Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog as as service to the blind, the illiterate, and the lazy. If you are blind, I hope somebody will start up the video for you so you can listen. (As for not seeing anything, trust me ... you’re not missing much.) If you are illiterate, I hope the Play button is self-explanatory. If you are lazy, congratulations on making it this far. If you are none of these, scroll down for the text version. Or not ... whatever.

Introduction

As if the COVID-19 pandemic weren’t bad enough, we as a nation are also facing a lot of scolds who have sky-is-falling, buzzkill attitudes about getting together with our families over the holidays. I say if we’re going to simply ignore or defy these naysayers, we might as well be responsible about it. This post tells you how.

Planning your trip

Leo Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What about healthy families? It’s worth taking some time to think about your particular crew and its COVID-19 profile. If your family Thanksgiving dinners inevitably descend into vicious long-winded bouts of character assassination, with everybody yelling at once like protesters at a political rally, maybe it’s best to sit out this holiday season. On the other hand, if the grownups sit with their hands in their laps, staring at their plates and finding themselves once again at a loss for words, while the kids sit isolated in another room, peering into their smartphones, silent and sullen for the entire long weekend, then it’s game on for holiday festivities!

Let’s be realistic about it, though: there is some question as to whether traveling is safe right now. According to the Georgia Departmentof Public Health, “Cases of COVID-19 have been reported in many states, and some areas are experiencing community spread of the disease.” Wow. I did not know that. Thanks, Georgia! (Yes, click the link and see for yourself: they really did say that.)

As it stands, the pandemic is certainly escalating. One of the main risks right now is the colder weather, with everybody gathering indoors. So instead of you and your far-flung siblings rendezvousing in Duluth, Bismarck, or Fargo where your parents live, you should have everybody meet up in a warmer clime. Australia would be ideal, but avoid the big urban centers. Kiwirrkurra, which is 450 miles from the nearest city, would be ideal. Kiwirrkurra’s population is barely over 200, so there can’t be much coronavirus there! Plan your trip carefully though, because it’s probably no tourist mecca … chances are you’ll be camping out. And steer clear of the locals ... you wouldn’t want to wipe out an entire community.

Flying during COVID-19

A new study by the US Department of Defense suggests that aircraft ventilation systems aren’t actually spreading the virus as badly as previously thought. “Planes don’t spread lethal viruses—people do,” snarled retired Lieutenant Colonel Miles Briggs, who knows a guy involved with the study. Unfortunately, when I fact-checked this article I discovered that its conclusion was based on a misunderstanding: the authors were talking about two-seater fighter planes where both travelers have those cool helmets with built-in air supply hoses.

Notwithstanding the DOD’s little goof, it is true that even the CDC has acknowledged the efficacy of ventilation systems on airplanes. Thus, the chances of spreading the virus on the plane aren’t that high … you won’t start infecting people until you reach your destination or have returned home. Obviously the problem isn’t spreading the virus geographically, but contracting it somewhere between points A and B. After all, the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic is … wait. I’m getting a bit confused. Let’s move on.

It turns out the airplane itself may not be the most dangerous part of your trip. There are also the logistical hurdles at either end. Taking a cab or Lyft to the airport would obviously be a bad idea, so you’ll want to drive there and park in the long-term parking, expense be damned. But the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the terminal is also out of the question, so leave an extra hour early and walk.

The security line is of course a Petri dish of coronavirus. Look at this typical line. I don’t think that’s six feet between travelers; that woman’s mask has slipped down below her nose; and the dippy little dog doesn’t even have a mask! (Can a dog transmit COVID? Hello, we had a bat and a pangolin infecting people already … a slobbering, yapping dog is obviously a mobile four-legged superspreader event!)

Conventional wisdom has it that you should skip the long security line by using TSA Precheck or CLEAR, but that actually might be worse than the longer queue. Why? Because you’ll be in line with frequent travelers—the guys who continue to travel on business, all over the country, treating our beleaguered nation like their own personal coronavirus tasting menu. You want to steer clear of those guys, believe me. Instead, just walk from long-term parking right out to the jetway and simply board the plane, without having set foot in the airport! If you act natural, they’ll just wave you through. Note that this means flying only on those tiny commuter planes without the enclosed jetway bridges, so you may have to hopscotch a bit to your final destination, but hey, safety first!

If you can’t take a commuter plane and are forced to brave the airport security line, remember that the most dangerous aspect of air travel is forgetting to remove your toiletry items from their kit and place them in a Ziploc bag. If your toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo aren’t segregated like this, the virus has already won. Also, if you have any liquid in a container over 3.4 ounces, you can pretty much kiss your whole family goodbye, unless the TSA catches you and saves the day (again). The exception is that they’re now allowing alcohol-based hand cleaner in containers up to 12 ounces, bless their hearts. So you can bring plenty of that, whether it’s to clean your hands with or to squirt on fellow-travelers.

Brace yourself for some unpleasant changes, though. Airports, which were crappy to begin with, have become even worse. For one thing, they aren’t offering the same amenities, like that $9 beer you normally splurge on because your can no longer handle your (spouse, kids, loneliness) without taking the edge off. Tip: bring your own beer, and charge your (spouse, kids, neighbor in security line) $9 a bottle so they can feel a sense of nostalgic normalcy while you make a few bucks. Yes, you’ll have to consume the unsold beers quickly before going through security, but chugging three or four good IPAs in 30 seconds at the threshold of the X-ray (actually, it’s properly called a millimeter-wave full body scanner) is bound to get your flight off to a good start.

As far as the flight itself, the best way to ensure safety is to make sure you’re well-equipped. I’m not just talking about N95 masks—though those are a good start—but also a good sturdy face shield (not just for blocking droplets, but in case you get in a fistfight, which is not unlikely during these trying times) and also some great noise-canceling headphones, so you won’t be unduly stressed out by the sounds of sneezing and coughing all around you, or people barking at you trying to pick a fight. If you can get your hands on one of those cool fighter pilot helmets with the built-in air supply hoses, that would be ideal.

Most planes use HEPA filters, but how will you know in advance about the plane you’re on, since airlines swap out the aircraft at their whim? The answer is, you can’t know: so bring your own HEPA filter if you can. Since these vary dramatically in size and shape from one manufacturer to the next, practice at home first. Ideally, you can bend the filter so it conforms almost exactly to your head.

If you can, get a window seat. Studies show that people in the aisle are there for a reason—usually because they use the disgusting lavatory several times during the flight, pace up and down the aisle constantly, rummage around in the overhead bin touching whosever bag they want, and otherwise act out annoyingly. Having one of these dirtbag extroverts right across the aisle can’t be a good thing. Meanwhile, if you’re sitting in the window seat and things get a little stuffy, you can open the window and get some air.

Keep your eyes open during the flight in case of unsafe behavior around you. For example, the guy next to you might remove his mask for no good reason, or let his nose poke out, or has a big greasy beard with possibly pestilent saliva dripping down it. Or maybe his mask is made out of tissue paper, or a pancake. Give that guy a proper N95, or ask to change seats!

