Ride Report - 2019 Markleeville Death Ride with Teenager

Introduction

I used to ride the Markleeville Death Ride every year, until the registration process became too cumbersome and I started racing the Everest Challenge instead. This year, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Death Ride hadn’t filled up, so I signed up with my daughter Alexa. Read on for all the gory details. (Full disclosure: there is no actual gore.)

Executive summary

We ate like supermodels; we ate like kings. It was really hot. The scenery was gorgeous. My daughter set some new PRs. Verdict: EPIC PASS. (Any linguistic shimmer here involving mountain passes is involuntary.)

Here are the elevation profile, basic map, and Deluxe map (with numbers showing what order we rode the passes in).

Short version

Seemingly following my own bad example, my daughter Alexa went into this ride woefully undertrained, at least by the standards of anybody who takes preparation seriously. The Death Ride includes five high mountain passes, but our plan was to tackle just three of them: #1 (west side of Monitor); #3 (Ebbetts); and #5, Carson. We figured this would be about 100 miles with  ~10,000 feet of climbing … but this was just a guess based on nice round numbers.

Dinner the night before was at a somewhat pricey Italian joint in South Lake Tahoe. I had an appetizer of stuffed mushrooms and then chicken saltimbocca over homemade fettuccine. The portions were woefully small. I could picture Kate Moss across the table saying, “Oh my God. I can’t believe I ate the whole thing. I’m such a cow.” It was pretty tasty, though I could show their cook a thing or two about making hand-cranked pasta; theirs was a bit limp. I inherited some of my daughter’s entrée because she got tired of it … the spiciness pretty much overwhelmed everything else.

Breakfast was supposed to be instant oatmeal, but our morning went totally awry (details below). We ended up scarfing a Clif bar apiece instead. It was a new flavor I’d never tried: Apricot Lunacy. Wait, that’s a Luna bar flavor. Or should be. But it was apricot, anyway. Pretty yum, in a wow,-my-hundred-thousandth-lifetime-Clif-bar kind of way.

During the ride I ate a banana-and-trans-fat mini-muffin; hundreds of Kettle-style potato chips; gobs of orange slices; about a dozen really poor robot-made chocolate chip cookies; a cup of weak instant coffee, black; five Pepsis; an electrolyte placebo capsule; three V-8s; 1.5 Cups-O-Noodles; several gels; ice cream bars; blah blah blah (all the usual nonsense ride foods) and a couple big ham & cheese sandwiches.

The post-ride dinner, which did not come with our $160 (apiece!) entry fees, was supposed to be at a far-flung restaurant (out of spite), but in the end we caved and had the onsite $10-a-pop burger plates: two burgers each (replete with trimmings, though the patties were cold), some admirably non-vegan baked beans, and hella potato salad.

Full report

We camped on the ground at Turtle Rock Park, a Death Ride tradition. It was surprisingly—almost eerily—easy to find a spot compared to years past. I almost wondered if we had the right weekend.

We carpooled to the ride with Chris, a fellow Albany High mountain bike coach, who was also one of Alexa’s teachers last semester. (Alexa got an A- in the class; any lower and this coach/teacher would not have been welcome in our group. Just kidding. Actually, if she’d scored lower, he surely wouldn’t have deigned to go with us.) Chris asked if we should set an alarm for the morning, and I explained the Death Ride organizers’ tradition of blasting the Jimi Hendrix performance of “Star Spangled Banner” at party volumes at 4:30 a.m.; i.e., no alarm needed.

Not far (enough) from our tent was a large party of jackasses who decided to hit the road at 3 a.m., which meant waking up at 2 (or maybe they never went to bed) and making a big breakfast in their stadium-lit compound. They talked incredibly loudly, like a bunch of drunks, so I couldn’t sleep. Without any knowledge of their leave-at-3 strategy, I kept waiting in vain them to turn in, and finally gave up and went over to tell them to quiet down. Most of them were so immersed in their 100-dB chitchat they didn’t even see or hear me. What a bunch of tools. My take is, if you have until 8 p.m. to finish a 125-mile ride, and you still need to start at 3 a.m., you’re not a real cyclist and should go try some other sport, like cordless bungee-jumping. Fortunately, they did quiet down, because my Plan B was to send them home to Mother in a cardboard box.

At 5:30 a.m., Chris woke us up. Evidently the 4:30 a.m. Hendrix wake-up call is no longer a tradition. He was just heading out (for all five passes) and we eventually got going at 6:30. Here is the “before” shot.

The ride begins on a descent and we froze our asses off … a Death Ride tradition that will never change. As the sun made its way up past the ridge to the west, things warmed up a bit.

Monitor Pass is a bear. So is taking father/daughter selfies with my ice-cube-slippery phone, especially when a scorpion is crawling toward my neck.

The scenery was as breathtaking as the altitude, notwithstanding fire damage.

The first rest stop wasn’t nearly as mobbed as in years past, which was fine by me. They no longer have energy bars or gels available, and the energy drink is either weak or diabetic-friendly depending on which volunteer you overhear. But they have weak instant coffee now, which is a plus at least from the hydration standpoint. You can tell Monitor was a tough climb because my daughter is a bit surly here.

Here she’s a bit perkier, no doubt due to the dueling V-8 juices she quaffed. Chris took this photo; after descending the backside of Monitor and climbing back up, he encountered us at the rest stop.

Wondering what ebvc is, on our jerseys? It’s just another way of saying EBVC. Does that help? No? Okay, here.

Here’s the official summit marker. Monitor is the lowest of the Death Ride passes, but not by much.

Not shown: the descent of Monitor. I don’t own a GoPro, or even a StayAm. If that doesn’t strike you as funny, it’s because I’m trying to avoid amusing even myself, due to my sunburned lips. If I were to smile too much they’d crack. Maybe you’d think that’s funny.

It’s a long run-up to Ebbetts Pass, with the temperature climbing along with us. I would like to take a moment to point out that I have done this pass with individuals (whom I won’t name) who whined the whole time, and I didn’t exactly blame them: it’s a steep, long climb. But my daughter didn’t whine at all. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe because no hill climb could ever compare to Mount Evans, which she rode three summers ago. (Though come to think of it, she didn’t whine then, either. At the time I chalked this up to lack of available oxygen.)

