normally call hardest.’ Words fail us.”

The great thing about the Col de la Madeleine is that, in accordance with the strong tradition and culture of the sport, the riders ride up it in two straight lines. Hmmm. I think it’s too early in the morning and I’m confusing this race with the children’s book about the little French girl who gets her appendix out. I apologize.

But seriously, these climbs are horrific. I’m not just relating what the commentators are saying (because after all, they could totally exaggerate). I am speaking from experience, having ridden both of these climbs myself, also back-to-back, the year before last. You can read about that here. Suffice to say the Madeleine kicked my ass. And, in a crazy coincidence, so did the Croix de Fer. They’re just brutal. In fact I think I still haven’t recovered. You should probably click that link and read that instead because today’s race will probably be boring.

Can you tell there’s nothing to report right now? It’s just a long-ass descent (with a couple short climbs) before the Whore’s Category Valmeinier 1800, a climb about which I know basically nothing except that it’s 16.5 kilometers (10.25 miles) long at an average grade of 6.7%. So it’s gonna be a smackdown.

The breakaway is stretching out its lead a bit on the fairly straightforward descent toward Saint Jean de Maurienne, a town notable mainly for its excellent pizza. At least, that’s what I remember it for.

Now Bardet has dropped the rest of the breakaway. The peloton will hang him out to dry for a good while before wadding him up in a ball and tossing him halfheartedly toward the wastebasket.

Here’s what’s been going on so far in this Dauphiné. The first stage, designed for the sprinters, was actually kind of exciting because Pogacar and the other GC favorite, Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma - Lease A Bike) were in a small breakaway with a very narrow lead heading into the final kilometer. It looked like the break would ultimately get caught but it just barely held on, to where its slower finishers were actually passed by the fastest sprinters of the peloton. One rider burst out of the mêlée, and at first I couldn’t tell who it was, but it ended up being—Pogacar. Huh? A stage racer launching a hellacious sprint and beating out big strong rolleurs like Mathieu Van Der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step)? Yep. To put this in perspective (if you’re not a diehard cycling fan), this would be like if for some reason a football team sent its quarterback out to kick a 65-yard field goal and he nailed it.

Anyhow, some bike racer won Stage 2, who cares who won Stage 3, and then in the time trial Evenepoel, the Olympic time trial and road race gold medalist, stunned everybody with a big win. His helmet had this really goofy visor that covered everything except what was right in front of him, where there was this big gap, so it was like an anti-visor. So many of the time trial helmets were so ugly, it just overshadowed everything else and made me want to curl up in a corner and try to sleep it off. But the good news was, Vingegaard took 28 seconds out of Pogacar in the TT, giving us viewers hope that maybe he’d have a chance in the GC.

Stage 5 was another for the sprinters and a sprinter won, some guy named Stewart. It was only in Stage 6 that things got insanely boring, with Pogacar absolutely destroying everybody. He dropped Vingegaard (and everyone else) without even getting out of the saddle. It was demoralizing to watch: you’ve got Vingegaard, a two-time Tour de France winner, out of the saddle thrashing like he’s in a final sprint, and Pogacar looks like some bored commuter on an e-bike pulling away from him. Pogi took just over a minute out of his so-called rival on a mere Category 2 climb that wasn’t even two miles long. So today is really unnecessary, like that soft-serve cone you unwisely decided to eat, for reasons you cannot yourself understand, at the end of your thorough drubbing at the hands of the Sizzler buffet court.

They’re interviewing Evenepoel, who got shelled yesterday and lost his yellow jersey.

INTERVIEWER: You got shelled yesterday and lost the yellow jersey. How does that feel?

EVENEPOEL: Well, I wasn’t going as hard on that climb as I had in the time trial, so that was a mistake.

INTERVIEWER: Are you actually telling me you forgot to hammer?

EVENEPOEL: I am using this race to learn and to study the values and the team is [undecipherable].

INTERVIEWER: Well that’s just bullshit. But before we discuss how badly you blew it yesterday, I want to back up a bit and talk about your Olympic road race victory where you crossed the finish line, stopped, climbed off your bike, and stood there at line, flexing because you were far enough ahead to do this, except what if you weren’t and caused a massive crash among those sprinting in for second as they tried to steer around you?

INTERVIEWER: And then, still standing on the finish line like an idiot, you pantomimed hanging up a phone, almost like slamming it down. Totally over the top and it doesn’t even really make sense. Who were you angrily hanging up on? And do you expect young fans, who’ve never even seen a landline phone, to understand what you were miming?

EVENEPOEL: You’re kind of hurting my feelings.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, I’m just getting started! I haven’t even asked about those giant goofy sunglasses you’re wearing! What the hell are those about?

EVENEPOEL: I have to go.

I have to confess, Evenepoel’s interview was so boring, I had to freestyle a bit there. Most of what you just read is pure fabrication. Evenepoel really did say, though, that he “wasn’t going as hard on that climb as [he] had in the time trial, so that was a mistake.” He makes it sound like a tactical decision, but I saw what really happened … dude got shellacked.

Bardet is still solo but his lead is coming down. There’s really no way he can stay off. The descent is simply too long. Now he’s starting the final climb but has only 40 seconds or so on the GC group.

I left for a while and now I’m back. With 12 kilometers to go, the GC group is on the final climb and Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates XRG) is drilling it on the front, setting up his leader, Pogacar.

