From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XVII

Introduction

This is the seventeenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, and Volume XVI is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in numerical order, reverse order, liturgical order, purchase order, mail order, and/or in good working order.)

July 24, 2007

I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any kids back when we were colleagues, but I have two daughters now, A— (age 5½) and L— (age 3½). Parenting has been both satisfying and exhausting. The girls always want me to “play Cassandra,” where I speak in this booming voice and pretend I’m an evil sea witch while acting out various scenarios they come up with. It’s really tedious, but they love it. Well, the other day I realized that playing Cassandra vaguely reminded me of some other wearying activity I’m routinely involved in, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. Then it hit me: conference calls. The dread I feel as I enter the passcode is identical to the dread I feel when I’m asked to play Cassandra. And yet both activities have to be done.

May 8, 2008

My back is seriously jacked up. For years I have lived in fear of my back suddenly going out: no apparent cause, no diagnosis, no treatment, no prognosis … just a purgatory of suffering that ideally will subside at some point. And now it’s upon me. The hardest thing for me is transitions (e.g., sitting-to-standing), and the hardest transition is from riding my bike to standing up and walking. So literally the most painful part of my morning ride today was carrying my bike up the short flight of steps to the porch. Then I had to maneuver the bike through the living room, around the landing by the stairs and through the kitchen, and then down the short flight to the office. A fresh stab of pain accompanied every change in direction, and one spasm caused me to catastrophically lose my grip on the bike when atop the steps down to the office. My poor bike fell and the top tube hit the arm of a chair, and now I have this huge dent in the top tube of my almost-new bike. It is absolutely heartbreaking.

The dent isn’t so bad that the ride would be affected, I don’t think. It’s just a really bumful blemish, like if Natalie Portman had a permanent whitehead the size of a pencil eraser on her forehead. Since this disaster I’ve twice had the bike up to a pretty good speed in a full tuck without any problem, so I reckon it’s good. It breaks my heart every time I look at it, though. Sometimes when I look down at that dent while riding I get so pissed off I can actually suffer more, so I guess that’s a silver lining. Man. I’ll still be whining about this on my deathbed, I’m sure.

February 9, 2009

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply to your simple inquiry. I’d forgotten all about it until I awoke at like 3 a.m., for no apparent reason, thinking, “pork shoulder recipe!” The recipe is below. E—’s handwriting is a bit hard to read, as she wrote this in a hurry. We were eating at Rivoli (on Solano Ave) and in a perfect storm of E—’s journalistic skill, our waitress’s helpfulness, and the amazing generosity of the chef, soon E— was being told the whole recipe, by the chef herself, right there at the table.

Let me decipher some of that for you. The pork gets half-covered in stock. (“Covered” gave me a lot of trouble in E—’s rendering, even though I know the recipe already.) Not given is how much chopped onion, carrots, and garlic to throw in. It probably doesn’t matter. The garlic should be chopped with a knife or razor blade (like in that movie), not put through a garlic press. (To hear Anthony Bourdain tell it, you should never put garlic through a press: “I don’t know what that junk is that squeezes out the end of those things, but it ain’t garlic.”) Real stock always helps but standard chicken broth is fine (except the Swanson “Unnatural Badness” style … you would want to pay the extra for “Natural Goodness,” which might be the same thing and they just added some margin to cover their substantial marketing costs, but you never know). Use the foil over the top even if you’re using a Dutch oven with a lid. The magic is that the pork just gets tougher and tougher and tougher as it cooks until it reaches some invisible threshold and then it just gives up, the proteins collapse (I might be making shit up here), and the whole thing becomes as tender as can be. I’m hoping that’ll happen to me eventually as well.

April 9, 2009

I agree, it’s pretty sad how many guys are running 27s [i.e., 27-tooth rear cogs on their racing bikes] and don’t even have the decency to be ashamed of it. They speak of this as though it were normal, inevitable even, and like it’s as acceptable as using, say, lightweight inner tubes or cork bar tape. “Oh, I love my 27,” T— has said on several occasions. This is as shocking to me as if he said, “Oh, I find that a feminine pad works so well as a chamois liner.” And don’t even get me started on the guys who advocate compact cranksets (as M— did on my blog post, eliciting what I hope was a sufficiently diplomatic response … my tongue is still bleeding).

Man, a pro racer using a giant rear cog? What’s gotten into these guys? It seems to me that if you have a larger rear cog than your competitors, you will either a) not use it, or b) get dropped in it. I remember before some collegiate race (in my Cuesta days) some guys gave me a hard time for having only a 19 rear cog. I predicted that nobody would be using anything bigger than that on the climb. As it turned out, I was dropped while still turning the 17 over pretty smoothly. These days I ride a 25. Sure, I’d rather have a 23 for aesthetics, and could probably handle this even on Lomas Cantadas in the summer on a good day, but I find I’m sometimes having to weave across the road even with the 25. Weaving of course isn’t the prettiest sight, but I’d rather see a guy weaving with a decent gear range than spinning along ineffectually in some really low gear facilitated by a triple, a compact, or a giant cog, or (worst of all) any combination of these.

