From the Archives - Lake Tahoe & Mount Rose Epic Ride

Introduction

If I still raced, I’d file race reports with my bike club and then post them here. Since I don’t, I like to do epic rides instead, and report on them. Lately I’ve done nothing epic at all, so I’m running a very old ride report from my archives. You should treasure this as a rare glimpse into the exclusive inner sanctum of an elite cycling community. (Full disclosure: it’s not so different than my typical bloggage, but man, I gotta try to keep your attention lest you wander off to watch “reality” TV.)

Pre-Tour-of-California Lake Tahoe/Mount Rose Ride Report – May 18, 2011

Since I didn’t even race Mount San Bruno this year, much less anything else, I’ll have to make do with a ride report. Three of us (C—, N—, and I) did a fairly epic ride near Lake Tahoe the day before what would have been Stage 1 of the Tour of California had it not been abruptly canceled literally at the last minute, with all the pro racers staged at the start line. (Why was it canceled? You’ll just have to read on to find out.)

The tale begins, of course, with dinner the night before. On the way up to Tahoe our family dined at a rather good taqueria called Talavera Cocina Mexicana. It’s on Solano Ave. Yes, you read that correctly: the little place like half a mile from our house. We got such a late start, we ended up setting a new record for how soon into a road trip we stopped for food. I had a carnitas burrito with cheese and guac. It was big and, well, tasty enough. Alexa had the mushroom quesadilla which was really the star of the show. Happily, the mandatory Parental Tariff policy stood me in good stead.

The morning of the ride, at 6 a.m., I had a PBJ: Alvarado bread with Adams organic peanut butter, the salted kind of course—not like the heinous, inedible Deaf Smith unsalted brand I grew up with, which came in like a 5-gallon drum and was so runny we called it Quicksand because you’d lose knives in it, so every time you got to the bottom of the drum there would be like six knives—and my mom’s homemade apricot jam, which is nirvana.

It was pretty chilly when we started at seven, and the spray from riding through several large puddles got my leg warmers wet. So I was cranky (like Hank with his diaper from that old TV ad). We tooled clockwise around the lake for a while and then headed into Nevada and took a left on Highway 431 at Incline Village. This highway took us up over Mount Rose, the summit of which—at almost 9,000 feet—is the highest pass in the Sierras (and higher than the Col du Galibier in France, though you shouldn’t for a moment think that Mount Rose even deserves to lick the Galibier’s foothills). My form was, as we in the suffering industry say, “El Crappo Grande.” I think that’s partly because I never seem to ride at my best in the cold, and partly because I’d donated two units of red blood cells about two weeks before and my marrow hadn’t yet replaced them all. Also, I suck.

N— dropped us climbing Mount Rose, and his reward was to have to wait around in the cold wind for us, all the heat leaving his uninsulated body. C— and I added insult to injury by asking him hang out a bit longer to snap our photo. He seemed just a bit tetchy about this, which warmed me from the heart outward. I’m small like that. It was 41 degrees up there but at least it wasn’t raining. You can see it was windy, though: look how the wind is puffing out our jackets (I hasten to point this out so you won’t think we’re just fat).

Happily, it warmed up a bit as we descended. We stopped somewhere to take a leak and fill our bottles, and I asked a friendly-looking fellow traveler for directions. He looked strangely familiar, so I gave him a big smile just in case I’m supposed to know him, but he totally gave me the silent treatment. He seemed really distracted and in fact wouldn’t even look at me. I peered over his shoulder into his road atlas for a bit before realizing it was just a book.

Naw, I’m just messing with you, I never thought it was an atlas. Of course nobody would rely on me for directions; C— had mapped out the whole thing beforehand. He said to watch for Joy Lake Drive, onto which we hung a right. This was supposed to connect us to … well, I never actually got to find out how it was supposed to connect up, because at the gate to a, well, gated community we encountered a stubborn security guard who wouldn’t let us through. He had a walrus moustache and a walrus physique and immediately made me think of the Pink Floyd lyric, “It’s too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.” He gave an impassioned speech about how the filthy rich people living in the McMansion compound were so tired of the thousands of cyclists streaming through their community, burning their homes to the ground, enslaving their wives and children, and littering, that they closed the gates and won’t let any more of our kind through. He said there was a great bike trail, though, and gave us directions that showed him to be either dyslexic, stupid, right/left colorblind, or maliciously faux-helpful.

So we had to backtrack, up the No Joy road we’d come down, and then continued on to Highway 395, where we headed south into a brutal headwind (surpassed only by what C— dragged a few of you through last week). I would provide a map of our route but C— won’t grant me permission to follow him on Strava. [Note: over fourteen years later, he still hasn’t granted me access.]

My strength by this point had decayed from hopeless to lugubrious and it was all I could do to suck C—’s wheel, shamelessly and parasitically. It was inhumane how little work I did, but that’s okay because C— has been training a lot and seemed to be punching through the wind just fine. We got into Carson City and C— had a general idea there was some really cool bike route to take, but we couldn’t find it, and then we happened upon another cyclist. “Which way do we go?” C— asked him. The guy responded, “Where are you going?” If there’s a such thing as the polar opposite of a tautology, this was it … a notion I pondered stupidly for the next hour or so.

Thus, we ended up riding right through the main drag in Carson City, and a drag it was. The wind was ripping the flesh off our faces. As we passed a used car dealership with all its dumb balloons straining against their strings in the wind, I wondered if there were a convenient way to end my own life. Falling off C—’s wheel would have probably done the job, but not swiftly nor mercifully. Plus, I’d have died hating doing something I loved, which just seemed wrong, so I chose life. Life without parole, it seemed like. We stopped at a mini mart for water and some guy said, “You guys heading over 50? You got a long haul there.” We acknowledged that indeed we were totally screwed (though we used a more polite term). As the guy headed out the door he said, “Have fun in the race tomorrow.” As if.