As they overhaul Kuss, who I guess must have attacked at some point when I wasn’t looking, Sivakov pulls off, clearly blown.

And now, of course, Pogacar attacks. Oh my. This is blistering. But Vingegaard was ready for this and is right on the wheel!

It’s a crazy attack! Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe), the German rider in the white jersey of Best Young Rider, who was third yesterday, is immediately gapped!

Can Vingegaard respond? No. Of course not. Nobody could. Look at this gap open up. It’s like an adult beating up a little kid. The peloton, of course, is shattered.

Evenepoel is off the back. I guess he’s “not going as hard as in the time trial” again. That is, he’s just not trying. And I can’t blame him. I mean, why try when Pogacar is taking all his marbles and going home, again?

Pogacar fiddles with his bike computer. Maybe he’s bored, or has realized he might set some sort of PR today for power output or something. Behind, Lipowitz has clawed his way back to Vingegaard. He’s having an amazing Dauphiné, sitting in third on GC after yesterday’s awesome ride.

Vingegaard flicks his elbow for Lipowitz to take a pull. Lipowitz doesn’t come forward. He probably can’t due to being on the rivet already.

I will say that Vingegaard is holding the gap down fairly well. He’s a fighter, for sure. But of course he needed to attack Pogacar today, not the other way around.

As Vingegaard buries himself, Lipowitz gradually comes unglued from his wheel.

With just over 9 kilometers to go, Pogacar is only 14 seconds behind Bardet, whose ride will be a footnote at best to this stage.

Oh, wait, my bad. While I wasn’t looking, Bardet was already overhauled. The 14 seconds is over Vingegaard, and I don’t think it’s accurate. He seems a lot farther back than that.

My online correspondent says, “😴😴😴.” I see his point.

I feel really bad for these professional commentators. I mean, I share their struggle to describe this race in an interesting way, but I’m just a rank amateur—my livelihood isn’t at stake. And at least I get to make shit up if I want.

And now Pogacar falters! He slumps over the handlebars, his bike careening this way and that! I don’t understand what I’m seeing! Oh, wow, you’re not gonna believe this, but Pogacar has actually fallen asleep while riding because this is even more boring for him than for us! Yeah, okay, I confess, I’m lying right now. Disregard this entire paragraph.

Pogacar does look bored, though. His official gap is now 20 seconds, though the essential gap—that being between a cyborg and a human—is insurmountable. He looks over his shoulder. Note his expression. He’s not worried in the slightest that Vingegaard is making any ground. He’s just curious. “I wonder what’s going on back there in that different galaxy. Maybe Jonas is actually bearing down on me and I get to attack again. That would be fun. Nope … can’t even see him.”

Bob Roll, one of the Peacock commentators, is talking about the beautiful little village at the top of this climb. That’s probably where he should focus his commentary. Let’s go inside one of those cute little cafés! Let’s interview the proprietor!

Lipowitz has lost 25 seconds to Vingegaard so far. Like you care. Like Vingegaard cares. Like Lipowitz cares.

Vingegaard gives another flick of the elbow. Is he hallucinating that somebody is still with him? No, probably just a tic, or a minor muscle spasm. It’s what passes for news on a day like this.

Do you think Team Visma - Lease A Bike has a big enough budget to hire some thugs to kidnap Pogacar before the Tour? Maybe they could hire some real dumbasses on the cheap, who screw it up in various ways, such that high jinks ensue. Or maybe Visma could hire a sexy actress to come on to Pogacar, a femme fatale, like Nancy was to Sid Vicious, who could derail Pogacar’s training? This is what has become of our sport ... leading me to fantasize. I can’t believe I paid for Peacock Plus in advance so I could watch the Tour next month. Maybe I’ll see what other programs Peacock Plus might have that would be more interesting, like NASCAR maybe, or old episodes of “The Office.”

Vingegaard, despite being off the back, is big-ringing it up this 7% grade. In any other era he would still be a champion. And actually he’s doing really well at keeping this gap down, which would be more useful if he didn’t start the day 43 seconds behind already.

The commentator Christian Vande Velde speculates that Pogacar isn’t even going all-out. It sure doesn’t look like it; his expression is the same as mine when I’m reading the paper or doing the Wordle. I’ll bet I could beat Pogacar at Wordle. Maybe Vingegaard could as well. They should just cancel the Tour and set up three weeks of puzzles.

What was Pogacar looking back at earlier? He had to know his lead was almost half a minute. Did he see some kind of interesting animal? A pika, maybe? Pogacar is an animal himself of course, but not an interesting one. Actually, I just did some light research (with nothing better to do this close to the end of the Dauphiné’s queen stage) and it turns out there are no pikas in the French Alps. The animal that Pogacar may be looking at (but let’s be honest, probably isn’t) is (or would be) a marmot.

Blah blah blah Pogacar has only one kilometer to go, who cares, la la la. He looks even more bored than I feel.

Pogacar wins again, and he’s pioneering a new victory salute, looks like. Is he miming something? Playing a banjo? Shooting a rifle? Or scratching his armpit like chimps are purported to do?

Vingegaard heads for the line. He looks really bad.

As he crosses the line he looks like he may actually collapse.

The phone rings. My mother-in-law is calling. Normally, when I’m watching a live sporting event, I would let the call go to voicemail, but whatever she has to say will be more scintillating than this. I won’t share any of her tidings here ... why steal my own thunder?