Using an aircraft bathroom is sketchy during the best of times, and especially dangerous now. The number one rule? Keep it quick! But wash your hands for at least twenty seconds. How is that quick? Doesn’t proper hand washing violate the number one rule? Hey—nobody said this pandemic would be easy. One more thing: if you suspect a pangolin has used the coach class lavatory, don’t take the risk of following it in there. Go through the forbidden curtain to the first class restroom, no matter how much the flight attendant and first class passengers yell at you.

Since the most dangerous part of a flight is removing your mask to eat, you don’t want to do that—and yet you still need hydration and sustenance. I recommend you purchase the Self Help Personal I.V. Kit for air travel ($48.99 from amazon.com, though the needle must be purchased in the airport gift shop or newsstand). With the Personal I.V., you can just run a quick intravenous line, and infuse a bag of saline if it’s a short trip, or Gatorade if it’s a long one. Heck, if it’s a full flight you might even consider putting a little bleach in there!

The road trip option

If you decide it’s just not worth the extra bother of flying, taking some extra time to turn your vacation into a road trip is an excellent idea. I fear for Generation Z, with their reluctance toward learning to drive and getting their licenses. Will they miss out entirely on the classic American young-adult road trip experience of blasting along I-70 at 90 miles an hour, sending toilet paper comets flying out the window, eating greasy fast food and blasting Nine Inch Nails at party volume to drown out the roar of air through the open moon roof? Well, maybe the pandemic can be their savior. Of course, it takes months to learn to drive and get your license, so it’s a little late for that now. Once again, the parents will have to drive, which means windows rolled up, AC on, and Maria Carey, Coldplay, or Sting on the stereo. But there are arguably worse things, like dying of COVID.

Once again, staying safe during the trip will require extra precautions. Going to the bathroom, for one thing, is going to be harder. Many service stations are using the pandemic as an excuse to shut down their restrooms, and others are simply understaffed so their restrooms are filthier than ever. The obvious solution—just pulling over to the highway shoulder, walking a ways out into the bramble, and peeing on a rock or tree trunk—isn’t fair to the women or girls in the car. Luckily, there’s a solution: you can now purchase a Foley catheter in their new “Road Warrior” edition (amazon.com, $58.95), designed specifically for consumers who aren’t comfortable with restrooms.

If you will be driving for several days, sleeping accommodations become a necessity. Campgrounds may not be open, and sleeping in random city parks with homeless people might be bad for your family’s morale. Clearly you’ll need a motel, but are they safe? Once again, the conventional wisdom—to find places that have high reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor—doesn’t apply here. Look, the most dangerous part about lodging is people: so you want to stay where nobody else is willing to go. Look for one-star reviews ranting about how filthy a place is. The gold standard here is a review containing something shocking, like “toadstools growing in the bathtub!” To remain safe, bring a large supply of disposable latex gloves, Tyvek bunny suits, plastic sheeting for the beds, and of course all your own toiletries and bedding.

Is holiday travel ethical?

It has been suggested that getting COVID-19 tests in order to travel more confidently is ethically questionable, when the number of tests—not to mention the personnel to process them—are limited. This can be a problem when we have front-line healthcare staffers to think of, and service-sector and manufacturing workers who don’t have the luxury to earn their living over videoconferences. To them I say hey, this is America. Anyone who can afford a test should just go get it. What’s all this money for, after all, if not to purchase the life we want for ourselves? Read my lips: we are having Thanksgiving with Grandpa, and yes, this means other people may die. You don’t like it, tough titty: this is just how capitalism works. You want you go spend your holidays in Russia? Be my guest. (Well …  theirs. Whatever.)

In closing: ten easy travel tips

Here are ten easy tips to keep in mind when planning or conducting holiday travel during the pandemic:

1. Get tested for COVID-19 before, during, and after the trip.
2. If you plan to visit a family member who has extra risk factors such as type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, heart conditions, cancer, or obesity, make sure these are cured before you visit them.
3. Quarantine for two weeks before beginning travel and again when you arrive at your destination, and require all family members, including your hosts, to do the same—and then quarantine for another two weeks, ideally in a hermitically sealed room, before heading home.
4. Download a COVID-19 app to your smartphone and use it regularly, being sure to rub down your phone frequently with an alcohol wipe.
5. If you’re flying, get tested for COVID-19 before, during, and after the airport security screening, and before, during, and after your flight—ideally, without removing your mask.
6. Demand COVID tests of those around you: at the airport, on the plane, at the florist, at the gift shop, and before hugging any family members.
7. If any take-out food is served at family gatherings, make sure it’s safe by putting it under the broiler for at least 30-40 minutes, and serve it on paper plates, employing gravity rather than utensils to achieve the transfer from pan to plate.
8. Keep your guard up—if somebody around you, whether it’s a family member or a complete stranger, endangers you by not wearing a mask, not keeping six feet away, or speaking too loudly (or worse, singing), take that dude out (but remember to wear disposable latex gloves if you strike him with your fists).
9. Be smart about this: if you’re not that smart, read some books, take a few classes, get educated!
10. Reconsider your actions as the situation changes. For example, if COVID-19 cases should happen to rise during your trip, don’t hesitate to just turn around and head home.

More reading on the pandemic 

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• COVID Wristbands

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Race Report - Everest Challenge 2014 (Stage 2)

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

Ideally, you’re reading this because you’ve already read my race report for Stage 1 of the 2014 Everest Challenge and are dying to find out what happened in Stage 2.  If, however, you stumbled upon this page by googling “pastrami not lean” or “Jennifer Lawrence nude cycling burrito race,” please don’t leave!  This post really is where you need to be … just go read about Stage 1 first.  That way, much of this report will make more sense (though, honestly, probably a lot of it still won’t).

Pre-race

On Saturday night, I was filled with near-absolute dread.  Given that Saturday’s race had featured dire cold, rain, sleet, and snow, you might assume that I dreaded a continuation of awful racing weather.  Well, not exactly.  In fact, I was dreading the prospect of the weather not being bad enough.  I was holding out some small hope that the cold and wet would be so grossly extreme that the race would be shortened in the name of safety, or my pals would say “Let’s bag it,” so I could shrug my shoulders and follow along, thus escaping both the race and the disgrace of cowardice.

I voiced this strategy when chatting with my daughter Alexa on the phone.  “Dad, you can’t quit!” she protested. “No matter what the weather’s like, you have to race!  If you drop out, you’ll never forgive yourself!”  Translation:  “I’ll never forgive you!”  And imagine the repercussions:  every time my daughter gives up on something, she could throw it in my face.  “Yeah, I’m a quitter!” she’ll say, “and I learned it from you!”

On Sunday morning I dressed in a long-sleeve Patagonia thermal top, shorts, jersey, leg warmers, arm warmers, Smartwool socks, a jacket, and Craig’s extra pair of full-finger gloves.  (Yes, I was humbled by his superior planning, just as I’m humbled by his greater strength every time we ride.)  

I confirmed at the check-in what I’d gathered the day before:  I was sitting eighth in the Masters 45+ category; in ninth was the Talented Mr. Ridley, some four minutes behind me; and in tenth was Marco, whom I’ve seen every year at the EC, another ten minutes behind.  So all I really had to do was finish this race without completely cracking and I could hold onto eighth.  Sounds simple, eh?  Well, considering I’d completely cracked two out of the last three times on this stage, and I hadn’t held anything back this year on Stage 1, things didn’t look so hot.