April 19, 2009

[This pertains to the news that cyclist Tyler Hamilton had tested positive again after having totally denied doping before, but years before coming clean by writing The Secret Race, which is reviewed here.]

Yep, turn out the lights … the party’s over. Actually, for Tyler, the party should have been over in 2004. Since then he’s been like that one dude at the party who never went to bed and is still drinking the next morning.

May 11, 2009

Thanks for the feedback on my blog … that is a rare treat. Only occasionally do I get feedback and when I do it’s just verbal commentary from my biking buddies, such as on the corn cob post. Nobody actually said he liked it, per se. I think there’s some unspoken rule like “Don’t say anything nice to Dana.” Perhaps this is for fear my ego will get too bloated or something. One guy started off by saying, “You should write for the ‘New Yorker,’” which of course sounded like the highest praise I could imagine, but then he continued, “because your articles are so fricking long nobody could ever finish them.” Well excuuuuuse me! (My longest piece so far, on indoor training, took me half an hour to read aloud to E—; it would take less than that to read it silently to yourself, and I’m sure everybody on the ride watches stupid sitcoms that take that long. But as you said, reading is a chore.) Another guy, who I happen to know does read the “New Yorker,” agreed about the corn cob post … sort of. “Yeah, it was way too long. In fact, I even thought the poem itself was too long. I don’t have time.” I took this as a subtle dig at the first guy, but then that’s just the kind of total egomaniac I am.

July 4, 2009

Thanks for the copious feedback on my Father’s Day email. To answer your main question, perhaps the hardest thing for me to convey about my relationship to my dad is how it actually affects me: which is to say, not really that much. I think you are spot-on with your “arbitrary scale” concept, about a son living up to vs. rejecting his father’s example. My dad’s poor performance stands mainly as a cautionary tale, kind of a reverse how-to guide, rather than anything for me to be really bitter about. Certainly I’m disappointed in him, and when I bother to think about him I can get pretty irked, but I don’t feel I’m struggling to bear the emotional weight of my upbringing as I move through my life.

The ability to learn from a parent’s mistakes, even if you’re the victim of those mistakes, seems utterly obvious and straightforward to me (so long as substance and other abuse aren’t involved, of course). At least, that’s what I have traditionally told myself, but I’m gradually realizing that not everybody believes this. B—, for example, believes that my dad couldn’t have succeeded at being a good husband and father because my dad’s own dad, my paternal grandfather, was such a jerk and that family so dysfunctional. To my retort that as parents ourselves we can improve on the parenting we got, B— said, “These things take time.” He spoke as if this were an evolutionary process, one generation gradually improving on the one before it, to which I reply, bullshit! It’s revolutionary, not evolutionary—we make up our minds to not just repeat the cycle. As a metaphor, let’s say you watch a guy stick his hand in a fire and sizzle all the skin off and howl in pain. You think, “Note to self: do not stick hand in fire. Bad outcome there.” Now let’s say your father, and his father before him, and his father before him, all had this tradition of sticking their hands in fire. You’d think, “Note to self: dad and ancestors all idiots. Do not stick hand in fire.”

July 28, 2009

My kids did their first bike race, a criterium on residential streets in Albany. It was a “fun” race, meaning nobody was paying any attention to who finished where (supposedly). My kids were pretty excited about it. A— got ahold of my Blackberry the other day and started writing about her race. Here’s what she has so far:

I went to a race. It wasn’t just any old race. It was a kids race. I made the decision to inter. Though it looked hard it looked fun and I went with my dad to sign up. I was put in the 6-9 group and I was escorted to the start line. L—’s start line was closer to the finish. It wasn’t indicated where the finish

That’s as far as she got. The race was funny because A—’s group was only supposed to go about a quarter lap, but they just kept going after the finish line and did a whole lap of the crit course after that. I was announcing the race over the PA and got to say, “And ladies and gentlemen, crossing the line now is Albany’s A— Albert of the East Bay Velo Club!” I hope she was listening…

August 7, 2009

Yes, we’re in London! Compared to my previous vacation in France, this is very easy because I can speak the local language, having majored in English in college. There’s still a bit of challenge here (a “spot of bother, “ I guess I should say) regarding certain phrases and concepts. For example, at a pub last night I gave the barkeep a five-pound note and asked him to break it. He was nonplussed. “Break” seemed to mean nothing to him. “You know, give me singles,” I said. His confusion continued. Did he think “singles” was some kind of bar snack that costs under five pounds? Finally he grasped my meaning. Apparently England doesn’t have one-pound notes, which might explain why the term “singles” doesn’t carry any meaning for them. They’re all about the coins over here. It’s weird to think of spare change actually having value. I left a bunch of coins on the dresser last night without realizing they comprised most of my liquid net worth here. Three of the coins alone are worth like seven bucks!