Lipowitz comes across 1:21 behind Pogacar. He looks absolutely miserable. He’s questioning his life choices, surely. But he’ll be happy later, I think ... with this ride he has solidified his podium position on GC, and he’s only 25 and it’s his first Dauphiné. He has a bright future ahead (if he can be content with second place at best).

Evenepoel lost another 2:39 to Pogacar today, 2:25 to Vingegaard, and 1:28 to Lipowitz. Hang up on that fool, he’s done.

What expression is Vingegaard wearing here? It looks kind of obscene, actually. But I like his sunglasses. They don’t cover up half his face like so many modern styles do.

Pogacar is being interviewed.

INTERVIEWER: You must be unhappy because you didn’t get to the finish in time to see [unintelligible].

POGACAR: Yeah, that sucks.

INTERVIEWER: Do you like my shirt? I got it at a thrift store.

POGACAR: Today we wanted to take control. Visma tried with all their tricks. I am happy with how I rode. Sort of defense today. I launched it and maintained a good pace.

INTERVIEWER: You never worried even though you were outnumbered?

POGACAR: Toward the top of Croix de Fer I think they wanted to drop me on the downhill. I did not like that but it’s modern cycling. And then we were in control again.

INTERVIEWER: I though “modern cycling” consisted of a rider being so totally superior to the others, he just makes a mockery of the race, and the sport.

POGACAR: Jonas was pretty strong but I also didn’t want to go too deep  myself. I was lucky I had enough time to ease up in the last few meters.

INTERVIEWER: Your eyelid keeps twitching. I think that means you’re lying. Do you want to come clean?

POGACAR: Fine. I admit it. I stole the bus money.

Let’s play a game. You try to guess which part of that interview was legit, and I’ll tell you if you’re right. Ready? Go. Okay, the answer is, Pogacar really did say, “Yeah, that sucks,” “I was lucky I had enough time to ease up in the last few meters,” “it’s modern cycling,” and “Visma tried with all their tricks.” That last bit sounds like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.

Bardet is nearing the line, over 12 minutes down. The cameraman pans over to Bardet’s father watching from the sidelines and looking pretty pissed off, honestly.

Bardet’s dad will have strong words for his son, I’m sure. “It’s Father’s Day tomorrow ... is this what you call a gift? I bought you your first bicycle! I drove you to all those races! I came all the way out here to watch you today ... and this is the best you can do? Your mother and I are very disappointed.” Bardet will retort, “At least I don’t wear cycling sunglasses when I’m not cycling. You dork.”

The commentators keep talking about how Pogacar was loafing in the last kilometer or two. How boring is this sport when the guy who solos to victory doesn’t even have to ride hard? This is like Mike Tyson pummeling a smurf. Which I’d actually really prefer to watch, to be honest. I would buy Peacock Plus for that. I wonder if I can get a refund?

My online correspondent declares, “The scenery is always good but super boring racing ... it’s like watching some Cat 3 race.” Hear, hear.

Pogacar mounts the podium to celebrate his stage win. The sport, which had eschewed podium girls entirely, is gradually bringing them back. Today we get only one, offset by an old white guy just to make sure the ceremony isn’t too pleasant.

Pogacar looks pretty baked, actually.

Whereas top professional cyclists used to have to specialize, Pogacar actually leads almost all the competitions: maillot jaune (GC), maillot pois (mountains), and maillot vert (sprints). The only one he couldn’t nab is the maillot blanc (young rider). So really, the only thing I have in common with Pogacar is that neither of us can deny the march of time … we both age. But he’s a mere 26 years old and (weirdly enough) went through puberty just a couple years ago, so he’ll have many years ahead to rack up the most distinguished palmarès in the history of cycling.

Here is Pogacar getting his green jersey. Look at his eyes. He really does seem stoned. Perhaps after the race he took some hits off a big ol’ stinky bong. Maybe that’s his secret?

Now he gets the polka-dot jersey. Climbing the steps to the podium is probably more work for him than dominating the stage today. Look at him. He’s struggling to keep his eyes open.

Lipowitz gets his white jersey. Man, he looks wasted, too! Was he pulling tubes with Pogacar right after the stage ended?

One more rider gets to mount the podium: Bardet, for the the Combative award. Some little kid is there and hands Bardet ... what? It looks like a toy skunk. Let’s assume it’s that. “Here is a skunk because you stink,” the kid may be saying.

And now Bardet’s dad has joined him on the podium. It looks like he’s about to whisper something in his son’s ear. “You suck,” perhaps.

Tomorrow has six categorized climbs, but it’s clear that Pogacar has the GC in the bag. That goes for the Tour, too. Even so, you should check back in July for my Tour de France coverage … because you never know, something interesting might happen with a rider’s saliva.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXI

Introduction

This is the twenty-first installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, and Volume XX is here. The different volumes are unrelated, though the real tales related are all real late and do all relate to me. You can read them in alphabetical order, numerical order, chronological order (note that these are all the same thing), check or money order, in some semblance of order, and/or because you’re “just following orders.”