Stage 2 – 73 miles, 14,030 feet of climbing

There was a mile or two of neutral riding before we crossed the highway and started the real racing.  My teeth were chattering uncontrollably.  I hoped everybody would chill out (pun intended, sorry) for a  good long time before dropping the hammer; it takes enough energy just staying warm.  But as soon as we reached the end of the neutral section, a guy went to the front and laid down the smack.  This was Chris Walker, who had finished third the day before, and was obviously wanting to turn the tables.  I saw my heart rate go into the 150s and decided my legs weren’t complete shit as in years before, which was kind of nice.  On the other hand, this meant I had to actually try.  (You see what a frail ego I have to work with?  Go ahead, pity me.)

I hung in there for a couple miles, but this was all too much.  I let eight guys roll away.  I looked back; the peloton was shredded like confetti behind me.  As the front group continued to distance me, it shed another guy:  Bobby, who had finished four minutes ahead of me, in seventh, the day before.  I was soon joined from behind by Marco, his teammate Jaycee, and one other guy.  We eventually caught Bobby, to form a group of five.

I was stoked to have riders to work with, but they were going a bit too fast.  I couldn’t bear to let them ride away, so I just had to suffer.  Can a person get better at suffering?  Of course.  Does suffering ever become any less unpleasant?  Please.  Read my lips:  it sucked.  It’s kind of funny how I train hard for like ten weeks for this, and my reward is abject misery for six hours, two days in a row.  It’s kind of an odd thing to plan your summer around.  Maybe my kids are right (“Dad, you’re crazy!”).  I’m reminded of what my brother Max swears my dad said to me when he heard I’d ridden over Trail Ridge Road during a thunderstorm at fourteen:  “You’re not very bright, are you?”

At least we weren’t being rained on.  It was really wet at the top, though, enough that the spray got our legs and butts all wet.  There’s a distinctive squeaky sound a cyclist’s wet shorts make when, after climbing out of the saddle, he sits back down.  It’s like a windshield ice-scraper being dragged across ballistic nylon, and we were all making that sound.  At the Glacier Lodge turnaround I took a bottle of water, mainly as ballast.  A minute into the descent I saw the Talented Mr. Ridley heading up toward the turnaround.  I reckoned we had three minutes on him.  My group took the descent easy due to the wet, and he caught us just as the road leveled out at the bottom.

I needed more Cytomax, but as we came through the parking area before heading up Waucoba Canyon, I couldn’t find my team’s cooler. So I pulled a baggie from my jersey pocket and mixed up a bottle while riding in our paceline.  “Really?” someone said.  The Talented Mr. Ridley rode away from us.  Marco seemed surprised.  “He’s kind of a lone wolf,” I explained.  Some twenty minutes later, the guy reappeared ahead, gradually drifted back to us, rode next to us for awhile, and then fell off.  “There goes Lone Wolf,” Marco said.

I’ll get right to the point:  our group of five got to the second summit turnaround together.  It may seem like this took no time at all, the way I’m reporting it, but believe me, it took a good while.  The race organizers lengthened this climb a couple years back, and I’ve never adjusted.  Imagine going to the dentist and having the hygienist poke and scrape at your teeth and gums for the entire normal duration, and then—just when you think it’s all over and you can get your new toothbrush and leave—she starts all over again and goes another round with her poking tool.  That’s the new, improved Waucoba Canyon climb.

We worked well on the descent and were still together when we reached the cars again.  We’d all agreed to stop to refuel and shed some clothing (it had warmed up a bit).  A couple of the roving race volunteers gave us some encouragement.  “You’re our favorite racer!” one of them told me.  I must have looked as bewildered as I felt because she went on to explain, “You smile more than anybody else!”  Now I was more confused than ever.  Could I have actually smiled at any point during this race?  She must have mistaken my rictus of pain.  Still, as misguided as the statement was, it’s still the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me, and I suppose I was encouraged.

Good thing, too, because that last climb—over 20 miles long and gaining over 6,000 feet in elevation—is a monster. At least I wasn’t facing it alone—I was happy to be in this small group, with nobody in it a threat to my GC placing. Not that it was windy or anything, and drafting wouldn’t make much difference at such low speed, but the miles go faster when you have company. As the Coen brothers put it, “There’s a spirit of camaraderie that exists between the men, like you find only in combat maybe, or on a pro ball club in the heat of a pennant drive.” The Coen brothers were talking about prison, but it’s an apt comparison; indeed, when (just a couple miles into this final climb) I couldn’t hack the pace anymore, and I had to let the other guys go, and was distinctly bummed at the long, silent miles stretching out ahead of me, I wondered if this was like going from the prison yard to solitary confinement.

I toiled away solo, buried in my lowest gear, starting to actually get too warm for the first time all weekend. Paul and Ken drove by in the Intimidation Van. “Do you need anything?” they called out. I did—I needed a lot of things, starting with a higher VO2 max and improved lactate threshold—but I didn’t need anything they could provide. I hoped I didn’t look too pathetic, pedaling away like a girl scout fighting the fierce current of Lake Chabot in a crappy little paddle boat.

Paul drove ahead and parked so I could ditch my jacket and arm warmers as I came by. Ken was quick enough to snap a photo. Look carefully at my crow’s feet—which are actually longer than an actual crow’s actual feet—and Paul’s waiting hands at the right edge of the frame.

The group of four that I’d dropped from was still visible at various points, and it disgorged another of its riders, whom over a period of twenty minutes I caught and dropped. Then Jaycee fell off the pace, and I gradually made up ground on him for another thirty minutes until, along a straight, shallow section of road, I saw him off the side of the road peeing. It seemed a pity to pass him under such circumstances, but my supersized bladder is one of my only athletic talents and I suppose I should take advantage of it when I can.

Not long after thus moving into ninth on the road, I suddenly felt completely nauseated. This happens sometimes, particularly at altitude (I was at about 7,000 feet elevation), and I truly hoped I wouldn’t hurl. Barf is really caustic so even just a mouthful can make your throat burn for hours. Fortunately I only dry-heaved. I did this a number of times. You know things are bad when you “only” dry-heave and feel fortunate about it. I retched wretchedly for a couple of minutes, and then felt a bit better and soldiered on.

Paul and Ken drove by again. I’m sure they felt a bit awkward trying to say something encouraging to somebody locked in such a seemingly pointless struggle, with so far still to go. What could they say? “Almost there!” No, that’s not true. And “You’re doing great!” might come off as sarcastic. But these guys know what they’re doing. “Dana, there are two bearded riders behind you!” Paul called out. “You are leading the bearded division!”

The temperature steadily dropped. The next time I came upon the parked van I got my arm warmers and jacket back from the guys and put them back on. Riding on, I was aware of a rider gradually catching up to me, but knew by his form that it wasn’t the Talented Mr. Ridley. Eventually the guy caught me. It was one of the bearded guys, and he pulled level right at the 5-KM-to-go sign. I felt oddly demoralized: not because I was getting passed (this guy wasn’t even in my category), but by how tired this guy looked. I thought he’d just roll away from me, but he couldn’t; it was like catching me had taken all he had. He was a living reminder of how hard this was. And for the first time all weekend, I began to battle despair.