So we headed west on Highway 50 over Spooner Pass, which those familiar with Spoonerisms might call Pooner Spass, thinking they’re funny or clever. It started off pretty badly because the wind still seemed to be in our faces, but then it shifted and we had a tailwind. Wow, what a relief. It didn’t help so much, but it left me free to drop off both N—’s and C—’s wheels without dire consequences. I’d have liked the company, of course, but at least I didn’t have to hear the squeaky chain that one of their bikes had, which was almost loud enough to drown out my wheezing. At one point I had to turn around because I accidently littered. Eventually I reached the top. Don’t we all? Here we are at the Spooner summit.

There’s not much else to say except the ride went on and on. I started to feel okay by the end, probably only because I knew I was almost done. I was barely coherent. When I tried to talk, often I would say the same word twice, like a strange form of stuttering. C— pointed out that on this bike path were painted instructions saying to ride right, walk left, which he felt was a very poor idea as it would lead to head-on collisions if heeded. At first I didn’t even know what he was talking about—I thought he was warning against slime in the puddles—but when I finally heard him right I thought his point was that it was backwards, that you should ride left and walk right, and only after several minutes did I finally grasp the lunacy of the instructions: it wasn’t a single rule applied to both directions, but actually one lane dedicated to riding and one two walking, regardless of direction. Dang. Anyhow, at 117 miles, with 8,400 feet of climbing, this was my hardest ride of the year.

During the ride I consumed four large bottles of energy drink, two energy bars, and four doughnut holes. The doughnut holes I bought on a whim at 7-Eleven at our last stop. By definition doughnut holes have zero calories, being nothing but a void, but I bought them anyway because they looked kind of tasty in a grotesque guilty-pleasure—nay, shameful-pleasure—kind of way. N— had totally bonked and actually looked sick (in fact his skin was slightly green, like a Vulcan’s) so I can’t tell if it was in the spirit of helpfulness or schadenfreude that I offered him some of the doughnut holes. He declined. I offered again. He declined again. I saved a couple for my daughters, along with the two Hostess fruit pies I’d bought but didn’t end up needing, probably because I’d just pounded a 20-ounce Coke.

Dinner was the gastronomic equivalent of an extended hip-hop mash-up where every single rapper on the planet jumps in to freestyle on the mic. While the men were out riding, the womenfolk had spent the entire day cooking. (This probably sounds sexist, and it’s an exaggeration, but after the beating I took on the road I need to take steps to rebuild my masculine dignity.) There was spinach lasagne, two kinds of enchiladas, salad (though I didn’t eat any), fruit salad (ditto), a big ham, and some other stuff. Then there were individual pumpkin pies with whipped cream, two kinds of ice cream, those weird cookies that have big chocolate disks pressed into them, and the mandatory parental tariffs I took of my kids’ Hostess fruit pies from earlier. I just sat there for like two hours straight eating plate after plate. (My wife has rightly pointed out that if I weren’t so thin, this kind of eating would be a truly disgusting spectacle.) As if C— hadn’t done enough work on the ride, he did the dishes while I just sat there. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for organizing the weekend and doing all the work.

The original point of this trip was to watch the opening stage of the Tour of California, but the strangest thing happened the night after our ride: it freaking snowed. As in, hard, and for a long time. In fact, Highway 80 was closed for a while. Look how much accumulated on my car, and how surly this has made my daughter. (Actually, this is her default expression. In fact she’s stoked because our cabin came equipped with sleds.)

The racers nevertheless assembled at the start line, but the snow showed no sign of letting up and they managed to organize a revolt. The organizers made noises about changing the start time and location, but ended up just canceling the stage entirely. Someone needs to remind Mother Nature that it’s May, and this is California. Oh well … at least my pals and I got a good ride in.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2019 Tour of California Stage 6

Introduction

Sportscasters covering professional cycling have a massive challenge: how to describe the action while continuously biting their tongues. They’re not allowed to bag on dopers, so they have to pretend that it’s exciting to watch a totally lubed rider destroy everybody. The Tour of California, however, runs concurrently with the much more prestigious Giro d’Italia, where the heavy hitters are. The TofCA is bound to be a cleaner race, so the announcers have got that going for them. Which is good.

So yeah, you could watch the coverage live, using the Amgen Tour of California Tour Tracker which really is the greatest streaming video platform ever. I’m so stoked on it, I feel like supporting Amgen by buying a bunch of their EPO. But even with this great tracker, the coverage is in the middle of your workday, so you don’t have time, and if you try to watch the highlights later, they’re going to give the outcome away in the first five seconds for some reason. You don’t want that.

Besides, maybe you’re a bit disgruntled by the sport, like I am, so you like my snotty remarks. Of course you do … you wouldn’t be here otherwise. So read on for my biased blow-by-blow report of the all-important, GC-deciding Tour of CA Stage 6, which finishes atop Mount Baldy in southern California (motto: “Don’t you dare walk here, we’ll ticket your ass!”).

2019 Tour of California Stage 6 – Ontario to Mount Baldy

I join the action way, way late. I took the whole day off work, went for a bike ride, went too slow, got home late, and then had a nice lunch at a Tibetan restaurant were the service was so slow, I almost wonder if they hired the cook after taking our order. Only 14 kilometers remain in the whole race, so I’m going to have to really rush here, which means typing “km” instead of “kilometers” from here on out, and not taking time to change kms to miles for you. Also, if I need to talk about the weather, I may express the temperature in Kelvin.

There’s a breakaway. Behind, some Bora-Hansgrohe guy has attacked the peloton. He’s trying to bridge up to the break, which only has like 30 seconds on them. That’s not a lot when at least half the remaining distance is uphill. The Bora guy is Felix somebody. With a first name like that, you don’t actually need a last name … “Felix” is distinct enough. I have a pal named John and I told him his name is useless. He agreed: “It’s a fcuking disaster.”

Okay, Felix’s last name is Großschartner. I admit I was stalling just a second ago, because that’s a really hard name to type. Steephill.tv had it as Grossschartner which I knew couldn’t be right. I mean, three Ss in a row? Nobody would have such a name. You couldn’t say it without hissing. Everyone would hate you.