What are albertnet Bits & Bobs? Well, imagine you’re making homemade pasta. When you cut the noodles, you get these stray shorter bits from the ragged edges of the dough sheets that fall on the floor or—if you’re smart—into a large bowl placed to catch them. You can totally use those fallen bits by gathering them up, pressing them together in a ball, rerolling them, and re-cutting them. That’s kind of what I do when I’m writing letters to friends and some extra words fall out of my word processor. The only difference is, I don’t reroll them, so what you are about to read is a big ball of scraps. Serve them with a nice Bolognese Ragu or Alfredo, or your favorite literary equivalent. (And if a presenting a big wad of literary scraps sounds half-assed to you, consider all the effort I put into that extended metaphor you’ve just enjoyed.) This week’s selections of Bits & Bobs are from letters I wrote during college.

[If you’re wondering whose portrait that is in the background, it’s the playwright Antonin Artaud, best known for his “theatre of cruelty.” I happen to remember this from 1990. Neither ChatGPT nor Copilot was able to identify him from the photo, by the way, thought Google nailed it instantly. To its credit, ChatGPT had a pithy comment: “Honestly, it might be the most fitting photo of someone who’s read Artaud and survived.”]

October 30, 1989

I had the weirdest dream last night. I’m at this party and dancing with this totally fly girl. I’ve never danced so well (and as you know full well, in real life I cannot dance at all) and we’re really hitting it off, and then the song ends and the girl collapses into my arms. First I think she’s trying to be funny but then I realize she can’t even stand up. Her legs drop out from under her, so I have to pick her up into my arms as though I’m going to carry her off. Then she whispers, “I have to tell you: I’m going to die. I’ve been poisoned.” I’m totally freaked out, looking at this girl’s face, and then she dies right then and there. I start to wonder if I’ve been poisoned too. I guess the Freudian analysis kind of conducts itself here…

March 1, 1990

I hope March goes better than February; that was out of hand. First off, I was sick all month. Then last weekend I finally started [collegiate bicycle road] racing [for the season]. The time trial sucked because I’m not fit and still not totally healthy after that virus. The criterium was one of these bullshit parking lot jobs that’s roped and coned off so they could make it twist around as much as they wanted. Half mile laps. Oil everywhere—in addition to all these big puddles of oil, the whole surface of the road had this kind of film on it. It was in Irvine, pollution capital of the universe, which gave me a gnarly sore throat. I figured on riding the crit mellow, for fitness etc. Well, the only guy on our team who was riding well was the new tri-guy, Eric, who hasn’t really perfected his sprint, so I went for the primes myself. I won one, and took third in another, and was actually kind of digging the technical course. I got in this breakaway of five halfway through, and T— and Eric were surely blocking for me, so I pretty much had to stick with it, but I almost didn’t want to because I felt like shit. On the other hand, Tony Palmer [a notoriously fast Colorado racer I’d admired as a junior, who raced in the Olympics in 1988], was in the break with me so I was excited about that.

Well, T— was sick and dropped out, and a then few riders bridged up including Eric, who of course would give the break a giant boost, almost guaranteeing our chances of staying off. So things were looking really good when suddenly I stacked in the hairpin for no apparent reason. I think I slipped on some oil. Ripped a big hole in my new Aussie bib shorts, and got this oily asphalt smear on my helmet—really sucked. Road rash on the hip, both arms, and the left leg, but not too bad. I ran over to the pit, and the asshole race officials wouldn’t give me a free lap because I didn’t go all the way around the course. So the Mavic neutral support guy just straightened my bars and sent me off. It took me like five laps to regain my composure, and I was dry-heaving and really wanted to drop out, but I was still in eighth or ninth or so, on my own between the peloton and the breakaway, so I chased hard and eventually got within about fifty feet of the break.

[Zoom in on that photo and you can see the oil smear on my helmet. Note also my teammate, T—, watching from the sidelines.]

I thought I was about to latch on when Eric attacked and blew the break apart (temporarily, anyway). So much for closing that gap. I thought maybe I could solo in ahead of the main pack but about ten laps later I got swallowed up. Towards the end of the race the break lapped the field and I was trying to get Eric off the front, since I knew that was his best chance at winning. Well, Tony Palmer was having none of that, and started cussing at me and yelling, “Don’t even try it!” Somehow, in the moment, feeling as crappy as I did, I accepted his authority, sat up, and just waited for the sprint. Damn, the tricks your mind plays on you when you’re miserable…

March 16, 1990

I was going to hit the sack but I forgot I did my laundry this afternoon and left everything festering in the washer so I just went and put it in the dryer and now I have to kill some time while it dries and I don’t really feel like studying even though I really should because finals start next Monday and I hardly even have a clue what’s going on in any of my classes, especially this boring as hell history class which is so lame that the best I could do for notes are statements like “1629: some emperor on verge of something with his edict of restitution which means something is restored to church; things after this began to go downhill for the Hapsbergs while Wollenstein is an example of why whatever war this was was the way it was, however that was” (that’s an actual quote from my notebook) which doesn’t really put me in a very good way as far as the final exam goes.

May 28, 1991

My dickhead roommate—the one with the Rolex and the $15,000 stereo—had a birthday recently. His mom called and asked for him, and when I said he wasn’t home, she said, “Just tell him happy birthday, and that his present is in the bank.” Nice. Meanwhile his girlfriend got him a Nintendo and he plays it 24x7. At first I couldn’t figure out why she bought him this thing, and then I realized, duh, she’s sick of him, and this will get him out of her hair. Easy enough for her … she doesn’t have to live with the guy. First thing in the morning, he’s playing “Contra,” and actually, he never stops, except to go to the bathroom or grab a snack. Same game, day in and day out. My other two roommates and I keep telling him to get a life and his answer is the same as when we tell him to do his dishes: “I’ll do it later.” What really sucks is that every time his guy is killed, he cusses like a sailor. Like it really matters. What’s he supposed to say if, one day, the television—my giant 26” Sony Trinitron Color Console in the giant cabinet—falls on him and pins him to the floor? Nobody will answer his call for help because we’ll assume his little Nintendo guy just got shot again. I keep hoping he’ll finally lose his temper and smash my TV so I can make him buy me a new one that isn’t all blurry.