How could I, with just 5K to go? Well, they’re long kilometers. I had about 1,000 vertical feet yet to climb. And it just suddenly seemed as though I couldn’t do it anymore. My legs simply didn’t want to turn the pedals. What if I stop? I wondered. Just for a minute? Just a little rest? I knew, of course, that these were the crazed delusions of a madman. I was like a car with an almost-dead battery: if I shut off the engine, I’d never get it going again. But 5K? It couldn’t be done! I reminded myself what was at stake: Marco (in tenth) was surely only a couple minutes ahead, and The Talented Mr. Ridley was behind me and unlikely to catch up, much less drop me by four minutes. All I really needed to do was finish. But that made it worse: so close, yet so far.

And so: I just kept pedaling, somehow. And after a few minutes, the damnedest thing happened: I started to feel better. Not so much physically, but emotionally. My mind relaxed. Yes, I can do this, I realized. Perhaps the grade had let up a bit, or the energy drink was doing its thing. Whatever the case, the despair melted away and in fact now struck me as having been silly. This was an epiphany of sorts: the idea that despair can just be a passing mood, that goes away all by itself. I suppose I’ve heard words to this effect before, but now I’ve experienced it. I’m going to remember it.

I reached the finish, made sure the ref got my number, rolled down to the refreshment station, grabbed a couple Clif bars, got my medal and t-shirt, and rode immediately back to the van before my tired body could cool off.  Even still I froze my ass off before reaching the van.  Ian and Craig rode by after a bit, and made a quick turnaround after the finish themselves.  We didn’t even pause for a photo-op; this was the only shot I managed to get.

Post-race

We showered at the hot springs.  I had a beer stashed in the cooler and chugged it:  doctor’s orders.  We went to Erick Schat’s for sandwiches, where we encountered (at like 3 p.m., spang between lunch and dinner) a crazy mob of people.  We had to sit outside in the cold.  Here we are.

Here is my sandwich.  It became more glorious when I’d stuffed the tomatoes, pickle, and sauerkraut into it.

Not shown:  the crazy bird that attacked Paul, and then attacked Craig.  Also not shown:  the little kid who started crying when Craig violently shooed away the crazy bird.  Seriously weird goings-on.  At least there wasn’t a group of firemen seated next to us, as there had been at Astorga’s and then at the Italian joint the next night.  For them to have joined us a third time would have been too much.  Instead it just started to rain.  We finished our lunches standing under the eaves.

We got on the road earlier than ever before, only to see on a flashing roadside sign that Highway 120, through Yosemite, was closed, along with the next highway to the north over Sonora Pass.  Getting home looked like it would take forever, meaning our merry band would go the way of the Donner Party, or the guys in “Deliverance” or “The Osterman Weekend.”  Fortunately, Highway 120 was open when we reached it.  Look closely in this photo (taken at the park entrance where we stopped to pee) and you’ll see the blowing snow.

We stopped at the pizza place in Groveland.  The staff seemed really out of it, bickering over who had to make the pizzas.  Ken asked if we could get a basil and tomato pizza and the cashier said, “No, we can’t make that.”  He asked which ingredient they couldn’t do, and she absolutely could not parse the question.  When I described this to Ian (outside) he said, “But that’s a classic Margherita pizza!”  I replied, “If I tell her that, she’ll say they don’t have a liquor license.”

I think the pizza-making job finally went to this fat guy in a filthy t-shirt who was chewing on a toothpick.  The poor cashier took a long time miscalculating the check.  I asked for a receipt and she had to write it out by hand on a scrap of paper, misspelling the name of the restaurant.  We got the two pizzas to go and ate them in the dark (the dome light seeming unwise as Paul was driving us down Priest Grade).  Ken said, “Dana, I’m gonna be pissed if I come across that guy’s toothpick.”  The thing is, it was nevertheless pretty dang good pizza.  Or were we just insanely hungry?

Postscript

On my third (short) ride after the EC, I went to shift into my big ring and my front derailleur cable snapped.  Bizarre.  I can’t help but feel grateful that this hadn’t happened during the race, when—despite the awful weather and rote suffering—nothing major went wrong.  And now I’ve been clobbered by a virus, which so easily could have struck earlier.  I’m pretty jazzed about this race, really; on my sixth try, I feel like I pretty much finally got it right.

Race Report - Everest Challenge 2014 (Stage 1)

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language and mature themes.

Introduction

As I begin this report, it is the Wednesday evening after the Everest Challenge.  I was going to go for a bike ride—just because it’s so nice outside and I want to know again what warm sun feels like—but my wife put the kibosh on that.  “Your breathing still isn’t back to normal,” she says.  She’s right about that … it’s like I’m still trying to catch my breath.  I told her I’d already talked to my doctor about it.  She knows “my doctor” means my friend who’s a doctor who specializes in pulmonary problems.  She asked if he had any theories.  “Nope, he wasn’t concerned,” I told her.  “And I know what he’d say if pressed him:  ‘You’re a pussy!’”

This Everest Challenge, my sixth, was different from the others.  For one thing, I actually caught the names of a few of the leaders, including the guy who I think ended up winning.  But don’t worry, I won’t bore you with such details.  This report focuses on the food, the difficulties, and the deranged culture of the event.

This was also my first year in the Masters 45+ category.  But the biggest difference was that instead of being unbearably hot, the weather this year was unbearably cold.  So don your fuzzy slippers, grab a nice hot cup of joe, forward your phone, and prepare for some highly indulgent schadenfreude!

Pre-race

We met at Ken’s place, where we loaded up Paul’s kickass Endurance  team van, which—being all modern and sporting a custom paint job and a giant bike rack—is so pro that we’re vicariously intimidated by ourselves.  New for this year is that all five of our bikes were badass black.  (I guess that’s not such a coincidence when almost all road bikes, it seems, are now black.) 

I was a bit late meeting the others because I got held up performing an emergency Epley maneuver.  At least I had an excuse the guys probably hadn’t heard before.

Our group has only two rules regarding the Everest Challenge:  1) don’t talk about the Everest Challenge; and 2) bring baked goods for the drive.  I think as long as I obey the second rule, the guys will cut me some slack on the first.  My daughter Alexa baked us a bunch of butterscotch brownies.  They were so good.  So were the cookies and chocolate the other guys brang.  (Yeah, I know “brang” isn’t a word, but that sentence was getting boring.)

Lunch was at Priest’s Station again, though it almost wasn’t.  We got there unusually early and the host told us they weren’t serving lunch yet.  He seemed relieved to be turning us away.  We were on the brink of leaving until Paul, who’d been outside when we got the news, came up with the brilliant idea of finding out when they did start serving lunch, which turned out to be just ten minutes away.

I won’t go into everything everybody ate, but we did have some intrigue when Ken tried to order:

[Ken]  “I’d like to get the vegan sandwich, but can you add cheese?”

[Waitress]  “No, I can’t do that.”

[Ken]  “Why not?  Isn’t the customer always right?”

[Waitress]   “I’d like to, but that sandwich you describe … it cannot be.  It does not exist.”