There’s a lake. Actually it’s Kinney Reservoir. This is at 8,350 feet elevation—so we’d already broken the climb’s back. It’s it amazing how you, gentle reader, barely have to exert any energy to journey up these passes with us, and yet you still complain about how long and arduous my blog posts are. Man, you’re not just humorless … you’re downright grumpy.

Due to California’s modern all-precipitation-all-the-time winter/spring format, there was still snow up there. It’s not hard to spot the snow in this photo, but I’ll bet you can’t find Waldo.

To mark our progress I would tell Alexa how much vertical gain we had left to go, but expressed as Berkeley-area climbs. For example, “We have 1.5 Spruces to go” or “We have 1 Wildcat to go.” My bike computer was understating the elevation, though, so I’d just announced half a Spruce to go when suddenly we reached the summit. Surprise!

This next photo doesn’t perhaps look very interesting, but that’s only because my arm isn’t like eight feet long and my phone’s “lens” isn’t very wide-angle. The point is, Alexa was so knackered, she had to lean her back up against me for support. The position I had to sustain for this made my back hurt quite a bit, proving what many of you already know: parenting is even harder than cycling.

Amazingly, I didn’t get the song “Lean On Me” in my head after this little exercise. Sometimes life is surprisingly merciful.

Check out this bag of chips. I wonder how high you’d need to take it before it actually exploded?

In other news, what’s with the watermelon? I mean, why offer what’s essentially a calorie-free food to hungry cyclists? Frustratingly enough, this is almost all Alexa felt like eating. I had to plead with her to eat more food. This is one area where you can’t “listen to your body.” Your body is a freaking liar!

Here is the requisite elevation shot. For the second time, Chris made the summit—his fourth, our second—right around the time we did. Incidentally, Ebbetts Pass is 62 feet higher than the Col du Galibier, which is the highest point in this year’s Tour de France. Does this mean Ebbetts is harder than the Galibier? Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. The Galibier is way, way harder. It’s a beast. But Ebbetts is hard enough.

We safely descended, had a nice lunch at the base (I grudgingly ate Alexa’s sandwich), and then the day got really, really hot: over 100 degrees for well over an hour! We tackled the seemingly endless Category 2 climb toward Carson Pass, and then it tackled us. It’s hard to describe how tedious and strenuous it was so I won’t bother. Eventually we arrived at the last full rest stop before the Carson summit. The Gu people were there handing out free product, which probably rescued Alexa from total blood sugar collapse. She loves herself some gels, especially their vanilla and their salted caramel. The Gu-sters also gave me some electrolyte capsules, which I took a) just to be nice, and b) as a placebo. I don’t doubt that these capsules are slightly useful, but potato chips have plenty of sodium, and orange slices have plenty of potassium, and that’s all there is to it.

While at this stop, some random woman came up to me and said, “Look at this! Somebody put his water bottle in my cage! What am I supposed to do with it?!” I was utterly perplexed. I mean, why tell me about it? Do I have a sign around my neck saying, “Come to me with all your problems”? Before I was able to come up with a response, I glanced at the bottle and discovered that, in fact, it happened to be mine. I have no idea how this happened; nor does Alexa.

Here is Alexa about to mount her bike for the final slog. If her expression is sanguine, that’s only because I hadn’t yet told her we had ten more miles to climb. On the map, we are at Picketts Junction where the boxed-in R is.

Beautiful meadow, snow-capped peaks, brisk headwind. Seconds after I snapped this, Alexa asked me to take the lead again. She certainly got to practice her drafting on this ride.

Up, up, and up.

Finally, finally we made the summit, then descended to the final rest stop, which shimmered like an oasis. (Full disclosure: it didn’t really shimmer, and I’ve never seen an actual oasis. But still.)

I knew there would be ice cream up there but I couldn’t find it. I looked around for somebody who had some. The first guy I saw was wearing a triathlon national champion jersey. He was eating a Drumstick. I pointed at the Drumstick and said, “Excuse me, but … where did you get that?” He replied (somewhat haughtily, I thought), “National championships.” As in, “This jersey you cannot buy.” I said, “No, I mean the ice cream.” Ouch … I felt a twinge of vicarious embarrassment. The champion pointed toward a huge truck with these vault-like doors on it which contained all manner of ice cream bar. You can imagine how tasty these were.

In the photo above, look at that little plastic strip bisecting the middle vent on my helmet. It gave me the stupidest tan lines of my life. No, I won’t be posting a photo of that. It sure sucks losing my hair.

And here’s the elevation photo. I suspect the height of the pole is to make the sign readable when the snow is incredibly deep … but if so, why is the Ebbetts Pass elevation sign so stubby? [Update: an alert reader has informed me that Ebbetts doesn’t need a tall sign because it’s closed in the winter.]

Descending Carson is an absolute blast. My brother Max, during a long-ago Death Ride, passed a cop car at over 60 mph. We took it a bit easier.

There’s one last uphill slog just before the finish, which is tolerable only because the excitement of being nearly done always gives you a final burst of energy. Alas, when we reached Turtle Rock we were at 96.6 miles with 9,750 feet of cumulative vertical gain. It goes without saying we had to keep riding, just so we could round out our ride at 100 miles and 10,000 feet of gain. Two miles of downhill, then two grueling miles back up. Here is Alexa stoically grinding out the last stretch.

I made a surprisingly unexciting video documenting the culmination of Alexa’s first full-on century ride.

Here is the “after” shot. I cannot account for my totally overblown expression. My only theory is that my crows’ feet are so deep they were causing me physical pain, and that my crazy grin is actually a grimace.

Here is our dinner. I cropped Alexa from the photo because the camera caught her mid-blink and you know how awful those shots can be. She didn’t touch the burger, by the way, so I got it. She was oddly un-hungry for someone who’d just conquered the longest bike ride of her life.

I’m sure there’s more I could write, but now it’s time to apply another coat of Carmex to my poor lips.

Ride stats

Here are the stats based on my old-fashioned bike computer. 