November 25, 1991

So I’m in the school library restroom and this guy comes in, heads to the next urinal over, and before even doing his business flushes it. I wouldn’t have noticed except he used his foot, so for a second it looked like he was trying to kick me in the head. I have no problem with him flushing with his foot since the handle is presumably gross, but why the pre-flush? I guess he doesn’t want his good, clean urine mixing with the bad, dirty urine in the bowl. That would be terrible, even if he’s not planning to use that urine again. Just the very sight of his elite urine mixing with the vulgar, common urine is too harrowing for him to witness. What a knob.

April 20, 1992

My mom and [her husband] the Landlo’ left their car here while vacationing in Morocco and I’m using it as much as possible to date this girl. So far that’s only been twice, so I better hurry things up while I still have the car. I don’t expect you’ll chastise me for refusing to have a really deep introspective contemplative period following the death of my last romance; as you well know, I am not some sort of Love Guru. But I can hold my own with the women: which is good, because that’s what they usually want me to do.

July 29, 1992

[To Giro Sport Design, Inc. who had given me a free helmet about six weeks before.] Dear Giro people: A month ago, my Giro Air Attack acted as liaison between my head and the ground. I was mountain biking in nearby Tilden Park, and that’s about all I remember because for several hours after my accident I alternated between being unconscious and incoherent. I was flown by helicopter to the nearest trauma center, where I underwent a CAT scan and was stitched up. Twenty or so sutures were put in my forehead beginning, notably, just below where the helmet left off covering my forehead. I have suffered no permanent damage to my head and for this I thank you.

October 8, 1992

I called my dad the other day and said, “Dad, I need twenty dollars.” He said, “Fifteen dollars?! What do you need ten dollars for?! Okay, I’ll mail you the damn five dollars.” But he didn’t.

But seriously, my medical bills are starting to catch up with me after that mountain bike crash. I wrote letters to the ambulance and helicopter companies, saying basically, “I have no money. Please dismiss my account. Thank you.” The helicopter company was cool about it, but the ambulance company ($550 to drive me one block, to where the helicopter had landed) wrote back threatening to slash my credit rating if I didn’t pay up the balance. (My crappy school insurance had only paid $100.) So now I’m on the installment plan, sending $50 a month through next June for a five minute trip I don’t remember going on. I plan to write in the “memo” section of each check, “You thieving bastards!” or at least “You teething hamsters!”

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Biking the White Rim Canyonlands Trail With Young Bucks

Introduction

Every year or so I get together with my friend Peter to do a monstrously difficult bike ride. This year would have been in celebration of forty years of friendship, except that neither of us actually noticed this milestone at the time. (I did just now.) Just to mix things up, we brought along Pete’s son H— and two of H—’s friends from the Colorado State University cross-country running team. This is a little bit like inviting Godzilla to your garden tea party with his pals  Megalon and King Kong, expecting them to sip daintily and take just a few cucumber sandwiches instead of trampling everything. If you like the idea of me suffering, well, read all about it right here.

This was a one-day assault on the Canyonlands White Rim Trail, which Strava says most riders complete in two to four days. Pete had done it in three days with H— a couple years back, and this spring H— decided it would be a pretty good idea to hammer it out in one. (So honestly, it was me being brought along as an afterthought.)

Executive summary

As I’ve mentioned before in these pages, I’m not a big astronomy fan. The old cliché about staring up at the stars and saying, “Kinda makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it?” doesn’t seem that profound to me, because all kinds of things make me feel insignificant (like being middle-aged, and an empty nester, for starters). I don’t need to travel to some remote place where there’s no light pollution just so I can feel like a trivial little speck.

Meanwhile, I learned through this exercise that if you travel to a sufficiently isolated place—in this case Canyonlands National Park near Moab, Utah—you can be so dwarfed by giant reddish rock formations towering above you that you never need to see the celestial heavens again, if feeling insignificant is your thing. In the photo above, look how Peter (the farther-away dude, in black) is so diminutive compared to the rock wall next to him. (If you can’t even make him out, click the photo to enlarge, which goes for all the pictures in this post.)

And yet, this being by far the longest mountain bike ride of my life, I feel like my Man vs. Nature battle didn’t come out so very badly. Despite a protracted ordeal in an unforgiving landscape, I find myself “still alive and bitching” (to quote the philosopher king Marshall Mathers). You might be alarmed to know we were out for almost 11 hours with virtually no shade but I barely noticed … we had far bigger difficulties to surmount than that. For example: the CSU brat pack; the relentless pounding of our tires over unforgiving landscape; and the formidable Shafer climb (starting at mile 75). If all you care about is the fact of us pulling this off, congratulations, this Executive Summary is all you need, and you can click here for dessert. Otherwise, read on for the gory details!