[Ken]  “Look, I grasp that it wouldn’t be a vegan sandwich anymore.  But I want the cheese.”

[Waitress]  “The addition of cheese obliterates the very essence of the vegan sandwich.  Not being our vegan offering anymore, the sandwich thus vanishes from our menu so you’d be adding cheese to nothing, to a phantom, to a lack.”

[Ken]  “Seriously?”

[Waitress]  “Hey, I’m just a waitress … I cannot alter fundamental ontological laws.”

Okay, I confess that I’ve exaggerated that exchange a bit.  What really happened is that Ken wondered aloud beforehand about whether he’d get any flak for adding cheese to a vegan sandwich.  When he (almost sheepishly) asked, the waitress said something like “Of course!” which suggested that the word “vegan” meant no more to her than “cowboy” in the context of my cowboy burger (grass-fed beef, bacon, BBQ sauce, onion rings—very tasty though it made a mess in my beard, which may be why hipsters so often order non-messy things like tahini pita).

When we stopped for gas at the eastern edge of Yosemite, we couldn’t believe how windy it was.  The forecast was for unseasonably cooler weather, which started on a promising note (mid-‘70s) but become ominous, with some websites forecasting rain.  (We enjoyed a long discourse on the probable evolution of weather forecasting, which must have started with Ouija boards but evolved to include almanacs just to get predictions into a saner range.)  But when we got to Bishop and headed out for our traditional spin-the-legs ride, we enjoyed sun and temps in the mid-‘80s.

Dinner was at Astorga’s, the Mexican joint, again.  They seated us in a back room, away from the decent guests.  We were all clean and presentable .. .what gives?  Maybe we’re too thin.  Anyway, something big was going down in the kitchen and nothing was coming out.  We ate at least a basket or two of chips apiece while waiting.  I wanted the combo with a beef taco and chicken enchilada and Craig ordered the opposite, just to spleen me.  I was unfazed until I got a beef taco and beef enchilada and both of Craig’s items were chicken.  “Boo-ya, motherfrockles!” the waitress did not say.

When we left, it was significantly colder out.  At the motel we set about pinning our numbers and mixing up bottles.  This year I even got organized and put a little sticker on my handlebars telling the mileage of each summit so I could mark my progress.

Craig, knowing he’d be groggy in the morning, wrote a to-do list for the morning:

The order is important.  If you dress before shitting, you’ll have to take your jersey and jacket back off to drop the bib shorts.  If you eat before heating your food, your food will be raw.  Etc.

Stage 1 – 89.2 miles, hella climbing

I say “hella climbing” instead of the normal precise number because the course had a last-minute change due to road construction and/or an evil troll crouching near the roadway.  So we did the traditional first climb (to South Lake, elevation 9,835’), then the standard second climb (to Pine Creek, elevation 7,425’), and then the first climb again.

I woke up dark and early, full of butterflies, and groped for my smartphone to check the time.  I was pleased by neither the time nor the active-background weather update for Bishop:

Craig was using some fancy-pants Weather Underground app to predict the weather at the higher elevations, and the forecast for South Lake was for snow turning to rain and then back to snow.  D’oh.

We began our day.  I burst out laughing to see Craig’s oatmeal in the microwave:  a serving the size of a grapefruit.  I opened the door to snap a photo and the oatmeal sank.  It was mostly air, bubbling up as it cooked.  Still, a hearty helping.

I’m never eating Uncle Sam cereal pre-race again.  It’s just like cardboard and is like 30% flax seeds.  I also ate a tasty old-school granola bar 2-pack that had expired during the Clinton administration.

I fretted over whether to save my wool socks for Sunday (which had an even worse forecast) before discovering, to my delight, that I’d brought two pairs.  These were not only Smartwools but were a Christmas present from my mom, so you know I was super-stoked.  Alas, I only had one long-sleeve thermal base layer and saved it for Stage 2.  The rain had stopped before we mobilized but it was still plenty cold.  Less cold, of course, than what we’d be facing at South Lake.

When we got to the start line, my bowels asserted themselves again and I had to ride off to the comfort station and do one last purge.  It was farther away than I’d remembered, and I rolled up to the starting line about 15 seconds before the start.  The ref laughed.  “There’s one in every peloton,” Paul said.

The first climb was brutal.  Determined not to wuss out and over-conserve my energy as I had last year, I dug good and deep and was still with the leaders until about halfway to the summit.  Then some damn climber type got a little aggro, others responded, and eventually my heart rate got too high for too long and I had to let six guys roll away, lest I detonate 13 miles into an 89-mile race.  When the grade flattened a bit I eventually made it back to them, along with Ken and a couple big rolleur types.  We latched quietly on the back of the lead group and sat in.

A few more dropped riders got back on, and right about the time I was thinking, “Wow, this is kind of a big group for this far into the climb,” Ken said, “Wow, this is kind of a big group for this far into the climb!”  The climbers must have heard, because the hammer went down again.  Plus, the road pitched up with a vengeance.  It was freezing cold up there, there was snow on the side of the road, I was carrying 175 pounds of blood and guts and my solid penguin-style bones, and a gap started opening.  I saw the 0.2 KM sign and figured whatever gap the pocket climbers got, I’d be able to close it on the downhill.

Suddenly I heard this isk-isk-isk sound and looked at my rear brake.  The rim was hitting it!  Had I broken a spoke?  No wonder I was hurting so bad!  I turned around at the turnaround (as one does) and stopped to put on my jacket.  Craig (racing in the 35+ category with Ian) was there, zipping up his.  I asked him to check my wheel.   He said it was fine.  (I discovered later that one of the decals had started peeling, and that was all that was hitting the brake, which wasn’t centered right.) 

Seeing as to how the leaders we already underway, I said to Craig, “Let’s go!”  I couldn’t believe my luck:  descending behind Craig is a wonderful thing.  Encountering him here looked like the best thing to happen to me since I missed my transfer (by like a mile) riding a San Francisco city bus and the driver, having just finished her shift, actually drove me home.

But here I was deluding myself.  “Sorry dude, Ian’s taking a piss,” Craig said.  “You better get going—your leaders are down the road.”  He didn’t need to add, “You bozo!” because this was implicit.  I’d have hauled ass down the twisty, narrow road except I was afraid of frost and ice.  I took it easy for awhile.  When I got back into the sun I chased like a mofo and eventually caught the leaders.  In fact, after I passed them I accidentally dropped them all via my aerodynamic tuck and my penguin bones.  So  then I had to coast awhile, untucked like a slob’s shirt, and let them catch up.  I kind of missed the hammering I’d been doing … at least it had kept me a bit warmer.

Those poor climber bastards.  They’re even skinnier than I am and a few weren’t even wearing leg warmers.  A couple of these guys were shaking so badly they could barely control their bikes.  I gave them plenty of room.

(A note about my constant climber-bashing:  I actually have nothing against climbers and in fact hold them in high regard.  But their ability to roll away from me on pivotal uphills just isn’t something I can take sitting down.  Or standing up.  It rankles.  It would be dishonest not to share with you the feelings I had during the race, even if these feelings evaporated immediately afterward.)