• 100.2 miles
• 8:49:47 ride time
• 11.4 mph average speed
• 10,249 feet cumulative elevation gain
• 40.1 miles total climbing
• 42.8 miles total descending

Further Death Ride reading

Death Ride Frequently Asked Questions

From the Archives – Death Ride ’99

Non-Death-Ride Non-Warmup

Ride Report – Sierra Nevada “Almost Death Ride”

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Ride Report - 2016 Grizzly Peak Century Ride With Teenager

Introduction

Last Sunday, for the second year in a row, I rode the Grizzly Peak [metric] Century with my daughter Alexa.  (Why not the full century?  Because I’m trying to promote the metric system in this country.)  Read on for a description mainly of the food, but also the jinx—high, low, and otherwise—we got up to.

Short version

We met up with my EBVC teammate Craig and his wife Susanne.  The weather was perfect.  The food was plentiful and yummy.  There were cool bandanas but no yellow socks this year.  Alexa rode like a boss (especially when she Froomed us on Pinehurst) and covered the entire ~120 kilometers—including almost 2,000 meters of climbing—with her customary flair and panache.

(Wondering what the verb “Froome”  means?  You’ll have to read the full report.)

Full version

Note that I don’t say “long” version.  “Long” in the context of anything written carries a distinctly negative connotation.  This report is “full” like “full-figured.”  But it’s certainly not long—I have just half an hour to write it so you’re practically done already.

Breakfast was the smear of jam Alexa left on a spoon.  My breakfast usually consists of my younger daughter’s bread crusts, but she wasn’t home.

I hadn’t ridden with Craig for like six months, even though he’s normally one of my best training buds.  That’s because this spring I decided, in lieu of my normal regimen, to ride less and get fat.  But I e-mailed Craig the night before and sure enough, he and his wife Susanne were registered for GPC, so we made plans to meet up.

Teenagers take a really long time at everything (except sleeping).  So Alexa and I were too late to meet Craig and Susanne.  Fortunately, fate was on our side and Craig got a puncture like 20 meters into his ride, giving me the chance to a) sync up with him anyway, and b) further promote the metric system via this report.

Here are the Alberts at the start, along with Susanne’s shadow.  Note my lack of arm warmers and leg warmers … that’s how nice the weather was.  This marks the first time I have ever rocked fewer biking garments than Craig.

Alexa got a new bike last summer, with a double (albeit compact) crank instead of a triple, so she’s forced to climb a bit faster, regardless of how much energy she ought to be saving.  But in fact she climbs much faster, beyond what her gearing demands.  At the base of the steep, winding part of Pinehurst, she stunned us all by suddenly yelling, “I am awaited at the gates of Valhalla!  Witness me!” and then launching a brutal attack.

Well, okay, I embellished that a bit.  (She hasn’t yet seen Mad Max – Fury Road.)  What actually happened is that she Froomed us.  That is, she was riding so well she accidentally dropped us without even realizing it, like Chris Froome always does.  I don’t think she noticed until she got to the top.  I had to speed up a bit to keep her in sight so I could stop my lap timer … I’m pretty sure she got a new PR by a large margin.  Her pace probably wasn’t very wise, so early in a long ride—particularly since this was only her second road ride of the year—but then, her prefrontal cortex is still under construction.  At least she’s not doing truly dangerous stuff like so many teens do, like stealing cars, snorting Drain-O, playing mind-altering video games, and texting 24x7.

At the first rest stop we tucked in to the famous GPC home-baked snacks.  In this photo Alexa does her best Vanna White impression, though her expression seems to be saying, “Did you really just give me a second plate of goodies for my very own?”  (No, they were mine!)

So that’s poppy seed cake, peanut butter cookies, ginger snaps, pound cake, zucchini bread, oatmeal cookies, and coffee cake.  There might have been some other stuff but I ate it too fast to notice.  Could there have been a home-baked aspirin loaf?  Possibly, if such a thing exists.

Next on the docket was a brisk descent of Wildcat Canyon, a trip through San Pablo, Pinole, etc. and on to the very heart of the ride, which is the oil refinery.  Here’s the requisite glamour shot … note how Craig’s head appears to be steaming.

We threaded along the newly restored Planet of the Apes road near Crocket, with a new diversion along an isthmus (?) past the C&H sugar plant, which (according to my handy GPC bandanna) was built in 1906 and processes all the cane grown in Hawaii, which is about 700,000 tons per year.  If my math is correct that’s 1.4 trillion pounds, which is particularly scary when you think of how rare sugar is compared to corn syrup these days.  Should I talk a bit about beet sugar?  Naw, let’s move on.  Here’s Alexa rolling past the dueling bridges of the Carquinez Strait.

We hit the second rest stop, ate a bunch more stuff, and let our legs get all stiff so we could have maximum difficulty on the next section of the route:  the famous, ruthless McEwen Road, named for pro sprinter Robbie McEwen, who compared this climb to having his spleen crushed in a giant mortar and pestle.  (Okay, I made that up … I don’t know where it gets its name.)

Craig and Susanne like to play word games to distract themselves from the pain of this climb, and were gracious enough to include us.  The standard game is naming world cities, going sequentially through the alphabet (e.g., Austin, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit…), but we decided to mix it up and try something new.  Craig suggested profanities based on the alphabet (asshole, bastard, etc.) but I nixed that since I’m supposed to be a parent.  We decided on non-profane derogatory statements by alphabet.  I started:  “Angry is how I feel toward you right now, Craig.”  Susanne had B, and of course that’s not very difficult (“bad” being a perfectly obvious choice) but she just couldn’t bring herself to say anything mean to anybody.  So this game didn’t last very long, though McEwen seemed to.

This year I didn’t forget to warn Alexa about the Pig Farm climb, though I’m sure she remembered it from last year anyway.  It was nice and green.  Here we are, having a good laugh, perhaps about how I talk too much and ought to be told to shut up.

Not surprisingly, Mama Bear was a mother.  The weather was now officially too hot for Alexa.  Plus, her neck was getting sore because she always rides on the hoods.  It’s just how she rolls.  Seems to work, anyway, and nobody could ever deny that she has better form on (and off) the bike than Chris Froome.  Would she complain if she had a mechanical problem and I took that moment to attack?  No.  She might ask me to fix her bike later, but then that’s what dads are for, at least in traditional patriarchal households.