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Epic Trans Alps Cycling Trip - Part VI

Introduction

I’ll bet I know just what you’re thinking: “Damn it, Dana, stop living in the past!” And it’s true, I can’t seem to stop blogging about a week in France that ended over a month ago. The cycling legend Eddy Merckx once said, “Compared to cycling, life is much easier,” and he might as well have added “though less interesting.” Frankly, nothing I’ve done since my Epic Trans Alps trip has been nearly as blog-able as this, so here I go again. But I promise this is the last lap. Here I tell the tale of the final day of the tour, and my unspectacular meltdown on Alpe d’Huez.

(If you’ve somehow missed the rest of this series, Part I is here, Part II is here, Part III is here, Part IV is here, and Part V is here.)

Breakfast

It is only because breakfast is so good at a fine French hotel that I would ever bother to write (home or here) about it. But it was a big deal for me, especially on Day 7 of this tour, because I was pretty convinced the rest of the day would be a fairly miserable slog through the cold and wet. The forecast was for persistent rain and drizzle, and I was pretty well knackered from the previous six days. I went into this meal figuring it would be the highlight of my day. Here’s the view out my window that morning:

This time there was no hi-tech coffee machine; a guy at the bar asked what I’d like. This is a bit like a barber asking me how I want my hair cut: the answer is, “I don’t fricking know, okay? You’re the professional, you figure it out!” As I blogged before, coffee in France mystifies me. I wanted to ask for an Americano but apparently only Americans know what that is. I think I asked for a latte but who cares, when the pastries are really the point? The problem was, for the first time all week, there weren’t any. I was about to panic when one of the hotel folks said, perhaps in French, that the patisserie hadn’t yet delivered them. This is about like saying, “Soon, you can look forward to your happiness quotient doubling.” So I created this basic plate just to tie me over until the pastries.

Pretty tasty for just the opening act! I thought that little wrapped “Président” item would be cheese, but it was butter—the first butter I’d had for my bread all week. The meat was sufficiently tasty that I didn’t feel jaded, despite having eaten cured meats two to three times a day all week. And the bread: well, just look at it … glorious. And then, after a few minutes, the pastries arrived. There was a bit of a stampede for the basket but there was plenty to go around. I’ve never had such fresh pastry and it was as good as it looks. I could have roared with pleasure.

Col de Lautaret

A couple thousand calories later, it was time to face the music. Leg warmers, arm warmers, thermal base layer, long-sleeve jersey, and my big black Stay-Puft Marshmallow Jacket … it all came out. Fortunately I was in good company: true to their word, Craig and Ian hung back with me as we set out on this (albeit only Category 1) climb, the Col du Lautaret. The evening before, upon hearing the weather forecast, I’d considered dropping back to the Trans B group that only does two climbs instead of three, but my pals promised to ride with me to provide moral support, no matter how feeble my pace.

We were surprised to see that several peaks which hadn’t had snow on them the day before now did.

The Col de Lautaret, from this direction, honestly isn’t that big a deal. It’s only 4%, albeit for over seven miles. A bit of a slog, of course, but we enjoyed the view. Here, you can see that Ian’s knickers aren’t even in a twist.

Why do cyclists wear knickers? What’s the point in not taking the fabric all the way to the ankle? Is it to save weight? Or is it to create a cold patch on your leg to help you appreciate that you’re not just in shorts?

Okay, fine, I’ll try to speed up the report or we’ll be here all day. Eventually we reached the Lautaret summit, where it meets the turnoff to the fearsome Col du Galibier we’d braved the day before. I guess all the stickers on that sign are what passes for graffiti in France. (In much of the American West, the sign would be full of bullet holes.)

We set off on a fairly long descent … another fun one, except for the long, poorly lit tunnels. It’s odd … when I raced here in 2003 and 2006, I really enjoyed the tunnels and didn’t remember finding them frightening. This time around all I could think of was running over a rock, crashing, and getting run over.

Col de Sarenne

We stopped abruptly at a turnoff, toward the little town of Mizoen where I’d stayed both times I did La Marmotte. This was the base of the Col de Sarenne, an Hors Categorie climb eight miles long averaging like 7.5%. It starts off pretty harsh, at 12%, but check it out … the sun managed to come out after all!

Soon enough we passed through Mizoen, which is just as darling as I’d remembered it.

You know how when something is really ballyhooed, and you start getting really excited about it, you sometimes start to worry that it won’t meet up with your expectations? You know, like what just happened with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” that left you disconsolate by not totally rocking your world? Just kidding, of course I know nothing about the Taylor Swift movie and whether or not it lived up to its hype. I’m just mentioning it for the halo effect, to draw people to albertnet. Taylor Swift! Taylor Swift! Taylor Swift!

Okay, so anyway, earlier in the week I had really looked forward to (and dreaded) the Col de la Loze and the Col de la Madeleine, based on their reputations, and of course the Galibier had loomed large since I’d been destroyed by it years ago. But I really hadn’t heard much about the Col de Sarenne, so it had nothing to live up to. So, what a surprise! It ends up being the most beautiful climb of the whole week (which is saying something—we did 18 of them). It sure helped that the unexpectedly sunny weather seemed to be holding up.