On the flat section it was really windy and I was hoping to put more distance between our group of 11 and the couple dozen guys who’d been dropped.  But the climbers wouldn’t help.  Their attitude seemed to be, “Who cares how many guys latch back on?  I’m a climber and another climb is coming up and I’ll just drop them again, ha-ha!”  Fine.  But they don’t get to self-identify with draft horses or oxen … just little ponies or maybe lapdogs.  Ken and I did most of the work until the second climb.

Four miles from the summit the pace got too high and again I released myself from the leaders on my own recognizance.  Fortunately, two big guys decided to detach with me.  One of them, Marco, I’ve raced with pretty much every year at EC.  The other didn’t look familiar but he had a cool Belgian-themed bike and good form.  I later learned his name was Bobby.  So we suffered along together for awhile before Marco said, “Hey, welcome back” to this fourth dude.  This guy was particularly lean, with really veiny legs and a fancy Ridley bike.  But he didn’t hang around … he went by us and gradually pulled away.  This seemed kind of stupid to me.  I mean, he wasn’t going to catch the leaders, and we were bound to catch him on the descent or the flat section later, so what was the point of expending extra energy opening up a gap on us?  But hey, free country.

Sure enough, after reaching the summit together and sharing the wind on the descent and the flats for about ten miles, our trio caught the veiny-legged Ridley guy.  As we approached the road where all the cars were parked, I thought about stopping for a couple fresh bottles.  (The race-supplied energy drink tends to give me debilitating gas, along with others I know who have used it.  Paul said it once blew his belly up like a balloon, and when he was finally able to begin farting post-race, each passing of gas shrunk his belly visibly.)  Of course it’s a shame to break up a group, so I was contemplating suggesting to the other guys that we all stop at our cars and then sync back up.  At that moment the veiny/Ridley guy suggested exactly that.  So we all stopped at our cars—except him.  He just kept right on going!  “Aha,” he must have thought, “I tricked them!”  Bobby said mildly, “That wasn’t very sportsmanlike.”

We had a strong, cold crosswind on the final climb.  Marco must have fallen off at some point.  Bobby and I picked up a couple other good riders (from other categories) and were steaming along pretty well when I saw the Talented Mr. Ridley ahead in the distance.  I knew I wouldn’t last in this group for the whole climb, but hoped we’d pass and drop this guy before I had to back off.  When we went by him I didn’t even look back to see if he’d latched on.  I just settled in and suffered.  I know the road would turn eventually, so the wind might not be so bad.  When I finally eased off  and peeked over my shoulder, the Talented Mr. Ridley was way off the back.  This stoked my coals.  I don’t mind telling you, I hoped we’d completely crushed his morale.

Of course, he was not all I had to worry about.  Survival was very much on my mind.  It was getting ever colder as I gained altitude, and then it started to rain.  No, it wasn’t a deluge, but enough but enough to soak my chamois, which makes Hank cranky.  How much weight does a drenched jacket add?  Oh well.  Then the rain turned briefly to sleet before becoming snow.  Again, not a lot, but—snow!  Dang!  And there was that damn wind.  I won’t go into tedious detail about how long the next ten miles felt.  If you really want a taste of what it was like, read this paragraph repeatedly for the next hour while punching yourself with a bag of frozen peas.

Paul drove up next to me in the Intimidation van and called out encouragement.  He would go on to park it as far up the climb as he was allowed, so we wouldn’t have to descend the full twenty miles to the start area after the race.  HUGE.

I eventually made it to the finish, though this required some paperboy-style weaving on the steepest pitches.  (Despite having already disgraced myself with a compact crank maybe I’ll use a wussy 27-tooth cog next year—there, are you happy now!? )  In case you’re wondering, I reached the finish almost four minutes ahead of the Talented Mr. Ridley.

Fortunately it was dry at the top and the sun even managed to poke through a bit.  I was drying out nicely.  A volunteer handed me a cup of hot cocoa which was so perfectly appropriate, it almost brought me to tears.  It even had a few clumps of un-dissolved cocoa mix, like chocolate croutons.  Then I had a bowl of hot noodle soup or two and various sugary treats.  I found the sag vehicle  and my (sadly under-stocked) warm-clothing bag.

Steve Barnes, the race director, recognized me despite my beard (which is more than I can say for many people in my community, such as the shocked school mom who wondered who this dangerous-looking stranger was walking along with my daughter).  Steve asked how the beard was treating me, and I pointed out that not only did it keep my face warm, but the moustache traps snot, which can be harvested later for its valuable electrolytes.  He’d not been aware of this, perhaps because I’d just made it up (though I think it’s actually true).

Craig and Ian rolled in and had themselves some calories.  Here we are.

This next photo is intended to showcase the dusting of snow on the mountains, and I suppose it does (though such things never look as good in photos).  Bonus:  it also showcases two other bearded racers.

Post-race

We had just started our frigid descent to the van when I realized nobody had grabbed Ken’s clothing bag.  (He’d ended his race at the van on the way up, having suffered a moment of clarity about our absurd situation and an ominous tightness in his chest.)  So I screamed for Craig (ahead of me) to stop, and the three of us re-climbed the 200-meter 16% finishing wall.  That really hurt, in every way.  I felt like I should have something to show for such an effort, so while Ian fetched Ken’s bag I had Craig take my photo with a couple of local superheroes.  If you look closely at this photo you’ll see that the snow had started up again.

By the time we got to the van I was completely frozen.  Hanging around at the finish line and diverting all my blood to my stomach had serious consequences, as had neglecting to bring full-finger gloves.  Craig reported that my lips were purple.

Dinner was at our old standby, the Upper Crust Pizza Company.  For some reason I listened to Ian and Craig, who thought that last year’s strategy—splitting an XL pizza among the three of us as an appetizer—was overkill, and that we should just get two smalls.  That place has seriously good ‘za and (though I say this every year) next time I swear I’m going to get my very own pizza appetizer.  But the ‘za, some bread, a bowl of soup, and the yummy chicken marsala pasta did a good-enough job of replacing my lost calories.

To be continued…

I was pretty happy with how I rode on the first stage.  (I was 8th in a good-sized M45+ field.)  I was less happy with the weather, and with the forecast for Sunday.  In fact, the wimp in my brain was half-hoping the weather would be so bad for Stage 2 that we’d be able to bag the whole thing without completely sacrificing our dignity. 

But I’ll tell you right now, Stage 2 did happen.  And as I’ve pointed out many times before, recovery is my greatest weakness:  the better I go on Stage 1, the more I pay for it on Stage 2.  So if you’re not satisfied with the level of misery I’ve described above, check back because believe me, there’s more to come.

Race Report - Everest Challenge 2013 (Stage 2)

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for coarse humor and mild strong language.

Introduction

A few days ago, when my lips were still too sunburned for me to smile comfortably, I regaled you, or somebody like you, with the exploits of my bike pals and me as we tackled Stage 1 of the 2013 Everest Challenge stage race.  I’ve forgotten half of what happened during Stage 2 already so I better get to it or I’ll be reduced to the classic one-line race report, “There was a race and somebody must have won but it sure wasn’t me,” which could be used for just about any athletic endeavor, come to think of it.