As we rolled down the hill toward the final fueling station, and I mentioned my intention to stop for water there, Susanne said, “Do not, my friends, become addicted to water.  It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!”  I’m paraphrasing here.  For some reason she doesn’t like to stop at that last rest stop, so she rides on ahead and Craig fills a couple bottles, then hammers to catch up.  So here are the three of us, with Alexa clearly thinking, “OMG, are we really doing another stupid photo-op?”

We drank a couple ice-cold Juice Squeezes (70% real juice, with the other 30% being, well, whatever makes it the right color and flavor), had some more cookies, and hit out for the final stretch to the finish.

Along San Pablo Dam Road, Alexa seemed a bit frustrated and expressed the teen equivalent of “Are we there yet?” (I can’t remember the wording but the tone was unmistakable).  She’s a fine athlete but with the mountain biking she’s been focusing on, her longest ride this year has been around three hours and this was over five hours in, so I can’t blame her.  I decided she just needed a bit of encouragement, and I’d planned for this:  I whipped out a can of silver spray paint, sprayed it all over her mouth, and declared, “You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.”  Alexa, delighted, cried out , “Am I awaited?”

(All of the above was communicated nonverbally, of course, and there wasn’t actually any paint, though I did remember to bring lip sunblock this year.)

At the finish, Craig and Susanne had saved us a spot at a shady table.  Well, at least they didn’t put a jacket or backpack down and tell us those spots were reserved for somebody else.  Fortunately that still mainly happens at the movies, though some dickwad did that on Bart during rush hour the other day, causing me to fantasize about holding his face against the electric third rail—but I digress.

The food was excellent, as usual.  Barbecued chicken; nude red potatoes; grilled onions, squash, peppers, and eggplant; jeweled rice; plenty of Acme baguette slices.  The guy working the bread station was so impressed with Alexa—that is, her rare combination of youth, lack of tattoos, lack of piercings, and willingness to be seen in public with her father—that he invited us to swing by after lunch for some free bread to take home.  We got like six baguettes and a sweet batard, which were hard to carry back to the car but then that’s a great problem to have. 

All in all, another glorious day of biking.  (I wish I could tell you what we had for dinner, but the sad fact is, I just don’t remember.  At this rate, next year’s report may be just a paragraph or two!)

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Ride Report - Grizzly Peak Century with Teenager

Introduction

Members of my bike club traditionally send out race reports, with a special focus on what was eaten before, during, and after the event.  I barely ever race, but decided to produce a report of the Grizzly Peak Century ride, a 73-mile effort I took on with my 13-year-old daughter Alexa.  This would be her longest and hardest ride ever, and also her best-fueled.  Read on if you’re interested in cycling, parenting, junk food, and/or a good laugh.

Short version

It was cold. The food was bountiful and tasty. Alexa rode like a boss. 73 miles; 5,770 feet of vertical gain; two pairs commemorative socks.  Post-ride BBQ was tasty, even the lentils. 

Long version

For breakfast, I served Alexa leftover homemade mac ‘n’ cheese.  I sneaked a few bites and man, it was good. But I didn’t dare take any for myself, for hell hath no fury like an Albert deprived of leftovers. The members of my household are like jackals.

We drove to the start, in Moraga, parked, unloaded, built up the bikes, and headed to Registration. As we approached the table the woman said, “You must be the Alberts.”  How did she know?  Well, Alexa’s name was flagged with “minor” and they don’t get many of those.  Huh.  Kids these days ... they have no time for exercise—they’re too busy playing “Grand Theft Auto XIII – Running Over Baby Pandas and Homeless People Edition.”

We met up with my teammate Craig and his wife Susanne and started the ride.  The plan was to ride together so long as we all enjoyed the same pace and I didn’t talk too much.  (I’ve ridden with Craig for years, and I actually had a Latin class with Susanne in like 1990.  She remembers it as being a really easy class and I found it really hard.  Story of my life.)

I don’t need to tell you it was brutally cold.  This Indian Winter is really getting old.  I’m tempted to complain about Global Warming but somebody out there would probably respond with a lame joke about “You call this warming?” so instead I’ll say this:  I’m really getting worried about Global Climate Fuckery.  Upper-80s on Thursday and every other day of spring is like living in an air-flavored Slurpee. I was glad to climb Pinehurst just to warm up a bit. I see one of you painted Alexa’s name on the road, but you spelled it “Alexis.” Thanks for the thought ... please try harder next time.

We cut the course a bit, taking Shasta down to Wildcat to the first rest stop rather than staying on Grizzly Peak the whole way. This is because so many residents on that road like to back out of their driveways without looking, and/or cut off cyclists and break their femurs.  I guess this isn’t exactly an epidemic but one time is enough for me.

I’d talked up the GPC food to Alexa, and she wasn’t disappointed.  Pound cake, banana bread, chocolate-chip/cranberry cookies, oatmeal cookies, crunchy ginger snaps, soft ginger snaps ... we tried it all.  I’m sure I’m forgetting some items.  I even had a cup of coffee, just so I could pee a gallon at every rest stop like I did at the first.

Did I mention it was cold?  I didn’t even have a jacket because I was leaving room for Alexa’s arm- and leg-warmers in the pocket of my Lycra bike racing shirt.  (I was about to type “jersey” and then I remember that there are pockets of hermitic sheepherders in Australasia who think “jersey” means “woolen sweater.”)

We descended Wildcat, hooked a left on San Pablo Dam Road, and went around the “Planet of the Apes” loop, a great little road threading along that piece of land sticking out (I can never remember what that’s called ... isthmus?) and giving a nice view of the Carquinez Strait and its dueling bridges.

There was a lot of ground to cover between the first rest stop and the second one.  As a veteran of century rides, I know to take extra cookies when I can get them.  Of course my daughter benefited from my savvy.

We descended to the second rest stop.  This stop didn’t have any baked goods unless you count bagels.  Craig asked for a sesame bagel; the volunteer picked up a bagel half, turned it over, silently registered that it had poppy seeds instead of sesame, and gave it to Craig anyway. I had a “nothing” bagel with Skippy peanut butter on it—a guilty pleasure if there ever was one.  The alternative was this health-food peanut butter product that looked like diarrhea mixed with gravel.  I think it might have been almond butter, which makes about as much sense as a strawberry newton (i.e., none at all).  I kind of wished there were a New Yorker around to launch into a diatribe about there being no actual bagels on the west coast.