The three of us had a very pleasant time, chatting merrily as we pedaled along, not really suffering at all. Craig was bound and determined to get at least one good photo of Ian and of me, and took several hundred. I tried to warn him that I’m not photogenic but he didn’t want to listen. I watched the sky along the summit ridge warily, expecting to see rainclouds move in, but there was nothing but sunshine. And we had no shortage of fun switchbacks:

Do I need to say the views were stunning? I do not.

All this being said, it’s a hella long climb and a couple kilometers from the summit I ran out of water, if not steam. This is where it’s so nice knowing you have a van waiting ahead to replenish you.

(I will acknowledge that in my last post I bagged on a fellow rider for riding on the wrong side of the road, and here above I seem to be doing the same thing. The difference is, the Col de Sarenne is really just one lane anyway, and besides, it was so peaceful and remote up there, with the visibility so good, this behavior wasn’t exactly reckless.)

As we neared the summit, the grade got steeper, and more importantly we had less mountain to shelter us from the wind, which really picked up. I really had to dig deep to push through it, apparently. I say “apparently” because only upon viewing the below video did I even recall having to make much of an effort. I’d just remembered the Sarenne as just a lovely, peaceful climb, until I saw the footage and thought, oh yeah, that was pretty hard.

I now remember feeling relieved when we finally reached the top. It’s like until that moment I’d only been pretending the climb was no big deal; now, surrounded by the majesty of the summit, I felt a tinge of … well, not menace, exactly, but the great power of nature. There’s a starkness to these places even when the weather is gorgeous.

Having failed to get a portrait-with-summit-sign since the Col de Madeleine, I took a moment for this one.

Gosh, look in my eyes there … it really does look like I’d been suffering. I almost look traumatized. Is it possible my sweet memory of this climb is all wrong, having been sugar-coated by the camaraderie I’d enjoyed on the way up? Is that how this works? And do I remember the previous day’s Col du Granon as having been brutal only because I’d faced it alone? Probably not, but … possibly?

Note above that the Sarenne summit is 1,999 meters. It’s not 2,000, and whoever placed this sign felt it important not to round up. No wonder this climb didn’t seem as hard as the Madeleine … it’s a full meter lower!

Here’s a nice aerial shot Ian got of our picnic site, having had the energy, somehow, to scamper up a hill to snap it.

We descended a bit and then had some rollers to climb over, which—being unexpected—made for some psychic discomfort. The long road curled around here and there and eventually brought us to the summit of Alpe d’Huez from the side you don’t normally see. We even did a little of the descent before peeling off to add a bunch of unnecessary extra mileage to our day. We got a sneak preview of what lay ahead.

We rolled up and over some uncategorized climb, then had an oily gravel descent, and then shed some clothing at the van. For the first time, the day was outright warm. We rode into a headwind along a bike path that I think was a false flat, maybe 1% uphill. Our leader was hauling ass, and clinging to his wheel was like motorpacing. Eventually we reached the base of the dreaded Hors Categorie Alpe d’Huez, a legendary climb that has featured in the Tour de France 32 times.

Alpe d’Huez

It had been gradually dawning on me, over the last ten miles, that my energy was basically all used up. We’d ridden for two hours since the Col de Sarenne summit, and I was fried. Whereas I’d felt sucker-punched by the Col du Granon the day before, having failed to imagine how hard it would be, I was fully dreading this one. Sure, you could say it’d be easier this way, Alpe d’Huez being the “devil I knew,” but it was still the devil.

Craig and Ian, having fulfilled their promise to ride with me over the first two climbs, dropped me instantly when this third and final climb started. Alpe d’Huez is almost nine miles, at an average grade of 7.7%, and it starts at over 11%. I started to ask myself, “Can I even do this?” but the answer was immediate and obvious: “I have to … our hotel is at the summit.”

At least the weather was perfect … maybe a little hot, but that would change with the altitude. The scenery was lovely which made the unpleasantness of the climb almost confusing. It was like if I were a teenager again, on a first date, marveling at how beautiful my date is and wondering why she keeps stabbing me in the belly with a steak knife.

There are, famously, 21 switchbacks on this climb, so you can look down at where you were just moments ago, and feel a welcome sense of progress.

It seemed the good weather would hold up, so I got to enjoy the impressive clouds (which we don’t really get in California).

As my power output steadily faltered, the length between switchbacks seemed to draw out. I began longing for the switchbacks, both because they indicated progress toward the summit, and because they tended to be a bit shallower than the straight sections. I gradually nibbled away at the climb. Think of how sprightly a helium balloon is, and now think of the same balloon the day after the party, when it’s wilted and shriveled a bit and is dragged toward the floor by its string. That’s how I felt. Whenever possible I peered over the side to confirm I was actually getting somewhere.

The switchbacks on Alpe d’Huez are numbered, in descending order as you climb, so you can mark your progress, like a countdown. Each number sign commemorates a past Alpe d’Huez winner. I kept a close eye out for this one:

Andy is from my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. He achieved a stunning solo victory on this mountain back in 1992. Is there any similarity between his feat here and mine? Yes, actually: though it’s somewhat hard to tell, and actually even kind of hard to believe, he and I are of the same species. Yeah, seriously!