Felix has a teammate in the breakaway, Maximilian Schachmann. So if Felix bridges up successfully, he’ll be able to help Schachmann win, obviously. I don’t know if there are time bonuses in this race because I was barely aware it was even happening until two days ago. Someone mentioned it was going on this week, so I looked for the Tour Tracker and happened to check out the final 10 km of the Morro Bay stage, which had apparently been super boring until the last 8 km. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Felix is on the short descent to the base of Mount Baldy. The top ten riders are all within like 30 seconds of each other in the general classification and there’s no time trial in this race, so this climb will be absolutely decisive.

The breakaway is Schachmann, Hugo Houle (Astana Pro Team), Matteo Fabbro (Katusha Alpecin), Pawel Bernas (CCC), Lennard Hofstede (Jumbo-Visma), and one other guy whom I’ll call John because hey, why not.

Schachmann is only 22 seconds off the GC lead, so this break is probably doomed. Tejay’s EF Education First team will surely reel them in, and even if they don’t, the race officials will bend the rules until Tejay comes out on top. They did that already in the Morro Bay stage, where Tejay crashed, then took a wrong turn, then blatantly drafted a support car for a really long way, and then only caught up to part of the peloton—specifically, the riders who were on the ground due to another crash—and because this was inside the final 3 km the officials gave Tejay the same time as the entire peloton: that is, as the part of the peloton that hadn’t crashed and was way, way ahead of Tejay. Meanwhile, this was actually 3.2 km from the finish, but the officials didn’t really care. I think they want a known rider, and an American one, to win the race because it looks better. I mean, if Hugo Houle won, what would that do for the sport? Everyone would remember it as “a foreigner called Huge Hole won,” and they’d shrug and go back to NASCAR. At least, that must be the thinking of the commissaires. As if this sport weren’t a big enough joke already.

Lawson Craddock is leading the chase for Tejay. He’s a great ungodly godlike domestique. I wish I could get him to work for me. Not in my races, of course, because those are few and far between. I could really use him for some light filing, maybe going through my mail and throwing out all the junk. Running errands. Things like that. I wonder of Craddock does that for Tejay during the off-season.

Wow, Schachmann has dropped the break and is trying to solo! He’s only got like 6 km to go, but also 2,000 vertical feet. And it’ll be hard to pedal effectively with such big balls crowding the crotch of his shorts. He looks like he’s pretty cool and calm, but that could just be a poker face.

Okay, the announcers just said there’s a 10-second time bonus for the win. But is that really going to happen? Tejay is really fast, obviously, and I think his teammate Rigoberto Uran Uran is in that field with him, and on a good day Uran is almost matchless on the climbs so he should pace Tejay quite effectively. (I guess I should hedge a bit though and point out that I haven’t watched a road race since last year’s Tour de France, where Uran crashed out, so for all I know he’s gotten too old to go fast.)

This stage is such a great one to watch, because there are plenty of GC hopefuls who haven’t had much opportunity to do anything in this largely flat stage race and have put all their hopes on this climb. Another rider to watch is Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo), who had so many not-normal performances with Team Sky that the only thing holding him back today would be not being able to find a fresh vein to inject himself in. I guess maybe his new team is clean though. Maybe he’s a really good guy and Team Sky was just a bad influence.

Speaking of Team Ineos (née Sky), its leader Gianni Moscon, wearing bib #1, is going out the back! So I guess the peloton is already going pretty damn fast. That being said, Schachmann has increased his lead to 35 seconds with only 5 km to go.

Tejay looks pretty comfortable. That yellow jersey looks so much better than the pink ones EF riders wear. In this one instance, I wouldn’t fault Tejay for wearing a yellow helmet to match the leader’s jersey. But a black helmet would be even better.

Kasper Asgreen (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) is now leading the peloton. He would be wearing the leader’s jersey today were it not for the clowns officiating this race (as described above). He must be impatient with the EF team or something, or maybe he’s trying to crack them in Merckx style instead of attacking. That worked pretty well for Merckx … everyone since him, not so much.

Shirtless idiots have arrived to run alongside the riders. I hope one of them gets smacked. Not hard or anything. Just a smack.

Whoooooah, Tejay is cracking! Dude is just getting shelled, with his own teammates ahead of him! Who’d have thought! I guess he’s getting old or something. It happens to the best of us. Heck, even Chris Horner kind of sucked toward the end, not that I blame him. I feel so old myself now, talking about riders who have retired. I confess I kind of lost track of this sport after Chris Froome was exonerated and I could no longer bear to watch.

Wow, Asgreen has been dropped! He looked so good earlier.

Now George Bennett (Jumbo-Visma) makes a dig and gets a bit of a gap before anyone can react. He’s being joined now by Tejay’s teammate Sergio Higuita, and not far behind it looks like Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates). I think that’s Porte struggling along behind them.

Higuita attacks!

Higuita is hauling ass and there’s no poker-face here, he’s just drilling it, his face a pitcher of pansies. You didn’t think I was gonna say “picture of pain” did you? I would never do that. His face is a pitcher. A patchwork. A bun. A bane. And more.

Porte is having bike problems. Good.

It’s only 1.6 km to go! Higuita is still really motoring. It’s hard to tell how far behind he is from Schachmann. Do I care who wins? Not much, though I don’t like Higuita’s neon green shoes. His Pepto-Bismol-pink jersey is ugly enough without introducing neon green to the outfit. Behind Higuita, Pogacar and Bennett keep up the chase, Porte having been totally distanced.

The break has completely dissolved, every man in it for himself. Like all the rest of us. Except moms. They’re in it for their kids. But I digress.

It looks like Pogacar is catching Higuita. He looks really smooth, and started the day only 16 seconds behind Tejay on GC.

Pogacar and Higuita are together now and look like they’re kind of crawling. The camera makes these grades look way flatter than they are. It must be insanely steep. I’m so glad I’m just sitting in this armchair typing, not out biking with these fools.