Short version

Dinner the night before, at our AirBRB (a nickname I’ve just coined, I think), was De Cecco pasta with trailer-trash sauce. This sauce is made by sizzling some crumbly house-brand Italian sausage in a pan, glugging some jarred sauce in there, and heating it up. Since I drove like a thousand miles for this get-together, I splurged on some weirdly high-end sauce that’s like $10/jar. (Did I pay that? Of course not. I had a digital coupon or something.)

I slept poorly the night before because a) I’d eaten way too much pasta, and b) during the two-day drive out to Moab I adopted an all-taqueria-all-the-time approach to dining, so I had percussive flatulence all night, loud enough to wake myself up (and probably some of the 100 or so species of arthropods we can presume were sharing my room, if this dwelling was typical). Did I regret all that Mexican food? No. Not even considering the long hair I found in one of my burritos, which was from a forlorn taco truck in the middle of a giant dirt lot in a remote part of Provo. I kept pulling on that hair and it just kept coming, like a magic trick. And yes, I did finish that burrito. Think of how many hairs are discovered and removed just before restaurant food is served, or hairs that we actually ate, unawares, because we were eating too fast. (Or is that just me?)

My breakfast on ride day was a seriously overripe banana (peel almost black) with peanut butter, and coffee blacker than the banana peel. The AirBRB had a coffeemaker, but they’d stocked the wrong size filters, so it’s a good thing I brought my own pour-over cone and filters from home (along with my standard-issue ground Peets). These items had saved me at the motel the morning before as well, where the only teabag-style “coffee” they provided for their stupid coffeemaker was decaf. I’m strongly considering bringing ground coffee, my cone, and filters with me every time I leave the house from now on.

During the ride I ate an untold number of Clif and Kind bars, washed down with about nine  or ten bottles of water. Knowing the precise number of bars wouldn’t properly document the actual caloric intake, because there’s a lot of chocolate in a Kind bar, most of which melted due to the desert conditions and couldn’t be extricated from the wrapper. I felt kind of foolish eating these bars because all of my riding pals ate almost nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I really need to get in on that.

By the time we finished the ride, showered, limped back out to the cars, and drove into Moab for dinner, not much was open. We hit the Moab Grill which was still hopping. I knew as soon as we sat down that a) I wanted wings, real bad, and b) Pete would refuse to have anything to do with them. He’s above wings, apparently. We’ve argued bitterly over it in the past, sometimes after brutal bike rides such as this, and never order them. (It’s not that I couldn’t eat a whole plate of them by myself with no appreciable dent in my appetite; it’s that they’re meant to be shared. Solo winging would be like drinking alone.)

Of course we had the three young bucks at the table, but what if H— took after his old man with the buzzkill no-wings-ever policy? And what if the other two dudes, G— and T—, were, like, vegans or something? You never know with elite athletes. So I tentatively asked, “Would anyone be into getting an order of wings?” G— grinned and said, “That’s practically I’ll I’ve thought about for the last two hours.” Score! God, those wings were good. Buffalo style, with ranch, of course. I miss them. I just love how you can shove an entire wing in your mouth and then zip the bones out in one motion, leaving all the delicious meat to be exuberantly chomped. I also had a Reuben that was pretty darn tasty, on marbled rye that the waiter specifically recommended, with hella fries dragged through mayonnaise. I also inherited like half of H—’s “Dyablo” burger (jack, bacon, jalapeños, roasted red peppers, hot sauce) that was super good despite the misspelling. I don’t know what is wrong with that kid that he doesn’t even finish his burger after a 105-mile mountain bike ride, but at least he likes wings. And it’s not like I’m complaining about the secondhand food.

The really messed up thing is that I’d brought a four-pack of Fieldwork IPA all the way from California to drink with Pete après-bike (or should I say après-vélo?), but we were so shattered from the ride, we just didn’t feel like drinking. And we didn’t. Okay … now are you getting a sense of how hard this ride was?

Long version

This long version is truly long, even for an albertnet post. What can I say? It was a long ride. If you think reading this is hard, go try riding White Rim sometime.

You may have noticed from the map above that there’s almost nothing on it but the crenulations representing topography, and one little actual paved road, that being Country Road 143 that we were on for a few miles. No towns, no trailheads, no warming huts, no bailout roads to civilization. Granted, if the map were more complete it would show the little visitor’s station we stopped at, ~80 miles into the ride. Other than that there was just nothing and almost nobody. But we had each other.

Wait, did I just imply that having each other was a good thing? Honestly, endeavoring to keep up with three NCAA Division I cross-country runners is one of the dumber things I’ve ever done. Yeah, sure, they were on bikes, which is more Pete’s and my thing, but then, fitness is fitness, and youth is youth. Plus, they had their inevitable rivalry, leading to irrationally exuberant accelerations. For the first 40 miles, it was more or less a death march hanging on for dear life behind them. It wasn’t just hard physically (I mean, duh) but psychologically too … I kept thinking, wait, we’re only 20 miles in  and the temperature is climbing and I’m already suffering and shouldn’t I be saving some energy for later, and specifically for that monster climb, instead of accepting this breakneck pace? I didn’t realize until I looked at the bike computer data afterward that these first 40 miles were almost all uphill. That’s because everything is so  wide open, you can’t get a sense for gentle gradients. I just thought it was the rough terrain and the pace that were making it so hard.

Obviously it’s only the shallow climbing that’s invisible. It’s pretty hard to miss a steeper climb like this one:

That’s the Green River in the background there, BTW.