Well, there’s not much more to tell. Eventually, inevitably, I did make the summit. I have a selfie of how I looked at the finish; it was one of those accidents where you grab your smartphone and go to activate the outward-facing camera but instead you see—gasp!—your own haggard mug. The horror! In this photo I look so deflated and gaunt, it’s like someone had put a 2x4 on either side of my face and pushed them together to squeeze all my water out. (Hell no, I’m not posting the photo here—what is this, Facebook?)

It’d have been nice to collapse at this point, and maybe just sit on the ground for a while, but it was time to remove my saddle, pedals, and bike computer from the rental bike and return it to the staff. Then I checked out the picnic table, with its usual assortment of sandwich fixings, chips, fruit, and drinks, but I just didn’t have the energy to take anything. Instead I slowly stamped my tired way up the long staircase into the hotel. I made it to the lobby and was so blown I actually started to hallucinate, imagining all manner of stuffed sheep in there.

After I found my room, showered, and rested up a bit, I returned to the lobby and discovered that the sheep were real. Well, not real, exactly. I mean, they were fake, of course, but weren’t figments of my imagination after all. Somehow this bizarre lobby made sense in the moment. I hella lounged in a big furry armchair.

Half an hour later Ian, Craig, and I went for a little walk. I can’t imagine why, other than it being a nice evening, and the fact of our being tourists (sshhh!—don’t tell anyone!).

Dinner

After a beer at the bar we headed to the dining room and before long were served this diced tomato thing with some white stuff on top that could have been cream, cheese, butter, or something in between. We didn’t care; it was delicious whatever it was.

We were starving and there was some good bread, and word got out that somebody had managed to procure some olive oil and balsamic vinegar in little matching decanters. There was much hubbub as adjacent tables started asking for them. The waiters seemed to want to hush the whole thing up. As at every dinner we had in France, the staff seemed bent on everyone eating their (excellent) bread plain.

The next course arrived: a beautiful mushroom risotto.

I tried to make it last but I was ravenous and it was gone in like a minute. We all speculated on what the next course would be. Meat, of course, but what exactly? Maybe a big steak? The night was getting better and better. And then, to our great shock, dessert was served.

I was incredulous. I mean, yeah, the dessert was artful and architectural and all, but WTF?! Where was the entrée? Was this meal really almost over? It was. I suppose the dessert was tasty but I was too distracted by the void in my stomach to properly enjoy it. Kind of like if somebody told you a really funny joke but at a funeral.

Breakfast

Well, I was a bit miffed but not for long … it’s hard to hold a grudge at the end of such a beautiful, unforgettable week of biking and dining across the French Alps. Meanwhile, breakfast the next morning was off the chain. Everything was just perfect—even the grapefruit juice was fresh squeezed.

Before we hit the road for the long drive back to Geneva and the longer flight home, I spent a moment gazing out from my hotel room balcony. Wow … what a trip.

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Epic France Trans Alps Cycling Trip - Part II

Introduction

If you’ve been on albertnet lately, you’ll have learned that I recently did a week-long, fully supported bicycle tour through southeast France, tackling most of the Alpine climbs that are included in Tour de France routes. You’ll also have learned that I tend to get sidetracked by culinary matters, which is great news for those who tire of cycling lore. Well, I’m back, and this time promise to focus more on the suffering—mine in particular (your favorite!). As before, this report doesn’t have a very specific structure … it’s more like a highlights reel, because there were just too many rides, too many climbs, and too many meals to worry about sequencing them properly.

Navigation

I’m really bad at navigation. I don’t have much of an explorer’s curiosity, and am happy to keep riding the same training routes over and over again. Even when I did a nine-month bike tour with my wife, we made literally zero effort to plot any kind of route—we just started by heading south along the California coast almost to Mexico, then went randomly east or north until we got to Maine. Let’s be clear though: It’s not just that I’m not interested in navigation, it’s that I lack the mental faculty for it. So my biggest fear with this French Alps tour was that I’d get dropped and then get lost, in this strange foreign land where you can’t even get a normal cup of coffee.

Hoping to have my fears assuaged, I asked K, our supported-tour veteran, if getting dropped would necessarily mean getting lost. His reply was emphatic: “If you don’t download the GPX files, you will definitely get lost.” D’oh!

This is kind of a classic pitfall of modern society: you’re expected to be an expert in the latest technology whether you like it or not. Events and itineraries are now communicated via social media—never mind that these vanity platforms were originally designed solely to increase teenagers’ insecurity. Case in point: the bike tour organizers took to sending important schedule updates via WhatsApp, a platform I do not, and shall not, use. On top of all this, I’m suddenly supposed to know what a GPX file is …. presumably it runs on a Garmin (i.e., one of the expensive gizmos I don’t own).