OMG, there’s 100 meters to go and still no sign of Schachmann, which means they must have passed him at some point. I’ve been thinking he was up the road this whole time! Maybe he was abducted by aliens or something. Crazier things have happened in this sport, like Froome getting off the hook after testing positive.

It’s the final sprint, and Bennett is coming back! And now Higuita overcooks the final curve, taking it too wide!

Pogacar comes blasting through! He’s freakin’ flying! He’s got proper black shoes and he’s blowing Higuita out of the water!

Pogacar’s got the wine! I mean win! He’s got the win! He’ll get the wine later. See how these typos work?

And now we wait to see how far back Tejay finishes. Wow, it’s not good. He’s clearly lost the GC. And he’s so tired, his arms are all crooked.

Gosh, Pogacar is super young. He looks like he’s about 15 years old. I think he cools himself the way dogs do. Maybe all the young humans are being made this way now. Okay, they’re saying he’s actually 20 years old. Too young to buy booze, which is surely why he had that extra edge today. I love to drink beer and look how slow I am. (No, you can’t actually look. Nobody is filming me. Thank God.)

Tejay’s daughter is too young to realize just how badly her dad fcuked this up today. She still loves him. That’ll change. When she’s a teenager she’ll read this blog (like all the cool teens will), and then she’ll be like, “Dad, the beginning of the end was Mount Baldy. Speaking of which, how’d you get so bald? You’re, like, a living fossil! And your chain of auto dealerships is failing.”

So, Pogacar not only has the yellow jersey, but rumor has it he’s going to get a video game made in his honor. Here he is getting his yellow jersey. Note that the podium girl doesn’t kiss him. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll get in trouble. Or maybe they’re not doing that anymore.

Man, Pogacar is so fricking young, some thoughtful race official got him a teddy bear! That is so fitting! They’ll have cookies and milk waiting for him later. I love the thought of him snuggling with that teddy bear tonight, maybe wearing his medal over his Star Wars pajamas.

They’re interviewing him now. “I was really strong and that made me go fast. Strong means fast, I have noticed. Higuita took the turn too wide. This black stuff you see at the corners of my mouth is Oreo. I just ate like five of them really fast. In Slovenia we have no Oreos. Also I have won very many bike races back home but nobody ever gave me a bear. I love America.”

Note: as you probably already figured out, I totally made all that up. He did say something about going fast and being strong, but after that it got really boring. “Thanks to my team blah blah blah.” It’s possible that my freestyling got us closer to the real truth. Though you must not quote me on the Oreo thing. I just did some light fact-checking and discovered this blog post, all about Oreos in Slovenia. I did not make that up. Click the link.

Now they’re doing the team podium. Here are the top three teams:

Wait, how did that get in there? That’s not just the wrong race, that’s the wrong sport! What you see above is the Albany High Cougars mountain bike team celebrating their victory in the team overall for the season. How that photo made it into this report is beyond me … probably some kind of online tampering. I’m going to leave it though, because they’re even younger and more fresh-faced than Pogacar. And that’s saying a lot.

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Ride Report - 2014 Tour of California Mount Diablo Stage

Introduction

This tale, written for my bike club pals but also for you and your closest confidants, concerns a very special journey up Mount Diablo to watch real professional cyclists tackle the “queen stage” of the Tour of California.

Due to the soporific effect of hackneyed phrases like “chess game on wheels,” “burned too many of their/my matches,” “a picture of pain,” “riding like a man possessed,” and “turning himself/myself inside out,” I will not describe the riding (mine or the racers’) in much detail, but—in keeping with my club’s fine literary tradition—will focus mainly on the food.

Short version 

• Breakfast #1:  Rigatoni alla Bolognese with zested Parmesan
• Breakfast #2:  Blueberry pancakes, real maple syrup, sausage, and bacon (chez Ian)
• Lunch:  Three bottles Cytomax, fruit punch flavor/color; two Powerbar gels, 1X caffeine
• Glycogen-window Treats:  organic strawberries, berry yogurt, vanilla Greek yogurt, dried apricots, chocolate chips, fruit popsicle, half a Dos Equis Special Lager, one Heineken
• Dinner:  Homemade spinach-and-meat lasagne, Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera, bottomless glass of water
• Ride report:  Epic pass
• Race report (witnessed):  Professional racers are really fast, and sometimes funny

Long version

Two words into the short version of this tale, I may have already ruffled some feathers:  Ian, who hosted a glorious breakfast for our group, must be wondering why anybody, even a glutton like me, would have a pre-breakfast.  After all, in an e-mail to the group he’d written, “I will of course be making a separate batch just for Dana.”  So it’s not like I had to worry about the food running out.  Besides, as I mentioned in my 2012 Tour of California Mount Diablo report, I don’t normally eat breakfast at all.  So:  why two breakfasts?  Well, it’s complicated.

First, there was the matter of the Bolognese left over from Mother’s Day, when I spent four hours making a triple-batch as a peace offering after a) having neglected to make any restaurant reservations, and b) having suggested to my wife a restaurant that wouldn’t be packed on Mother’s Day (i.e., Hooters).  Now, if you’ve ever had a proper Bolognese (i.e., one that is a solid once refrigerated), you know that this sauce is almost impossible to resist under any circumstances, even with the knowledge of an imminent pancake breakfast.  Even when bacon is involved.

Second, there was the personal challenge of seeing if I could heat up some leftovers for my daughter’s thermos, to make her the most stoked kid at her entire school, without eating any of it myself.  You know those well-trained dogs that can balance a dog biscuit on their snout without eating it until given the go-ahead from their owner?  I aspired to match that level of pointless discipline.  Alas, I ended up nuking more than would fit in the thermos, so I had no choice but to eat the rest, which—though being only perhaps a cup of food—was the equivalent of a good-sized meal, because my non-heart-healthy Bolognese is the second most caloric food on Earth.  (First place is eggnog.)