I got some Gu version of Shot Bloks, which were like Jujubes for grown-ups, and Alexa coveted them, so I told her to get her own.  Turns out I’d gotten the last bag, so I gave her mine.  Note to other parents:  this is how to get your kid to do century rides—just relax your normally stingy treat policies during long rides.  (Of course, this only works if you deprive your kids the rest of the time.)

Next on the docket was the fierce McEwen Road climb.  Craig and Susanne came up with a word game to make the riding go more quickly, and this was so effective they dropped Alexa and me.  Once we’d conquered that climb, I told Alexa the next climb would be Mama Bear.  Of course this was false.  The next climb was actually Pig Farm, which is by no means insignificant.  As it dragged on and on, Alexa remarked on how I hadn’t warned her about this one.  (I wouldn’t say she complained, per se, but her displeasure was evident.)  Poor kid.  It can’t be easy having an idiot savant for a father.  (For those of you questioning the “savant” part, I’ll remind you I have great facility with iambic pentameter, which has saved my ass ... well, okay, zero times.)

At the base of Mama Bear, we stopped so Alexa could take off her leg warmers.  She’s normally impervious to the cold, being the odd sort of person who would be perfectly happy pulling an Iditarod sled while wearing gym shorts.  That she waited this long should tell you how frigid the conditions were (even though the sun was doing its best).  While we were stopped, a worried-looking woman rolled up, stopped, and asked, in a quavering voice, “How long is this climb?”  Nobody said anything for a bit, not knowing how to answer.  I mean, it takes as long as it takes, which depends entirely on one’s fitness.  She rephrased her question:  “How far up does this road go?”  All I could think of was, “It goes on a right fur piece,” so that’s what I said.  Got a chuckle out of her, anyway.

Alexa had really suffered on Pig Farm, and when Craig offered her a sleeve of Clif Shot Bloks she happily accepted.  By the top of Mama Bear she’d consumed the whole lot of them.  I found this impressive because those Bloks have stymied me in the past.  Consider this passage from my Everest Challenge 2012 report: 

Hunting in my jersey pocket I came upon a sleeve of Clif Shot Bloks that Craig had given me.  My hand groped it, trying to figure out what it was.  Once I’d identified it, my brain tried to comprehend what Shot Bloks were and what they did.  You eat them, right?  But what are they?  And how do you get into the package?  Is it like Pez?  I gave up trying to fathom this great Shot Blok mystery and managed to find a gel.

I guess all that piano playing has really enhanced Alexa’s fine motor skills.

After Mama Bear, Craig uttered the word “kit” in reference to our bike costumes.  I glowered at him and said, “I can’t ride with you anymore.” So we parted ways.  Okay, that’s not actually how it happened.  He never said “kit.”  It’s just that Alexa descends more slowly than those guys, probably because she knows her mom would kill me if she crashed.  Moreover, Alexa and I wanted to stop at the last rest stop (I mean, free food—hello?!) and Craig and Susanne didn’t need anything.  So they rode off into the sunset.

The last rest stop had more baked goods, and we had one more of everything, except the chocolate-chip/cranberry cookies—we had two of those.  They also had Crystal Geezer juice drinks and we took two apiece.  “So, we just have Papa Bear and Baby Bear, and we’re done with the climbing?” Alexa asked hopefully.  I replied, “Right, though we also still have to climb Mama Bear.”  This was not me teasing my daughter—this was me being an idiot.  Again.  Poor kid.  “Wait, I thought we already did Mama Bear!” she said, distraught.  I assured her she was right.  From now on, I’ll give her the map and have her tell me what’s going on.

On Papa Bear, we passed this angry middle-aged woman wearing mostly black.  It was this weird long-sleeve costume, and under her helmet she had a thin head-scarf, tied in the back, like what a Ninja wears.  In a brittle voice she asked, “Are you two doing both loops?”  Had I known the kind of person I was dealing with, I’d have been tempted to reply, “Hells yeah, beyotch!” but instead I said, “Oh no, just the first one.”  To which she replied, “Oh, well I don’t feel so bad then.”  Like it’s some kind of disgrace being passed by us.  Sheesh.

Baby Bear was a cakewalk (cake-ride?) and then we hooked a left on Camino Pablo.  Rolling toward Orinda, the woman in black caught up to us—probably she pulled a lot of time back during the post-Papa-Bear descent—and she blew right by us by running a stop sign.  On her way past, she muttered, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”  What a fascinating utterance!  Was she quoting Tolstoy’s epigraph, that opens Anna Karenina?  Or was she quoting Romans 12:19 as Tolstoy had?  Or am I paraphrasing her body language?

On that long, shallow climb just past Orinda, after Camino Pablo becomes Moraga Way, we passed the Ninja woman again.  As we rolled slowly by, she glared at Alexa and said, “You possess, in the highest degree, a quality that makes one forget all shortcomings; this quality is blood, that blood which tells, as the English say.”  So it was definitely Anna Karenina she’d quoted the first time, since this second utterance matched Tolstoy’s description of Vronsky’s horse, though I’ll confess it’s also possible that this strange woman said nothing at all.

About this time I became aware that we were being tailed.  This dude with a red jersey, white arm warmers, and a yellow helmet had been behind us, maybe 30 feet behind, for an awfully long time.  It’s not credible that his pace just so happened to be identical to ours.  No matter how many stop signs and stoplights we stopped at, he never got any closer.  I’m pretty sure he was with the Bureau.  Many a father/biker would have been spooked, but I’m pretty good with my fists.