Climbing on a road bike, on asphalt, is hard enough, but at least that’s just a matter of turning the pedals. On a really rough trail—and I was surprised how legit and rocky and complicated a lot of this trail was, compared to the dirt road I’d naïvely imagined—you also need to steer around the bigger rocks, bumps, etc. because at such low speed, they can stop you cold. Sometimes you can’t avoid an obstacle and have to use body English to pop your bike over it, one wheel at a time. Meanwhile, the whole time you have to lean really far over the front wheel or else it’ll lift up off the ground (even if only slightly) at which point you lose the steering and your brain shuts the whole operation down so you unclip from the pedals and are dead stopped. Riding with your weight this far forward, you have barely enough traction on the rear tire, so it slips from time to time, costing you priceless forward momentum. Add in that you don’t know how long the climb goes on, and it’s hard to have faith you can make it to the top.

Sometimes we did give up and walk our bikes, which was a major letdown. For example, check out the pitch shown below, coming at the end of a prolonged section of brutally tough climbing. Pete almost made it. I was maybe 2/3 of the way before realizing (or at least imagining) that if I waited until the even steeper bit ahead to bail out, my shoes might slide out from under me. Pro tip: as you start to walk your bike, grab the rear brake to lock that wheel, or the bike will drag you backwards down the slope.

By the way, the shade you see in  the above pic is almost all we got the whole day.

We started getting some nice downhills. I don’t mean the super-steep technical ones where you’re hanging your ass over the rear wheel to keep from face-planting (though we did get those too, and they were glorious) but the more relaxing easy ones where all you have to do is steer around the larger rocks (because who wants a flat tire or other mechanical out in the middle of nowhere?). Unfortunately it’s really hard to take photos or make movies while doing these, but one of the young bucks somehow managed:

It was bumpy enough that I lost five bottles, only four of which I managed to retrieve. Three losses were from the side pockets of my CamelBak. I didn’t use the bladder with it, because I needed room for tools, the first aid kit, food, and five water bottles. (If you’re interested in everything a seasoned mountain biker has in his pack, click here.)

The trickiest part of these downhills was that you’d occasionally hit soft sand, which can sometimes seem to grab your wheel and twist it, so your bike starts to jackknife. Gave me the heebie-jeebies every time.

We stopped for rests periodically, especially in the more scenic places like this chasm we peered into.

Here is our lunch stop. (This happened to be around 1 p.m. but really, every food stop was lunch. It’s like when you’re in the grocery store checkout at like 4 p.m. and the manager says to your cashier, “Go take your lunch now.”) Look at H— peering at his PBJ. He’s probably thinking, “Come ‘ere, you.”

At around the southeastern-most point of the loop, at say 5 o’clock (i.e., the position of a hypothetical minute hand on a clock, not the actual time), several of our phones chirped because we randomly had a cell signal for the first time all day. We stopped and fired off some emails, because after all this was a workday. Kidding! But I did snap the below photo and texted it to my brother, and he actually got it!

By the time I tried to send the same pic to my daughter, the signal had evaporated. Probably it had been bounced off a passing jet, maybe even a spy plane, and was a flash in the pan.

I was about to type a thousand words about how majestic and architectural the landscape was, but instead here’s another photo.

If you’ve ever wondered how these formations got to be how they are, and especially if you’re a female reader, let me explain (or mansplain) it all from a geologic perspective. Wait! Come back! I was kidding! I have no idea how this land got to be this way. I’ve had it explained to me half a dozen times over the decades but I never listened. It’s complicated. Something about sedimentary, igneous (or is it Ignatius?) deposits, once submerged by an ancient ocean, or was it crushed by a glacier? I actually have no idea.

You might be wondering: does Canyonlands have anything to compete with the amazing pupfish of Death Valley? Well, not that I saw, but there were occasionally these darling little cactus flowers. (Bike tire included for scale.)

I count at least two or three species of insect in there. It’s like a big bug party in the desert!

While we were stopped for that photo and some chow, an SUV rumbled slowly by. A puffy middle-aged woman was in the front passenger seat and gave us a bored glance. She was wearing one of those ring-shaped neck pillows people use on long airline flights. Perhaps she was just doing this drive for the commemorative bumper sticker and couldn’t wait for it to be over (though that’s exactly what she was doing).

At around mile 60, an inventory of pain had assembled itself in my brain and my inner voice was whining. My back hurt (mainly from the strain of climbing). My right collarbone hurt where the strap of the (overloaded) CamelBak was pressing down, because of the heads of the screws holding the plate in there that fixed my once-broken collarbone. All my toes felt broken, which tends to happen on really long rides (despite my excellent footwear). Perhaps most of all, my hands hurt from my bike’s continuous impacts with rocks and hard-edged slabs we kept bumping up on and down off of. I’d brought long-finger cycling gloves and short-finger ones, the former without padding and the latter with gel, and ultimately opted for the long-finger. I don’t know what I was thinking … they’re just what I normally wear mountain biking, for protection against poison oak. But was I going to find that here? (I can sense you shaking your head.) I couldn’t switch to the padded gloves because G— had forgotten his gloves and was thrilled I had a spare pair. Would it be a dick move to demand that he trade with me now? Yeah, it would, dang it. So my palms were really raw. Have you ever gotten a little overexcited while tenderizing a pork chop, working out some demons perhaps, and you realize the meat has become so roughed up and soft it’s almost like moss? That’s how I imagined my hands had become.