What is “zested Parmesan,” you might ask?  It’s Parmesan grated with a zester (see above photo) so it melts like snowflakes on your pasta.

The plan was for me to meet Sean and Ryan at the coffee shop, and then we’d ride to Lafayette to meet Craig, who knew the way to Ian’s.  Well, I was so late getting to the coffee shop, I got angry voice-mails on both my mobile and home phones.  I didn’t want to add insult to injury so I didn’t even explain myself at the time.  So I will now.

Dana’s Top Ten Reasons for Quasi-Flakage on Tuesday 

1. Spent too much time photographing rigatoni alla Bolognese
2. Could only find Water Babies sunscreen from 2002 and didn’t want to end up with Moroccan-leather-red skin
3. Having eventually found Sport Performance SPF 50 sunscreen, took too long applying it to hairy legs
4. Took forever finding SPF 50 lip balm but refused to endure burnt lips yet again
5. Decided at last minute to find darker sunglasses
6. “Shut up, bowels!”
7. Being frazzled by already running late, struggled with recently-replaced Boa dials on my cycling shoes, because both shoes now (oddly) have right-hand dials so left-shoe dials are backwards
8. Had to charge camera battery and phone to hold my own against any Millennials I might encounter en route
9. Took too long indulging my daughter in a long goodbye (her cuteness = entrapment)
10. Didn’t allow for so much traffic, especially when riding past junior high school right when all the able-bodied students were being dropped off by their overprotective parent/chauffeurs

I was actually only six minutes late to the coffee shop, but Sean and Ryan seemed pretty stressed.  I guess that’s because I alone knew how to get to the trefpunt, and I alone knew what “trefpunt” meant.  (In English it’s “rendezvous.”  Wait.  French.  Whatever.)  So after I assured them we had plenty of time, we moseyed socially along until we actually were running late, so then we got to do some real hammering.  Man, I love real hammering, especially on the flats, because I never do anything but climb and seldom have anybody to draft.  We ended up reaching the trefpunt six minutes late, which was fine because Craig was running late himself.  We rolled in to Ian’s unfashionably early.  It was already getting hot.

Ian had the blueberry pancakes already made and keeping warm in the oven while he cooked the bacon and sausages.  Ian is from England, and—knowing what I know about the superior bacon over there—I was very impressed that, while he did comment on the high fat content of American bacon, he did so non-pejoratively.  Perhaps he knew I’d be blogging about this and was worried about the NSA questioning his loyalty.  I think this NSA flap has frightened all of us.  (Note to NSA readers:  when I say “flap” I’m not saying it’s your fault.  Thank you for keeping us safe!)

Due to Ian’s brilliant pancake breakfast concept I changed my fueling strategy radically.  That is, I didn’t bother bringing any food on the ride, foregoing the sandwiches etc. I’d schlepped in a backpack last year.  You might think this is foolish since pancakes have a pretty high glycemic index (i.e., they burn rapidly), so my blood sugar could crash after just a couple of hours.  But bacon and sausage, being high in the right kind of fat (i.e., the chewy kind) have a very low glycemic index.  In fact, gristle probably has a G.I. of about 1.  And low-G.I. foods slow down your burning of high-G.I. foods.  This is why a big carnitas burrito obviates the need to eat for at least twelve hours.  Dang it, I’m making myself hungry here!  Anyway, I tried to keep track of the number of sausages I ate, but could not (though it was at least ten).  Ditto the bacon and hotcakes.

I tried to spam that last photo out to all my followers on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and it probably would have worked fine except I decided to get fancy.  I figured, hey, Ian’s great food will probably get me a whole bunch of Likes, but couldn’t I get even more Likes with a really nice stock Getty image of a visually perfect stack of pancakes?  Alas, between my fingers being greasy from the bacon, my smartphone touch-screen being fogged up, and my skills being rather poor to begin with, all I managed to do was send the photo to my Paypal account, which they’ve now frozen.

That whole last paragraph?  Yep—pure fiction.  I’m not on social media, beyond this blog.

So, yeah, no lunch needed after that bodacious spread.  Of course, not bringing a backpack meant I couldn’t bring a hat or sandals for our long wait, on the mountain, for the racers.  But Ian, who is apparently going for Man Of The Year, chucked some extras in his pack for me.  (If I hadn’t taken my boys out of the game, I’d try for a son and name him Ian.)

The ride was very hot—temperatures in the 90s by the time we left Ian’s—but not all that hard due to our conversational pace.  Full disclosure:  I was technically blood-doping for this ride.  Last week I donated blood, which normally is okay from a sporting perspective, but in this case it was platelets and plasma, so I got my red cells back.  Since having blood return to my body is technically a transfusion, I guess I was technically in breach of the rules and I really wonder what my blood passport would look like if the UCI did one for me.  But I’m not going to be one of those riders who, when finally admitting guilt, takes down a lot of other guys with me.  So from this point forward all the names of my fellow biker/spectators will be redacted in my report, following the example of the USADA rider affidavits.  Otherwise you might think them complicit in my transgression.

We headed up North Gate road, which is the harder approach of Mount Diablo, just so we could lord that over the racers later.  On the lower slopes my bike computer registered 103 degrees Fahrenheit.  It’s a good thing nobody asked me to spell “Fahrenheit” because my brain was being cooked.  We chatted the whole way up, of course.  [Spectator 3] extolled the virtues of base layers, because they hide his massive pelt of chest hair (which frightens other men and lures in women, creating marital friction) and when I tried to respond my poor brain got stuck.  I started out, “Your chest hair makes Austin Powers look like—” but here I couldn’t come up with the name of Austin Powers’ hairless cat.  Fortunately, some random cyclist within earshot called out, “Mr. Bigglesworth,” thus saving me from acute embarrassment.  (Actually, [Spectator 2] and [Spectator 3] had probably stopped listening to me anyway.)