We took a left on Moraga Road:  the home stretch!  There was a slight tailwind and we had a good head of steam, but that didn’t stop the Ninja woman in black from making her final move.  She came flying by, in her best approximation of an aerodynamic position.  Somebody should explain to this woman how to ride on the drops.  I guess she didn’t grasp what that part of the handlebar is for, because she had her hands on the hoods but her elbows bent way past 90 degrees, sticking down low.  It didn’t look very comfortable, nor very safe, but she could not have cared less.  Her face was stony with determination, her mouth a rictus of uncaged ferocity.  This time she didn’t say anything, but to my astonishment Alexa cried out, “She sucks nitro... with Phase 4 heads! 600 horsepower through the wheel!  She’s meanness set to music and the bitch is born to run!”  Okay, okay, Alexa didn’t really say that.  She hasn’t even seen “Mad Max” (yet).  What she really did say was something wistful, along these lines:  “Normally women that age are just waiting for the end, but she’s breaking new ground.  I think this was a big day for her.”  I should pay more attention to that child ... I think I could learn something. 

In case you’re wondering, the angry biker woman easily bested us in the end; she didn’t really even need to run that last stoplight in cold blood.  I wonder if she’s told her own glorious tale on the Internet somewhere, or at her book club, or on the wall of a public restroom.

Dinner was great.  I graciously accepted the  volunteers’ offers of roasted red potatoes, jeweled rice, and even lentil pottage, though I drew the line at the couscous salad.  To my surprise, Alexa also allowed all these things on her plate, though she then whispered to me, “I took the lentils to be polite, but you’re eatin’ ‘em.”  Then it was on to the barbecue station, for chicken and vegetables.  They had eggplant, peppers, onions, all kinds of groovy stuff.  Then, on principle, I covered my plate with corn chips and those glisteningly greasy no-name potato chips that come in the 5-pound bag. 

I was not going to be one of those guys hitting his forehead and saying, “I coulda had a V-8!” so I had one. 

I went back for more chicken.  The volunteers don’t give you that much, so I tried a new tactic:  instead of withdrawing my plate after the chicken was deposited, I just kept it there.  There was a brief stalemate before the volunteer divined my wishes and put more on the plate.  It was like a game of chicken.  (Get it?  Chicken?)

I’d have stuck around and eaten more, but Alexa wanted to get home before the library closed.  Can you believe this kid?!

From the Archives - Death Ride ‘99

Introduction

De Ronde van X recently got me thinking about the Markleeville Death Ride. The Death Ride is one of the most famous organized rides in California, covering about 125 miles with over 15,000 feet of climbing. I've ridden it twelve or thirteen times, and used to have a tradition of riding it with all three of my brothers. Click to zoom in on the map:

Alas, I won't get to ride the Death Ride this year. Registration is on the lottery system, with so little chance of getting in that my brothers and I no longer bother to try. But to motivate anyone among my readership who is doing the upcoming Death Ride (or any similarly tough ride), and as a companion piece to De Ronde van X, I present to you my Death Ride '99 Postmortem Report. I didn't bring a camera in ‘99, but to enliven this post I‘ve thrown in photos from the 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2007 editions.

By the way, there is a literary gimmick lurking in this tale. I will give a prize to the first reader who e-mails me at feedback@albertnet.us and correctly identifies the gimmick. (To my brothers and friends who have seen this report before, obviously you are not eligible.) Enjoy!

Death Ride '99 - The Postmortem Report

Bryan and I drove to Markleeville on Friday, July 9, the day before the Death Ride. That night we went to a Mexican restaurant in South Lake Tahoe for dinner, and man, we really packed it in. Then it was a short drive down to Turtle Rock campground, more or less at the starting line of the ride, where we pitched our camp on a brambly dirt patch, next to our car, just at the last hour of the dying day.

The stars came out, and we gazed for awhile, pondering tritely our own insignificance in the face of the infinite beyond. Soon we tired of contemplating our mortality, and managed to fall into a light, fitful sleep (which was all that was possible given our cramped quarters in the tent).

For the next hour or so campers continued to arrive, fitting themselves into smaller and smaller patches of rocky, lumpy ground (there are no actual campsites per se in Turtle Rock park), chattering boisterously, and it seemed to take forever before the noise finally died down. Earlier, I'd really enjoyed the rare treat of seeing the stars, without them being drowned out by city light, and now I savored the dead silence. Not even the chirp of a cricket or the croak of a frog could be heard.

The night passed for me in a series of catnaps, and along toward four o'clock, as I was finally achieving a peaceful slumber, my long-sought rest was cut down in its prime by the most foul, heinous sound you could possibly imagine. At first I almost panicked—I didn't know what in the hell the noise was. It was a terrible screeching, as though an animal were being slaughtered. I finally realized it was music being played over the loudspeaker—or, more accurately, an ill-fated attempt at music by some deadbeat rock band. All I knew for sure was that it was four in the morning, a full half-hour before I'd planned to be awakened by the alarm on my Timex Datalink watch (which I'd set up to beep in its nefarious "step-tone” way while scrolling the word "DEATH!” across its LCD face). I'll probably never know what the first "song” was, but finally the "singer” let out his last gasp and another song, much less irritating, came over the PA. We decided it was pointless to try to continue sleeping, and succumbed to the cruel Death Ride wakeup call.

Breakfast

We'd elected to buy the optional pre-ride breakfast, provided by some volunteer group, though to my dying day I'll never understand why. The food is abysmal—rubbery pancakes, clammy eggs, and sweaty oatmeal, the kind of food I imagine they'd serve on death row. As is becoming a tradition, one of us forgot his ride number, which is the only way to prove to the cafeteria cashier that you don't have to pay at the door for your meal because you already bought it when you registered for the ride. While Bryan went back to the car, I stood in line and killed time talking with other Death Riders. We chattered away in the most breezy and carefree way, as if to deny the grave difficulty of the day's undertaking. Bryan arrived at just the right moment, and we moved through the chow line, which was manned by volunteers offering their hellish fare with cheerful enthusiasm. One volunteer, a rather attractive young woman, I found particularly perplexing: she was holding up a plate of plain, unbuttered, and untoasted bread, which left her very little to do but stand there and do her best to look drop-dead gorgeous. The other volunteers were much busier, and I have a feeling this gal was supposed to be making toast for us, which I would have liked—but I digress, and though I could spend an eternity complaining about the food, I should hurry up and tell you about the ride itself.