Well, I found the email with all the routes, downloaded a GPX file, tried to open it on my phone, and was offered two apps to try. One of them I hadn’t heard of, but the other was (surprise!) an app I actually use. It’s Sigma Ride, the workout tracking app for my cheap, weird bike computer that nobody else in America has. Well, the GPX file opened right up, which was a pleasant surprise but not that helpful. After all, it’s not like I want to ride around the Alps peering into my phone the whole time. On a whim, I clicked a three-dot icon and saw an option to beam the route into my bike computer via Bluetooth. And, voilà! There it was, the route loaded in my bike computer so it could give me step-by-step directions … a feature I was vaguely aware it might have but had never before investigated. Sweet! Now I could totally get dropped and all I had to worry about was everyone snickering at my frailty behind my back! (You know, the devil I know…)

Col de Joux Plane and Col de la Columbière

I don’t remember much about our first climb of the day, Cat 1 Col de Joux Plane, other than we started up it immediately, with like zero warm-up. That’s okay, because I was raring to go after a great night’s sleep. Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Actually I hadn’t slept for shit, between jet lag, the room being too warm, anxiety about the big day of riding, etc. Plus, my older daughter phoned me in the middle of the night. Why? Well, my phone had gone berserk and had been texting and re-texting her my Wordle result and some trip photos almost continuously, all night, creating the illusion I was awake and insane and already on my phone. At least, that’s what led my daughter to forget the time zone difference. My roommate was oddly gracious about the whole thing; turns out he was wide awake at the time anyway. I’m not the only one having trouble sleeping.

Anyway, the pace on the Joux Plane was fine. The photo above is from early in the climb. The first descent was beautiful and fast and fun, and my rented Felt FR road bike handled very well—so if you stumbled on this blog by searching on “Felt FR,” and are this close to buying that bike, and don’t mind a 73-degree seat tube angle instead of 72, well, shoot, just go ahead and buy it. It’s a good bike that does not hesitate to dive right into the curves.

Near the base of the Hors Categorie (i.e., “too difficult to even categorize”) Col de la Columbière, as if in some kind of harmonic convergence, my East Bay Velo Club teammates Craig and Ian and I all had to pee at the same moment. (As far as you know, we dutifully used a public restroom and any photo you may have seen of any less responsible behavior was surely Photoshopped.) Following this stop we found ourselves off the back of the group, which by this point had pretty much split apart into tiny clumps, pairs, and individuals. We passed them all, like in one of those car race video games. It was super fun. Craig paced Ian and me, which is bog standard for all the rides we do, as though Craig were our super-domestique … except that in the end he always sails off into the sunset instead of us.

Sure enough, about three kilometers from the Columbière summit, where the climb gets particularly hard, Craig accidentally dropped me. He would never, ever attack; it’s just that he forgets how limited my endurance truly is, and after all he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. Sometimes he realizes I’m gapped and he holds up, but other times I’m too far back and just does his own thing. It’s kind of like a cat playing with a snake, and not realizing he’s actually killed it, and then he wonders why the snake isn’t very much fun anymore.

Guideposts

Did you notice something just now? Something very odd for albertnet? Like, how I used the metric system to specify the distance from the summit? Nice catch. As you know from this post, I’m a proponent of the imperial system of measurement, even if this puts me at odds with the entire scientific community. Well, I haven’t renounced those views; it’s just that in the very specific context of Alpine mountain passes, kilometers have their place. It’s because of these cool guideposts you’ll see on every major climb:

If you click to zoom on the above image you’ll note that that sign gives all kinds of info. It gives the name of the climb (which, believe it or not, you can forget if you’ve targeted several in a day and are severely oxygen-deprived); the distance to the summit in kilometers; the current altitude (alas, in meters, which is still not so useful to me since I can’t do simple arithmetic under physical duress); and the average percent grade for the next kilometer. This info is generally very useful (though at times it can seem to be taunting me, like when the end of a climb seems to never come). Do I wish all this info were in imperial units? Well, almost, except that, kilometers being shorter than miles, this arrangement obviously gives me more signs to look at, and a better sense of progress. So I’ll accept this use of kilometer as the exception that proves the rule.

On the final climb, the Category 1 Col de la Croix Fry, Craig and I encountered some lovely cows, bells a-jangling:

I still had great legs on this final climb of the day, which was so satisfying, I cannot tell you. As I said, I’d worried about not keeping up, and embarrassing myself, and trying the patience of my pals and other Epic A riders, but this is not at all what was happening. My legs were totally up to the job. This surprised me because I knew I hadn’t trained enough for this trip. I just can’t seem to carve out enough time, and I’m getting too old to simply wing it—at least, that’s what I’d assumed, only to end up riding just fine. But this satisfaction with my fitness wasn’t only about ageing well. Let’s just say the last couple of years have been hard on me, so to be doing something bloody difficult, but with aplomb, gave me renewed faith in my whole self (even if my competence is in the largely useless realm of amateur cycling). The scenery was pretty glorious, too.

After a sweet, sweeping descent to our next hotel, and a giant snack there involving cured meats, we wandered around the little town of La Clusaz and noted their brilliant open-air market. Check out what you can get from this little vender:

Not to be unpatriotic or anything, but this sight reinforced my growing sense that farmers’ markets in America are a joke. I think that, as with factory outlet stores, farmers’ markets started off well—an actual farmer could sell truly local, fresh produce directly to consumers—but then morphed into a sham when deeply cynical minds realized that once people had latched on to an idea, they’d pursue it indefinitely regardless of whether there was any value in it. So we have people setting up tables at these farmers’ markets with produce they just bought somewhere (which is sometimes still in someone else’s packaging!) and then they actually mark it up because the farmers’ market seems like a “premium” experience that is worth paying extra for. Sheesh.