That wasn’t the only time a complete stranger joined our conversation.  Another time, we were trying to remember at what elevation the officials closed the road to VUPs (Very Unimportant People), and someone helpfully said, “It’s at 3,848 feet.”  Wait, did I just say “helpfully”?  Well, I lied.  This comment wasn’t that helpful because that’s the elevation of the summit, as we already knew, not the info we actually needed.  But it was very nice of the fellow to try to help and I wish him well.

We finally found a great viewing spot a little past the 3-KM-To-Go banner.  There were a few trees, and though people were already massed below them, the gradual setting of the sun would thrust that shadow in our direction (as [Spectator 2] cleverly realized).  We’d refilled our bottles at around the halfway point but were still running pretty low.  I asked if I’d get lice from the loaner hat, and its owner said, “That hat hasn’t been worn since the Tour of California Mount Diablo stage last year.” 

Here we are maxin’ out while the racers made their advance toward the mountain.

Look at the big “E” on my jersey.  See that insect?  It’s an earwig.  There were flying earwigs all over the place up there, and they bit!  Not just “bit” as in “man, that totally bites!” but as in, they kept actually biting us.  So we had to keep brushing them off each other, sometimes a bit violently.  At one point [Spectator 5] told me, “There’s one on your groin but you’re on your own.”

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, two more pals, [Spectator 4] and [Spectator 5] arrived, separately, one having dropped the other en route.  [Spectator 5] rode all the way from San Jose, even though he has a newborn at home.  The fathers among us chastised him at length.  “I did a whole load of dishes before I left!” he protested.  [Spectator 4] said, “Look , did you have an episiotomy?  No?  Well then shut the hell up.”  I tried to explain to [Spectator 5] that housework and other methods of helping out are not fungible, but my sun-baked brain couldn’t come up with “fungible” so it took a lot more words to convey that you can’t just bank goodwill by doing housework in advance.  You have to hang around the house in case your wife says, “Please take your shrieking demon-infant away from me before I do something I regret.”

Nobody was giving out popsicles or drinks this year, but a guy did hand up some official Tour of California gas-station-grade sunglasses, and a woman gave us miniature Champion Systems jerseys.  You may not know this, but it’s against the law for a blogger to praise a consumer product if he received any perk from its manufacturer.  So it would be illegal for me to say anything nice about Champion Systems products.  That’s okay, though, because I already had my say on the topic of their dangerously undersized clothing.  Anyway, it was nice of them to give handouts, and it was in a good-natured spirit that  [Spectator 3] quipped (once the CrampSys rep was out of earshot), “Is that their size medium?”

At least half a dozen big vans drove by, toward the summit, with absolutely nobody in them.  I’m sure there was a point to this but I’ll be damned if I know what it was.  And damned if I don’t.

After a very long wait in the open-air sauna, we finally saw the official vehicles, then some motos, and  the leader of the race.  We had no idea who he was but it didn’t matter.  Half a dozen seconds later came the lead group, with Sir Bradley Wiggins right on the front.  Despite setting a blistering pace, Wiggo looked not only more comfortable than we had pedaling our casual way up the mountain, but more comfortable than we felt just watching the race.  I think he was breathing only through his nose.  Note to self:  abandon tentative plan to turn pro.

The peloton was in pieces.  Lone riders came by here and there, and small and large groups.  Tom Danielson rode by, well off the back, and [Spectator 4] yelled, “Hang in there, Tom!  I know it’s not easy when you’re clean!”  Indeed, he did look a lot, uh, cleaner than in past years.  Then [Spectator 4] set up an empty water bottle with a $5 bill sticking out the top, as an ad hoc crowd prime.  If the cyclingnews start list is correct, it was the Dutch rider Danny Van Poppel who wheel-thwacked the bottle off the road, to our great delight.

The final racers trickled by, then the broom wagon, and then the show was over and we made our way down the mountain.  It wasn’t nearly as clogged with biker-spectators as last year, perhaps due to the heat.  I rode hard all the way home, part of the time with [Spectator 2] and [Spectator 3], and though I didn’t tackle my beloved Lomas Cantadas (the heat was still in the upper 90s and it had been a long day) I did feel a moment of pride when I made it over the so-called “I hate pain” hill (on Wildcat Canyon Road, by the Brazil Building) in the big chainring.  It was only a moment of pride, though, because then I remembered that my so-called “big ring” is actually only a 50-tooth because, uh, well, I’m riding a compact these days.

When I got home I presented the sunglasses and micro-jersey to my daughters, and instantly achieved hero status.  Lindsay knew right away what to do with the jersey.

The jersey could use some tailoring but I think Ken looks great in it.  All those Barbies are going to be fighting over him!  Note how closely he’s shaved his legs.

I’ve already listed off my assortment of post-ride sugary snacks.  After those I did some cheese grating duty as my wife put the finishing touches on the aforementioned spinach-and-meat lasagne.  The Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera weren’t quite done yet so they came out as a second course.

What?  You haven’t heard of Brassica oleracea var. gemmifera?  Yeah, I’m using a code name there.  It’s a vegetable that is so unpopular among Alberts that its name must not be uttered.  My dad made an exception once, when he composed a bit of verse on the topic:  “It takes more than a muscled lout/ To make me eat a [Vegetable 1].”

Anyway, even that course was pretty tasty.  It was a great dinner after a great day, and my lips, for once, hadn’t even gotten sunburned.  Life is good!

Ride Report - 2013 Tour of California Mount Diablo Stage

Introduction

I’m on battery.  Very little time here, probably less than I think.  My battery is bad.  My PC will bluescreen any second because that’s how it announces it’s run out of juice.  So this report, about my big ride to watch the Tour of California Mount Diablo stage, will be merciful and quick.  It’s targeted at my bike club pals, so if you’re not one of them there may be some unfamiliar proper nouns in here, but just roll with it.  If the text, brief though it may be, becomes too much, scroll down for the photos and movies.  And then go back and read the text so you’ll know what the hell you just saw.  Or not.  Whatever.  (For the report of last year’s Tour of California Diablo stage, click here.)