Pre-race

I slept pretty well until about 2:00 a.m.  Anybody with such a daunting race ahead of him, and one just as daunting already behind him, could be forgiven for having night terrors.  But I didn’t have night terrors—I had night bowels.  I suppose we should all be grateful that our bowels shut down and night … when they do.  But to whom much has been fed, much is to be expected.  I was up again around 4 a.m. for another round, and then somebody’s smartphone alarm—something between a purr and a growl—went off at 4:45 and we were all up and about with our pre-race preparations, which consisted mainly of groaning, committing brazen acts of flatulence, and making sophomoric jokes of the very highest (and lowest) order.

Halfway through my bowl of GoLean Crunch (which I pronounce “Goal-ee-an Crunch” and pretend is the food they ate in “Star Trek”) I began to hear murmurs from below.  They were the non-verbal equivalent of “never send to know for whom the bowels move; they move for thee.”  It was time, once again.

Needless to say, with four nervous bike racers sharing a motel room, there was no chance of the toilet being free.  I puckered and squirmed and waited and finally heard the happy gurgle of the toilet flushing.  I was already on my feet when I heard a cry from the bathroom and one of the guys came staggering out, looking (as another described it later) as though he’d just witnessed a murder.  And in a sense he had:  he’d killed the toilet.  Totally overwhelmed it.  Kicked its ass, you might say.  The water level had risen to the rim and beyond, carrying his fecal offspring with it.  This couldn’t be happening!  I needed that toilet!  I needed it now!  I was already crowning!

Fortunately, Paul’s friend Rich had another room just a few doors down, or this report might move from daytime TV territory into another “Silence of the Lambs” installment.  I won’t dwell on the devastating effect this overflow had on our group other than to say that a) I plunged that bad boy myself once the maintenance guy dropped off the plunger; b) we tipped the maid very well, and c) when we got to the race I still wasn’t caught up from that giant dinner the night before.  So I had to brave the trailer-mounted San-O-Let near the start line. 

The line wasn’t too bad, but the tiny trailer’s suspension was shot and/or its tires were low, because being in there was like being in a ship during a storm, or maybe being in a NASA flight simulator.  There was nothing to hold onto and I couldn’t shake the thought that some mistake might be made and the trailer driven off toward some far-flung rest stop with me still in there.

Stage 2 – 73 miles, 14,030 feet of climbing

During the race, I had seven bottles of Cytomax, one bottle of water, one bottle of Heed, one foil pouch of Capri-Sun, half a banana, and five gels.  I thought of the Capri-Sun as a Capri-Sonne; I first became aware of this beverage in 1981 because they sponsored a pro cycling team in Europe that rode kickass Koga-Miyata bicycles.  (That was, incidentally, the first year Capri-Sun was sold in the U.S., and the year I got my first Miyata.)  During the race, the prospect of a) a drink associated with a cool pro team, b) a drink that wasn’t Cytomax or Gatorade or Heed, and c) a drink that might actually be cold, was thrilling to contemplate.  This was at a brutal part of the race when the temperature was 96 degrees and … wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Imagine this.  It’s the summit of the first climb, to Glacier Lodge, and I’ve crested it with the leaders!  In fact, as they slow to take water bottles, I cruise right past to take the lead.  As we begin the blazing descent, I look back and yell, “OKAY DUDES!  ARE YOU READY TO SHRED THIS GNAR’?!”

Now forget that whole vignette because it’s absurd.  Of course that’s not what happened.  In reality I hung with the leaders only until a good number of riders had fallen off, and then I backed off my pace, hoping not to waste all my energy early and then utterly crack on the final climb as I had the previous two years.  I think seven or eight guys dropped me.  I counted two of them whom I’d beaten the day before, when I’d placed sixth, so I figured if I didn’t see them again, I’d slip down in the overall standings.  My hope, of course, is that they were foolishly going out too hard and would pay later.

On the second climb, Waucoba Canyon, I was totally alone, and it started to get hot.  Traditionally it hasn’t been such a bad climb, except that last year they lengthened it (for complicated reasons you don’t care about).  Look, and zoom in:  Waucoba is almost as high as the first climb now (original course is on the left):

I kept my pace ridiculously mellow, my heart rate in the 130s.  It was just a slog.  It was the bike racing equivalent of Traffic School, except more boring.  I’ll tell you the highlight:  I was pedaling along, the air dead still, not a rider in sight, even my breathing so quiet the whole world around me was one huge hush, and then this giant and very loudly buzzing fly, probably a horsefly, flew by, from my left side past my face before flying off to the right, and I got a pitch-perfect example of the Doppler effect.  It was as perfect as an animated short showcasing the THX sound system before a Pixar movie.  And then it was over and things got boring again.

The third pass, to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, has been accurately described as a ░░░░.  That’s right, a word I can’t even put in this blog.  The climb starts at just under 4,000 feet and finishes at over 10,000 feet (with a demoralizing little screw-you descent along the way).  It’s always hottest at the lower sections, where there’s usually a bit of tailwind.  It’s a sauna, in short.  This is the place where you know whether or not you’ve saved enough:  if you start crying, you’ve squandered your strength too early.  I felt okay and only wished it didn’t go on so long.  Sometimes I’d see somebody up in the distance and, over a period of five or ten minutes, overtake him.  Sometimes somebody would pass me, and ride away just as gradually.  It was like one of those car race video games, except in super-slo-mo.  (I could be blasé about any rider passing me whose bib number didn’t start with a 4—that is, any rider who wasn’t in my category.)  It was along this section I got the Capri-Sun.  Somebody had brought it specially for his son, but the son rejected it, the little ingrate, so:  my gain.  Dang it was good.

So, did you notice that just now?  How I started the tale of this race by telling about the Capri-Sun, and then backed up and started the story from the beginning, and then caught up to the Capri-Sun bit again?  That’s a very sophisticated literary technique called in medias res and it’s generally considered a privilege of the élite to get to enjoy such masterfully constructed narratives.  I’d like to thank my mom and dad for paying for a good bit of the English degree that makes such things possible.

I had some trouble with allergies and blew some giant snot comets out my nose.  Twice they refused to detach, and flew out behind me like some grotesque narrow scarf, and I had to pinch them off with my forefinger and thumb and fling them away.  I pretended I was finally expelling the tapeworms that I (and others) have long suspected are living in my stomach.

I just kept pacing myself, going no harder than I needed to, which meant hardly working except for the really steep sections, which were kind of a treat because I could just plow over them by digging a bit deeper.  This went on until I got to around 7,000 feet and passed a guy in my category.  I recognized him from the day before when I’d introduced myself to him.  I remembered distinctly that he was either 5th or 7th place the day before.  (Okay, I guess that’s not actually remembering it distinctly.)  It was one or the other, meaning one of us could pass up the other in the GC based on this stage.  It had taken me awhile to overtake him and I was level with him long enough to exchange looks.  Who knows what my look really said, but to my mind it was something like “Sorry about this, but sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.”  His look was less inscrutable; it said something like “Damn you all to hell you soulless life-ruiner.”