First climb

There must have been cloud cover at some time during the night, because it was less chilly that morning than I've ever experienced before on this ride—a pleasant change, but it made us worry a little about how hot it would get later on in the great adventure. The weather looked so promising, we decided for the first time ever to pass on the jackets we would normally have carried in our jersey pockets. Still, it wasn't very pleasant slathering ourselves in sunscreen, but since my once gloriously suntanned skin is now closer to deathly pale, I'm forced to resort to SPF 15 to keep from getting horribly sunburned. Needless to say Erin would kill me if I came home looking like a lobster.

We started the ride at exactly 6:00 am, with a brisk descent—not as bone-chillingly frigid as in years past, but cool enough that when we started the first climb, up Monitor Pass, our legs were totally stiff. The road was thronged with riders — the field limit this year was 2,500, and it had been reached—and yet as many riders as we saw, we know others had started much earlier than we and had probably already crossed over to the other side of Monitor Pass. As always, we marveled at the wide range of body types represented on this ride—sure, we saw plenty of examples of the lean, ripped, almost skeleton-like breed of cyclist, but every year there are also people on the ride who are, well, not so fit. In fact, I'll come right out and say it: some participants are flat-out obese—heart attacks waiting to happen. By the third pass these ones would be goners, but you had to admire their spunk.

The front side of Monitor isn't all that tough, climbing only 2,813 feet in nine miles for an average grade of about 6%, and given the freshness of our legs we were able to dispatch the climb without too much suffering. At the top we each received our first-pass sticker: the way they keep track of who did all five passes, versus the majority of riders who don't make it, is to put a different sticker on your number for each pass you conquer. After the brief (five-second) sticker ceremony, we took our picture next to a very fitting landmark: a tombstone, basically, engraved with the name and elevation (8,314') of the pass, placed there and dedicated (to nobody in particular, apparently) in 1954. We also filled up on energy drink; bananas, a potassium-rich favorite; boiled new potatoes, an unlikely but very welcome Death Ride staple; and this year's innovation, Wheat Thins, which I'm normally not all that fond of but which, under these circumstances, were just to die for!

First descent

The descent down the backside of Monitor is probably the most dangerous part of the ride; although nobody's every actually died on this ride, this would be the place to do it. It drops 3,274 feet in just 8 miles, for an average grade of almost 8%, and because it's so early in the ride, cyclists are still bunched closely together (not like lemmings exactly, but almost). This fact, combined with the breakneck speeds possible (over 50 mph is a given for Bryan and me), mean that this would be a thrilling descent even if there weren't cattle guards. But of course there are, which caused me to ponder, as we flew down the mountain, what happens to the especially stupid cows who fall into them and break a leg . . . after all, isn't it standard procedure to shoot any horse that breaks a leg? Assuming cows are treated no differently, isn't the cattle guard like a Doomsday device for any cow stupid enough to wander into the road? Then I remembered that the whole purpose of most cows is to be slaughtered anyway, so there's no point worrying about it. Anyway, the game Bryan and I play is to see how often we can make it over the thin steel strip, maybe an inch or two wide, that crosses perpendicularly over the pipes of the cattle guard, so as to avoid that annoying series of bumps each time your tire crosses the bars.

Second climb

It was a totally killer descent, reminding us why the climbing is always worthwhile, and before beginning the long haul back up the backside of Monitor, we stopped only briefly to got some more energy drink and, of course, our second-pass sticker. The backside of Monitor is much harder than the front, not just because it's steeper, but because our vigor had been deadened somewhat by the first climb. Soon enough, though, our spirits were lifted by the appearance of what I could only describe as the ride's only full-motion water stop. This Death Ride institution, manned by a skeleton crew of tireless volunteers, apparently has as its charter the filling of every single empty bottle without a single cyclist needing to stop. A volunteer sprints like a hundred meters down to you, takes your empty bottle, and then practically kills himself running back to the water jugs to get the bottle filled in time to hand it back to you as you ride by. It's an inspirational thing to witness—those guys are out of this world!

The remaining six or so miles of the second climb passed away uneventfully, albeit with the standard-issue suffering that, although long dreaded, always somehow manages to astonish me with its intensity. It's always kind of demoralizing to reach the top of Monitor for the second time, feeling significantly worn out, and realize you have almost 100 miles and 9,000 feet of climbing to go before the ride finally comes to an end some ten hours from this moment. I'd also managed to develop a saddle sore (only the second one in my entire life); it barely hurt as we dismounted at the rest stop, but was positively killing me as we got back in the saddle after filling up on food and drink. I pondered, bleakly, how Laurent Fignon believed it was a saddle sore that cost him the 1989 Tour de France (a loss from which his professional career never recovered). I cheered myself up by recalling LeMond's inspirational victory that year—his big comeback after a near-fatal hunting accident a couple of years before.

Second descent

I wish the mother of the kids across the street growing up—who earned the nickname "Mrs. Trapdoor" for her constant safety warnings such as "Bicycles are deathtraps!"—could have seen us descend the front side of Monitor. The riders were more spread out by this point, so we had more of the road to ourselves and hit what would end up being the top speed of the ride, a seemingly death-defying 53.8 mph. Don't worry, though, this was really a very safe and reasonable speed—my self-preservation instinct has increased dramatically since I set the all-time Death Ride land-speed record of 60.5 mph back in 1993 (or perhaps 1995, I can't remember for sure). Glorious as it was, though, our swiftness only served to bring us that much sooner to our greatest nemesis: Ebbetts Pass, the climb that every year claims hundreds of riders—as if they were veritable human sacrifices to this diabolically steep, winding, asphalt shrine to suffering.

Third climb

Remember "deadlegs"—the sudden punches to the thigh that bullies inflicted on you with impunity, knowing you couldn't show the bruises to parents or teachers without lowering your pants? Well, imagine feeling that kind of acute thigh pain for over an hour, and you'll begin to understand why Ebbetts is such a killer. As we labored up monstrously steep grades, negotiating switchbacks that practically stop your bike cold, all conversation ceased, kaput. We became pedaling zombies. We were too close to breathless to utter more than an occasional moan, groan, or whimper. This is the part of the ride when it's dangerous to think about whether or not you'll make it to the top of Ebbetts, much less complete the whole ride. The best way to motivate yourself at this point is to look at the relative novices around you, who never did a race in their lives, the Fuji Road Look set who seem criminally unaware of how hard this is, whose presence on this climb make you deny how difficult Ebbetts is—in short, you succumb to a totally unspoken, tacit peer pressure, and chastise yourself for thinking this is hard. You almost want to turn it into a race and charge to the top ahead of everybody—but all you can do is hold on for dear life and try to keep your composure.