Bad weather!

Oh, man, the forecast for the third day was not promising: a 93% chance of rain from 5 a.m. through late afternoon. Sure enough, it was already raining when we woke up, and raining when we rolled out. What a grind. I don’t have a good rain jacket, for the simple reason that—as documented here—I don’t ride in the rain. What I do have is this big puffy thing that doesn’t breathe very well, doesn’t wad up small enough to easily fit in a jersey pocket, and isn’t really waterproof. I think of it as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Jacket.

Perhaps halfway up the Cat 3 Col des Aravis the rain let up somewhat, and I had a nice time riding by a lot of cows, their standard-issue bells making the usual pleasant racket.

The respite didn’t last, and on the Cat 2 Col des Saisies, K and I rode through a downpour of biblical proportions, the rain drumming on our helmets and jackets, the road completely flooding. You know how when you’re in a car wash, you sometimes get the sensation of the car rolling forward though you know it isn’t? Same deal: the water rushing past my wheels gave me the illusion of hauling ass up the mountain until I lifted my gaze again. I wish I had photos and videos of this, but of course you can never get that footage … you’re too busy suffering and shivering. There was thunder and lightning, and K wisecracked about opportunistically riding next to me so he’d never be the tallest object.

Here’s a photo of the summit, where the rain had finally let up. K and I are offering our gratitude, or at least a photo op, to Saint Anne, whom we took from this shrine to be the patron saint of travelers. Turns out (based on some very light research) she’s actually the patron saint of unmarried women, housewives, and women in labor. Whatever.

We warmed up at the van, scarfing Cokes, cookies, fruit, chocolate milk, and of course cured meats. We had a decently dry descent and, during a brief stop at one of those darling French villages, stashed our rain gear in the van for the climb.

We began the final climb up the Hors Categorie Col du Pré. Halfway up, the skies got darker again, and Craig and Ian fetched their (slim, scrunch-able, actually waterproof) jackets from the van to have on hand. I decided to take my chances (which gave me the opportunity to noodle on ahead). The climb was a lot of fun. It’s a gorgeous road with a lot of super steep pitches.

The sky grew increasingly tenebrous as we climbed.

The climb went on and on.

This could have been a great photo if the smartphone camera software weren’t so janky:

I mean, look at how small Ian looks compared to Craig—like a dwarf or something! Craig’s head looks as tall as Ian’s torso! And Craig’s front wheel looks way larger than his rear. What is this nonsense? This is why you want a real camera.

With 4km to go, I got my last photo from the Col de Pré … after this, the skies opened up and the rain just absolutely pummeled us. I was soaked to the skin. At the summit, we piled into the van and went through our backpacks of warm gear. Ian had an extra jersey for me, and after some discussion four of us, plus the guide, decided to forge ahead on the descent while the rest of the crew went down in the van. It was a frigid descent, rain flowing over the road like a water slide at a theme park. A road construction crew, decked out like stormtroopers, stared at us dumbfounded. Ian, riding a bike with rim brakes, eventually thought better of the whole enterprise and pulled off to the side to be picked up. When we reached the town down in the valley, the rain showed no signs of letting up, and Craig reported, with fascination, that my lips were completely blue. With only a relatively unexciting flat run-in to the hotel ahead, we bagged it and climbed in the van. The heater was blasting in there. By the time we got to the hotel we’d all been basically poached alive in our wet gear. I hope there are no pets in the cargo hold of this aircraft, proximate to my luggage, as I make my way home. I have never before encountered such stinky cycling gear, and that’s saying something.

Brides-les-Bains

We lodged at a strange health spa type hotel in Brides-les-Bains. This is where unhealthy people with unhealthy lifestyles go to get cured by the special waters and various spa treatments, so that they can enjoy robust health going forward without changing any of their unhealthy behaviors. Several of these guests regarded us with a bit of the ol’ stink-eye, as if deeply suspicious of our very presence at their spa.

This place had those fancy outward-facing elevators that are like glass cylinders so you can watch the world go by during your vertical trip. They were also among the slowest elevators I’ve ever encountered, with disconcerting juddering at times. Most interesting of all was the sound they made: think of a giant, like the one atop Jack’s beanstalk, groaning, combined with the sound of a whale calling out across the ocean. The noise was nearly constant. At the request of my wife I’ve attempted to recreate the sound:

Dinner got off to a good start, with a salad that was like 70% Serrano ham.

The entrée, though, was a bit on the small and non-starchy side:

The menu described this as “Veal nut with its juice.” Needless to say, this led to all kinds of sophomoric humor (“testicle of a young bull, with…”). The dessert, or “desert” as the menu called it, was a peach clafoutis, which I guess was supposed to be like a cobbler but was practically frozen. We’d have starved except the very good bread was plentiful (though still bereft of butter or olive oil). But then, breakfast the next morning featured the excellent pastries we’d come to rely on, so no harm done.