I pulled away only gradually, and occasionally I looked back to see where he was, and he was never very far behind.  I feared that he’d been loafing and only needed a little extra motivation to dig into his reserves.  No matter how long the climb lasted—and any EC veteran can tell you it’s seemingly endless—this guy was never far back.  He was starting to really stress me out.  I lifted my pace to where I was starting to suffer properly, and thus to doubt how long I could keep it up.  But he just stayed there like some Masters 35+ doppelgänger.  And then, horribly, he started to close in.  Suddenly my dream of “touring” the EC was over, and I was actually racing.

Oh, I did what I could, my heart rate well into the (gasp!) 140s, the memory returning of how cruel this climb could be, but there was really nothing I could do to defy fate.  Soon my opponent had teamed up with some other guy and they were trading pulls in the headwind sections.  (Yes, of course there were headwind sections.)  And finally, after maybe twenty minutes of this mutual struggle, he had me.  I was trying to figure out what to say.  “Chapeau” seemed a bit twee, but “Hey, nice job, way to dig deep” would give him too much encouragement and help seal my doom.  Of course, there was always “Damn you all to hell you soulless life-ruiner,” but that wouldn’t capture the cowardly relief I got by giving up.

But to my sudden amazement, as he pulled up alongside, I realized this wasn’t my Masters 35+ opponent at all—it was one of his teammates from another category!  Somehow, the two had traded places on the road.  I’d been chased up the mountain by a phantom rival!  I could have laughed, except that this would probably have started a coughing fit.

Now it dawned on me that I didn’t have to slow down just because I wasn’t being pursued; I was close enough to the finish to stop saving my legs.  It’s kind of like when I ran out of money in college and thought, “Could I use the Uncle John inheritance?  No, I’m saving that for college … wait, I’m in college!  I can use it!”  So I kept up the higher pace, and hung with the two guys who’d just caught me.  As we gradually neared the finish we caught a couple more guys. 

And then, in the last quarter-mile, I saw another Masters 35+ rider a ways up the road.  How cool would it be, I thought, to pass him with like fifty meters to go?  He’d be morally shattered, of course.  A real sucker-punch, after all that suffering.  Yeah, I figured, I had to do it.  Now, normally a quarter mile wouldn’t have been enough to overhaul anybody, but the last quarter mile of this race is special.  It’s over 10,000 feet elevation and you’ve got almost 170 miles of racing in your legs.  A quarter mile is a vast distance in this case, especially when the guy you’re chasing is totally blown.

So I dug deep and started completely drilling it.  I was surprised—pleasantly or not, I couldn’t say—that I could get enough air to make my legs burn.  But burn they did, and gradually I closed the gap.  I realized maybe I’d actually catch him too soon, and he’d have a chance to react, but once I was upon him this fear was stamped out because once again I’d hallucinated—this wasn’t a fellow Masters 35+, just another innocent bystander in another category.  I felt like the dog who finally caught the mailman.  But a minute later it was all over and the race was finished.

A guy I’d beaten the day before took second on the day, so I slipped to 7th in the overall.  This stage had seemed to take at least an hour less than it had the year before, but looking back it turns out I was only like four minutes faster.  And since I went so much faster on Stage 1 last year than this year, my overall GC time was slower this year.  Lesson learned:  suffering works!  Next year I’m going way harder.

For the nerds out there, here are some power and heart rate stats:

 - 259 watts at 143 bpm on the first climb (vs. 248 watts at 142 bpm last year);
 - 221 watts at 135 bpm on the second climb (vs. 220 watts at 133 bpm last year);
 - 232 watts at 136 bpm on the final climb (vs. 220 watts at 136 bpm last year).

Before you get all smug about being way stronger than I, consider that those are “dog-watts”—that is, they’re based on my rate of vertical gain and my weight (from the formula f=mgh) without considering wind resistance, etc.  A real power meter would’ve read higher.

Presently Mike arrived, and before long he started digging through his bag.  He pulled out a large shiny foil-wrapped thing that ended up being leftover pizza.  Amazingly, he had enough to share with Craig and me.  Because Mike’s initials are MC, he gets lots of ad hoc nicknames (e.g., MC Everest, MC Hammer) and through this gesture he earned the moniker “MC Genius” which seems to have stuck.  Here are some photos of us at the top.  Paul, Mike, Jamie, Lee, and Craig ... if you don’t know who these guys are, check out my Stage 1 report.

Post-race

For lunch we went to Erick Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop, a tradition we somehow didn’t follow last year.  In the report I filed two years ago I called it a Bakery but it’s actually a Bakkery, as Ian pointed out, or maybe it was Lee.  (I was tired and those British accents all meld together, especially when they’re saying non-English words like “Bakkery.”)  Lee was all excited about the pastrami sandwich until I pointed out the placard that says “Note:  our pastrami is not lean.”  Amazingly, this turned him off to it. Obviously he’s got a lot to learn about food, but give him time … he’s still young.

While we stood in line at Schat’s, Craig challenged me to a sandwich-eating race.  Over dinner the previous night I’d bragged about my Burrito World Championship victory and I guess he thought it was time for my comeuppance.  He also decided that for some reason it would be fair for him to get a head start on me and start eating as soon as he got to the table.  Well, I was delayed finding a fork for my potato salad, and moreover forget all about the race, and he beat me.  Man, was he stoked.  He gloated like he’d just won Everest.  To quote Lermontov, “I feel that one day he and I will meet on a narrow path, and one of us shall fare ill.”

Note that it was impossible to get everybody to pose for this photo.  They were all too into their food.  My pastrami sandwich was not lean, and I mean that in the best possible way.

During the drive we stopped at Bridgeport again, at a little shack where we got milkshakes and whatnot.  Look at MC Genius here, two-fisting it with a shake and curly fries:

The smoke was just as bad on the drive home.  Man, it stunk.  It all but blotted out the sun—check it out.

In the grim town of Escalon (at least, it was grim when we rolled through) Paul badly needed some dinner.  I was a bit hungry myself.  We stopped at Taco bell, a good 15 minutes before closing time, but the good-for-nothing staff had decided to close early.  We could see them in there, cleaning up.  I’m sure Paul considered driving the Intimidation Van through the glass doors at high speed, but was just too tired.  So we did a driving tour of Escalon, growing increasingly despondent as place after greasy place was closed.  A little cat was lapping water from a puddle in a parking lot and we slowed to a crawl, considering its plight.  We passed a supermarket.  “You could just stop there and buy a big bag of frozen shrimp,” I offered.  Finally we found a McDonald’s that was open.  My fries came from a totally fresh batch—the fry cook seemed pretty proud of them—but they were oddly disgusting, even to my starvation-softened palate.  Paul ate some damn thing, I don’t remember, and everybody else just kept up the post-Everest patter, words that drifted away instantly, like smoke.

MC Genius loaned me his truck to drive home.  Along the way, I noticed an ominous dashboard light:  Tailgate Open.  I could lose my bike right out the back!  That would be a disaster, of course, but as I pondered the bruised state of my respiratory system, and suppressed a coughing fit, I reflected that there would be a silver lining to such a mishap.  I’ve had enough cycling for awhile....

Postscript

It turns out that, although I was indeed 7th place in the second stage, I maintained my 6th place overall.  That does it, I’m going to race again next year!  (Actually, this was never in question.)