Full (but quick) report

Breakfast before the big outing was a plate of leftover Fettuccine Carbovera.  I’m coining a term there for Erin’s ad hoc creation.  It was like a Carbonara, to gratify the family’s saturated fat centers, but also like a Primavera, with a bunch of vegetables she threw in, probably to assuage her guilt at serving a starch-bomb to the family to begin with.  Very tasty.  With this I had a glass of my homemade Caffeine Water, which is like that Vitamin Water people drink except that instead of having corn syrup and artificial color to complement the needless easy-to-get vitamin supplement that gives people, including college-educated full-grown adults, an excuse to drink sugar water, my drink is just water and an off-brand caffeine tablet.  When NoDoz was recalled well over a year ago I had to switch to this off-brand, which I’m convinced doesn’t dissolve readily, because I end up getting no benefit from it during my ride and then being bizarrely unable to sleep like eight hours later.  So I dissolve it which makes a beverage with such a foul flavor, it must give me a performance advantage. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see four EBVC dudes waiting at the coffee shop.  Sean had pre-flaked and based on my flakage chart I didn’t expect to see him, and I figured at least one other guy would probably flake as well.  I was less pleasantly surprised by how few of us decided to spend the whole day standing out in the sun to begin with.  It wasn’t easy for me to get a furlough:  I missed one daughter’s soccer game and the other’s violin recital for this.  As I was leaving they let me know how unimpressed they were with my decision.  Parenting is hard, but they’ll thank me for this tough love later.  I don’t know why they’ll thank me—probably just to make me feel guilty all over again—but they’ll thank me.  If they don’t I’ll make them.

I’d been thinking of Jens Voigt that morning, and even cornered my younger daughter and made her watch his interview following his brilliant win in stage five, where he said, “I was really hurting so I thought ‘now or never.’”  I explained the point of this to my daughter—if you feel good the others do too, so you better attack when you’re suffering to make sure they are, too—figuring it might help her soccer game.  She’s good at soccer but in my opinion doesn’t suffer enough, yet.  I also told her about how Jens Voigt is known for saying, “Shut up, legs!” as they scream at him during a solo breakaway effort.

I was late meeting the guys, yes.  But not as late as Tony said.  His 10-minute-late claim is about as realistic as “clean coal.”  I timed myself and was exactly 5 minutes 40 seconds late.  It’s not my fault.  I was all ready to go, and ahead of schedule, when I suddenly realized I wasn’t done with my, uh, toiletries.  This wouldn’t have been a problem except at that moment my wife started taking a shower.  We have only one bathroom (a sore point in our family, I might add).  She would be talking to painters and buying paint and shuttling the kids around everywhere all day so I had to be careful what more I asked for.  Could I manage to ride without doing this download?  “Shut up, bowels!” I said to myself.  Well, I said it to my bowels, really, in my best stern German voice.

So, yeah, I was late.  It was worth it.  No offense, guys.  We made good time meeting up with Ian and Matt at Whole Foods, despite getting totally wrong instructions from some guy in a parking lot who probably just stands around giving bad directions to people.  Diablo was mobbed.  It was hot.  I was wearing a backpack.  It contained a good camera, a big thing of sunscreen, two glorious sandwiches (in the special internal sandwich pocket), an orange, a hat, sandals, phone, and in the outside pocket a totally brown banana that I brought just to get it out of the kitchen where it was slowly killing the flowers I’d bought for Mothers Day.  Ripening fruit put out ethylene gas.  Erin refused to move the flowers from over the sink.  They were her flowers.  I got a big furlough today.  I didn’t argue.  Plus I hoped to aggravate Ian with the brown speckledness of the banana.  As he is known for pointing out, he likes a firm banana.

There were spectators here and there reclining along the side of North Gate Road.  I couldn’t decide whether or not to tell them the racers would be coming up South Gate, making this vantage point utterly useless.  In the end I didn’t tell them.  Perhaps they had their reasons.  It’s often best not to engage.  Today I engaged with a shoeshine guy.  He was right in my face and I decided there was no harm in getting a quote.  He said, “Let me look at your shoes,” and then squirted this stuff on them.  Now I was on the hook.  Smooth.  “You’ve been had, don’t feel bad,” he said.  Now my shoes stink.  I don’t know what he used to shine them, but the fumes are making it hard to think.  To the extent you hate this report it’s his fault.  Oh, and that of my battery because it’s making me rush so much.

My backpack was heavy and suffocated my spine.  Remember “Goldfinger”?  That woman died because her spine couldn’t breathe through the gold paint, and she wasn’t even trying to pedal a bike up the harder side of Diablo.  (The racers themselves did the easy side, South Gate.  We did North Gate, for fear of being harassed by one another for being wimps.)  I was one second slower than last time from Checkpoint Charlie to the ranger station, due to the backpack.

Here are some photos, which perhaps we’ll use in the “Men of East Bay Velo Club” calendar.

While we waited for the racers for a couple hours, we tried to watch the race on our smartphones.  I got about five seconds of video before it froze, so I gave up and stashed the phone in my pocket.  Ten minutes later Phil Liggett is suddenly talking out of my pocket.  I had to force-kill the app to save my battery.  Ian theorized that the titanium in my leg was interfering with the signal.  Mark and Lucas had better luck and were getting the blow-by-blow report, and could see that our local hero, Nathan English, was in the breakaway with Andy Schleck.  We were pretty excited about that, of course.  Local Boy Makes Good!  But as the racers approached Mount Diablo itself, Nate got caught.  Lucas was yelling at his phone, “C’mon Nate!”  I guess that’s progress:  a generation ago men our age were yelling at football players through the TV.  At least phones could communicate, unlike TVs, and at least Lucas didn’t call him a dumb bastard or anything like football fans do.