Eventually we made it to the base of the dreaded Shafer climb. G— and H— took off ahead, ostensibly to make it to the ranger station before it closed. We didn’t actually know its hours, and it was already 4:30 p.m. with zero chance of getting there before 5 anyway, but the young bucks were out of water and thus desperate. Here’s Pete looking back at me as if to say, “Okay, they’ve got enough of a head start. I’m going hunting … see you at the summit.” The look I returned, as I snapped this photo, said, “Release the hounds!”

(Full disclosure: Pete’s look back surely meant nothing of the kind, nor did my return glance. I’m adding these subtexts only now, to give this report some drama and the shimmer of fiction.)

In the photo above, if you look straight up from the top of Pete’s head (zoom in!), you can see the switchbacks we would have to face.

Pete’s chase was swift and ruthless. The climb was ruthless but not swift, not for me. This next photo is from two minutes later. Not only has Pete caught H— but look how far ahead he is of me! I think I even used my camera’s zoom for this shot!

I rode my own pace, having released myself off the back on my own recognizance as I so often do. I know better than to try to run with the bulls. Here’s a little video documentary I made.

If you pause video that near the beginning to look at my bike computer readout, you’ll note I was going only 4 mph. Go ahead, mock me … but also consider the grade was 14%. (See what I mean about the wide open topography making the grade look shallower?)

Almost twenty years ago, my wife and I did a mountain bike vacation in Moab and, for shits and giggles, took a sunset river cruise narrated by a quasi-historian. The script he read from was cheesier than all-you-can-eat fondue. Our favorite line, delivered toward the end after a long pause (calculated to build suspense, I suppose), was, “And now, in the darkness of night, we ponder the legacy that is ours.” So pompous, and so meaningless! My wife and I like to trot out that utterance from time to time. And perhaps pondering our legacy is what G— was doing when I came around a bend to see him stopped.

Or maybe he was just enjoying the shade and taking a breather. I’d kind of been counting on these runners to eventually tire so they’d ease up on us. I’d asked beforehand how long their longest event is; it’s the 10K which takes them like half an hour. Obviously their training runs are longer, but then nobody runs for eight or nine hours at a stretch … and yet this kind of duration is typical for Pete and me on our monster rides. (Our 2022 slogfest took 8:37:47 and our 2023 gravel adventure took 8:37:32.) H— , T—, and G— are like greyhounds, whereas I’m more like a lobster lumbering across the ocean floor. As I distance cyclist I am kind of made for this, or more to the point I kind of made myself for this. We’d only ridden for six or so hours; I was just starting to find my groove.

I could still see Pete and H—, utterly dwarfed by the canyon wall.

The landscape was so literally awesome, so  sublime, that I kept trying—but always in vain—to  capture its grandeur with my phone camera. Perhaps my best effort is this accidental video, that was supposed to be a still photo. Though it’s obviously pretty sloppy camerawork, I think it captures the feeling of this climb better than any of my stills.

Switchback after switchback, the climb went on and on. Obviously I was suffering hugely, but at least the trail was smooth here and I settled in to a rhythm of sorts. If you read my posts from my epic French Alps cycling “vacation,” you’ll understand my point when I say this kind of suffering is the devil I know. (If you missed that series, cancel all your meetings and click here.) I felt like I could pedal like this all day, and probably would. At least it was easy to appreciate the progress I’d made, as shown by this photo. (SUV and T—, or maybe it’s G—, included for scale.)

Just before the summit of the climb, I caught Peter and H—. (The only explanation for this is that H— was hurting and had slowed down, and Peter hung back for some quality father/son time, to witness the lad’s suffering.) At the top, H— wobbled off the trail, set down his bike, and lay down on the ground to rest. Pete and I rode a couple miles to the Visitor’s Center to see about water. It was closed but had a spigot and we filled all our bottles. Bringing them back to the young bucks gave me a welcome paternal feeling, and I reconsidered my earlier plan to file charges of Elder Abuse against them.

We woke up H—, topped up everyone’s bottles, and set back out for what we thought would be a 20-mile descent, the first five miles or so being on actual asphalt. Instead it was rolling (if mostly downhill). That might not sound too bad, but each time the road tipped upward, it was like a slap in the face. Our group broke apart and regrouped a few times and over the last few miles I did some quality wheel-sucking behind T—, who’d caught a second wind at like mile 95. At one point I actually hallucinated and thought I saw buildings, like a small town, in the distance, indicating that we’d made a horrible navigational error and were screwed. “Do you see those buildings down there?” I asked T—. He looked at me as though I were crazy, which I suppose in the moment I almost was.

Eventually we reached the cars, our ride actually done, and busted out the cooler. There were only three Cokes, which were snapped up by the lads, but Pete and I were happy to make do with beers. Here is our official post-ride Beck’st:

Fortunately Mother Nature had put out some nice furniture to relax on. I love how, in this final photo, H— appears to be deep in thought, doubtless pondering his life choices and how he ended up here.

I can’t wait to return next year. With an SUV. And a neck pillow.

Stats

• 105.1 miles
• 8:44:05 ride time
• 12 mph average speed (really not bad for mountain biking…)
• 7,283 feet cumulative elevation gain (based on Pete’s Strava, presumably more accurate than the bike computer value shown above)
• 6,207 feet maximum elevation
• 120 bpm average heart rate
• 157 bpm max heart rate
• 4,316 kilocalories burned

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