At the top of Ebbetts, elevation 8,730', we were toast. We were spent, gone. We were completely knackered—shadows of our former selves, ghosts, spectres. We were history, we were in the archives, we were lemures—in fact, you might even say we'd had the stuffing knocked out of us. Fortunately, the Death Ride provides the best support of any ride I've ever done, because we were in grave need of calories. Specifically, we needed that miracle elixir of life—no, not energy drink, I mean plain old Coca-Cola Classic. Of course they had it, ice-cold, and we chugged it greedily as we sprawled on a grassy hillside, our lifeless legs spread out before us like dirty laundry.

A fellow rider was deliberating aloud about whether or not to cash in her chips, so I told her what I thought was an inspirational tale about a 65-year-old man who told me, under identical circumstances atop Ebbetts during my first Death Ride, "You finish the first three passes on ability, and the last two on guts." She stared at me like I was some kind of imbecile, which I supposed I was, or am. But then, she departed for the backside of Ebbetts, so either my little speech got to her, or she'd simply decided not to be outdone by such a wanker. After a short rest—well, okay, a fairly long rest, something just short of eternal rest—we headed down the backside of Ebbetts ourselves, fortified with carbonated water, sugar and/or corn syrup, natural and artificial flavorings, caffeine, caramel color, phosphoric acid, bananas, oranges, cookies, and What Things (a fine nickname for Wheat Thins, if you ask me).

Fourth climb

Of our climb up the backside of Ebbetts and passing back over the top, absolutely nothing is known.

Fourth descent

We descended the front side of Ebbetts with jubilance, carving up the serpentine roads and drinking in the slide show of scenic vistas overlooking the great beyond. There is an impulse, on such descents, that has nothing to do with suicide but everything to do with the repressed desire to deliberately miss a turn, to fling yourself and your bike off the edge of a drop-off and whoosh your way along in perfect freedom through open sky. Needless to say, I resisted the temptation, or you'd be reading a much briefer Death Ride report—in the obits.

Final climb

On the way to the fifth pass, my bike suffered what is proving to be an epidemic of broken spokes. If I couldn't find the technical support truck, I'd be doomed to ride a drunken, wobbling, ungainly bike for the next 42 miles. At mile 90, we were told tech support was nine miles and a scant 1,500 feet of climbing away, at Pickett's Junction (who Pickett was I have no idea, unless it's the General Pickett of the ill-fated Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, in which he lost three fourths of his Confederate troops). Since fixing the bike could take some time, and Bryan's legs were even deader than mine, I charged on ahead—well, okay, I limped on ahead—solo.

Sure enough, technical support was there, and my bike was fixed in record time by a mechanic who looked exactly like Alfred Packer, the survivor of an ill-fated mountain expedition who ate his fellow explorers, and who appears on a mural at the University of Colorado's Alfred Packer Grill (motto: "have a friend for lunch"). From Pickett's Junction to the final summit, Carson Pass, is only nine miles with 1,573 feet of vertical gain, for a paltry average grade of 3.31%, so for the life of me I can't explain why it's so hard. Much of that nine miles is a "false flat," meaning it's not really a climb but rather a diabolical stretch of road that looks flat but feels like a climb. When it begins to get steep, it's almost a relief, because the cause of your hellish suffering is at least more obvious.

For awhile, our spirits improved as we realized the end was near, and we took some pictures in which we're actually smiling. The top section of Carson is really steep, though, and in the last mile our jubilance died down and we settled into a rhythmic pedaling drudgery. We were dead to the world by the time we rounded what we believed was the final curve (but without optimism, because there are so many false summits on a ride like this one). But sure enough, the Carson Summit sign was dead ahead, and our suffering was finally near its end!

I turned and looked over my shoulder at Bryan, who was about fifty feet behind me, intending to congratulate him on surviving Carson and to suggest we stop for a photo-op. Imagine my shock to see him sprinting, all-out, hell-bent on beating me to the summit! Nothing could have motivated me to sprint at that point—nothing, that is, except the mortification of being beaten to the summit despite having a good head start and a lighter and more expensive bike. It was a sprint to the death, and to this day Bryan insists I wouldn't have beaten him but for my Dura-Ace 9-speed STI, which enabled me to shift into a higher gear, under full power and without taking a hand off the bars, to nurse a little more speed out of the mighty Guerciotti and eke out a victory.

Final summit

At the rest top atop Carson, we grabbed more Coke and the long-awaited ice cream bars (another Death Ride tradition), and headed for some lawn chairs to rest our much-abused nether regions. At the time, we were vaguely aware of the difficulty of what we'd done, and certainly unable to calculate some of the statistics I'll now quote: roughly 16,000 feet of total vertical gain; .2244 horsepower (167 watts) average on the climbs (.2480 horsepower, 185 watts, for Bryan, who's heavier); four hours and forty minutes of climbing to end up here; 8,573 feet closer to heaven than our earth-bound peers back home. Our achievement was overshadowed, though, by that of another Death Rider: a man in his seventies, thinning hair white as snow, had finished all five passes! I would kill to be that fit when I'm his age!

It's hard to recall the full gravity of our suffering now, as I sit in a comfortable chair at home, and even harder to describe it. Suffice to say we were wasted, spent, totaled, used-up charcoal briquettes, mere smears of ash, quivering masses of protoplasm. But we had survived, and what's more, as we sat on top of Carson, which seemed at the time the top of the world, we had twenty-one miles of descending ahead of us.

Finish

A glorious descent it was, too, the highlight being when we blew this guy away, rode him right off our wheels. Then, we returned to the parking lot and enjoyed the hard-won opportunity to go to our reward: the poster signing ritual, a privilege granted only to those who finished all five passes. Even as we realized we were finally done, though, we were already contemplating our return to Markleeville and to the suffering in the California Alps, every year to our dying day.