The other guys bought sandwiches at the Food Whole.  Lucas showed his off.  It did look fancy.  (Oooh!  Brie!)  My sandwiches didn’t look so fancy but deep down inside I’ll bet Lucas was envious.  Mine were handmade by college grads:  I made one, my wife the other, and I looked forward to testing the theory about whether a sandwich always tastes better when somebody else makes it.  But I queered the whole test by not using identical ingredients.  One sandwich had avocado, cheddar, tomatoes, salt, and pepper; the other had mozzarella instead, and the addition of cucumbers.  I tried to brag:  “These cucumbers were marinated in Italian dressing all night.”  Mark correctly guessed that they were leftovers from one of my kids, not any premeditated culinary scheme.  The cheese in my sandwiches was nicely melted from the hot day and my stuffy backpack .  On the other hand, the banana had gotten even riper—let’s face it, flat-out rotten.  But good.  (By the way, Alex, who met us up there, had the best lunch of all, that being sandwiches he made fresh right there on the mountain, using a really cool knife to cut charcuterie and a cheese that was so fancy I can’t remember, or never knew, its name, all on an Acme baguette.  I was too jealous to snap a photo of it.)

Eventually the racers approached.  We could see them, ant-like, on distant stretches of road.  Just find the copter and look down.  A million support vehicles drove by, along with an astonishing number of snub-nosed (well, short-fuselage) school buses with the “School” part covered up.  They were carrying VIPs, no doubt, to a point farther up the road than we mere fans were allowed to go.  Probably those people were rich or good-looking but had almost no interest in cycling.  That’s just how it goes.

I focused my camera, zoomed all the way in to 16x, on a switchback way down the mountain.  I thought the helicopter might rise up behind the riders and I could catch a really good shot, maybe even a really cool movie.  As I sat there waiting for it, it actually happened!  Somebody next to me said, “Here’s your Airwolf moment!” and it was almost too good to be true.  Actually, it proved entirely too good to be true, because in the heat of the moment I totally choked and failed to snap a photo, much less make a movie.  The helicopter rose out of view and man was I pissed at myself.

When the racers came by I almost made good on my vow not to try to film them, which is almost impossible, and just to enjoy the visual spectacle through my eyes alone.  But I couldn’t resist, but also didn’t really look at the camera screen, so what you get below is kind of a Blair Witch Handheld Cinema Verité  kind of thing.  It has its moments, particularly the part where you can see the BMC boys, including race leader Tejay, with my very own bike (the grey and black Orbea) in the background!

Nate came by.  He ended up riding pretty well, passing by former Tour de France winner Andy Schleck.  Here are a couple photos of him.  I wonder if his all-time Strava record for Mount Diablo fell.  I could check, except I’m not on Strava (nor Facebook, nor Twitter, nor Tumblr, etc.)  … I refuse.

It didn’t take as long for the racers to go by as I’d expected.  They were all flying.  If the tables were turned and any one of these guys was standing on the side of the road watching me ride by, even on my best day, he’d shake his head and think, “Poor stupid bastard, why does he even try?”  And he’d be right.  I am humbled, which is humbling, because I think I was pretty humble to begin with.

The descent was madcap.  Throngs of cyclists, of varying ability.  Skilled, unskilled, bold, cautious … the worst combination was bold and unskilled, followed close behind by skilled and bold.  Nobody should be bold in such circumstances.  Some of the lesser pros blew by us, one of them trailing garbage.  Throughout my descent (I went it alone, not wanting to cause—or become—collateral damage) I kept hearing this whistling sound.  What was it?  Finally I realized:  it was the whistle built into the Fastek buckle of my daughter’s backpack.  (I borrowed the one without the butterflies on it but probably still looked like an idiot, but it didn’t matter because I couldn’t see myself anyway—BAM!)

At the bottom we regrouped right where the team vans were all parked.  We saw Jens Voigt himself roll up, and suddenly I remembered Mary Beth’s request to get a photo of him.  (She couldn’t come to the race because she had to walk her dog or something.)  As luck would have it, I already had my phone out, to call my wife and say I’d be late (and to ask her to put a fresh rug in the doghouse for me).  So I flipped it into camera mode and pointed it at Jens.  He looked over and even waved, and—dammit it to hell, the thing wouldn’t snap the picture!  I don’t know why.  It just didn’t feel like it.  I almost spiked it onto the sidewalk, but instead ran over to Jens’s bike.  The rumor I’d heard turns out to be true, about what he has painted on his top tube:

The guys were leaving and I scrambled back to my bike and took off in a hurry, further cementing the fear I’d had periodically all day that I was leaving things behind.  I think I actually made it home with almost everything—only my hopes of the Airwolf shot and the Jens Voigt shot were left behind.

A few of us rode to Bart, to mitigate the Dutch we’d be in with the wives for staying out too long.  At least we wore plenty of sunscreen, and we didn’t hit a pub on the way and show up at home drunk.  Punch-drunk perhaps, but it’s always that way after seeing a live sporting event of this caliber.

Dinner was crab cakes.  I made the tartar sauce myself.  There were mashed potatoes—mine plus the kids’ because they’d somehow spoiled their appetites.  I had a beer, a San Miguel, which is a pointless nothing-beer … it’s not watery like a Corona, which goes down nice on a hot evening after a long ride, nor tasty like a Belgian ale, nor powerful like an IPA.  But it was cold and liquid and didn’t bother me a bit.  Not having another beer cold did bother me a bit, but it’s just as well, considering how (relatively) slow I am on Mount Diablo these days with my off-season belly.

It’s almost time to switch Bart trains, so I can make a bunch of new enemies based on the stench of these shoes.  I can’t believe my luck, that this laptop battery has held out so long.  I hope you also consider this to be a stroke of luck.  I guess if you’re still reading you do.

Epilogue

I was so absorbed in this report, and my nagging fear of sudden battery death, that I got off at the wrong Bart station.  I hope you’re happy.  Oh, and one more thing:  Mary Beth, here’s a photo of Jens Voigt.  Obviously it’s not from this race (wrong kit); I snapped it at another great American bike race.