At every breakfast I had a croissant and a pain au chocolat, sometimes two, along with a big bowl of cereal, some eggs, cured meats, cheeses, and yogurt. This is how I managed to gain four pounds in a week—the same week I rode almost 400 miles and climbed almost 60,000 feet. God bless these Alpine cows and all the butter they make possible.

To be continued…

Well, that seems like enough for this round. I’m getting cold just remembering all this. Check back soon because I’ll be reporting on the Col de la Loze, which is considered the hardest climb in the entire Alps; the famous Col de la Madeleine; and the absolutely brutal Col du Glandon. And of course I’ll describe our caloric intake as well, to include one of the weirdest and French-est dinners I’ve ever had.

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From the Archives - Book Review: Bill Bryson’s “Lost Continent”

Introduction

Did I really write a book review, for practically no audience, all the way back in 1994? Yes, I just now stumbled across it. This review was within a letter to my brother, who’d recommended Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America. You might as well read my review; it’s really more about dining out in small towns than it is about helping you decide whether to read Lost Continent.

Book Review: The Lost Continent – January 10, 1994

I must say, that Bryson fellow has a sharp sense of humor and a keen eye for detail. I especially like his made-up town names: Draino, Indiana; Tapwater, Missouri. And his mockery of American products: Hunk o’ Meat Beef Stew ‘n’ Gravy; Sniffa-Snax; Country Sunshine Honey-Toasted Wheat Nut ‘n’ Sugar Bits Breakfast Cereal. It’s an easy book to get in and out of, since it rambles along playfully without any complicated structure. I read it eagerly during my recent trip to Oregon, and then at the Amtrak station while waiting for my train, and then while the train was delayed.

Well, I’m almost done with the book now, and upon careful consideration I must conclude that as far as I can tell, Bryson has not given America a fair shake. After a while his clever critiques became tiresome, cranky complaints that I didn’t need to hear. My moment of epiphany came when I read his description of Wells, Nevada: 

              I spent the night in Wells, Nevada, the sorriest, seediest, most raggedy-assed town I’ve ever seen. Most of the streets were unpaved and lined with battered-looking trailer homes … Such economic life as Wells could muster came from the passing traffic of I-80 … I turned up my collar and trudged the half-mile from the town proper to the interstate junction with US 93, where the most prosperous-looking truck stops were gathered, forming an oasis of brightness in the pinkish dusk.

              I went into what I looked to be the best of them, the 4-Way Café, which I gather took its name from the fact that it consisted of a gift shop, restaurant, casino and bar … It was absolutely, in my opinion, the worst food I have ever had in America, at any time, under any circumstances, and that includes hospital food, gas station food and airport coffee shop food … I pushed the plate away and wished that I still smoked. The waitress, seeing how much I had left, asked me if I wanted a doggy bag.

              “No thank you,” I said through a thin smile, “I don’t believe I could find a dog that would eat it.”

I did get a chuckle out of that, but then realized, wait, I’ve been to Wells, Nevada, recently, and had a totally different experience.

It was the summer of 1991, when I was driving out to Boulder with a friend of a friend. We stopped for the night, got rooms at the Motel 6, and relaxed for a while before setting out to find a worthy restaurant. The motel was about like all Motel 6’s everywhere: clean, perhaps a bit too air conditioned for its own good, but generally a fair bit nicer than many of the apartments I’ve lived in. Scoping out the town didn’t take too long. We even went to the 4-Way Café, which as Bryson reported was a conglomerate of gift shop, restaurant, casino, and bar. But we never even considered eating there; it was clearly not even an option. Nothing obvious about it tipped us off as a lousy place; it just seemed lacking in whatever local flavor a café in Wells, Nevada could have. Wouldn’t anyone rather go to a place that’s only a restaurant? Have you ever encountered a gift shop or casino that appealed in any way?

We found a more promising little café not far away, right next to the visitor’s center. Now here’s something interesting: this so-called “raggedy-ass town” actually had a visitor’s center. It wasn’t a commercial operation, but more like a tiny museum of whatever heritage Wells happened to have. Free coffee, a cheerful docent, etc. Would the sorriest, raggedy-assed town in America have a visitor’s center?

The café we went to also seemed to try harder than it really needed to. It wasn’t overbearing or self-important, mind you; not like Zachary’s Pizza, which has all its awards framed and on display. But the mop-topped glasses-faced kid behind the counter was friendly, and looked at us intently, maybe trying to figure out where we came from and what brought us to Wells.

My philosophy about eating in strange towns, or even at strange restaurants in general, has just two basic tenets:

• Stick with simple stuff. It’s hard to ruin a big steak or hamburger. Grilled ahi tuna 800 miles from the nearest ocean, cooked by someone who’s never had a chance to try the genuine article, is not a good bet.
• Ask the restaurant staff what they recommend. If there’s a loss-leader on the menu, they’ll usually steer you away from it. And if you can spot actual enthusiasm about a dish, you know you can’t go wrong.
• [For my more modern guide to spotting bad restaurants, click here.]

My rules for dining out are not nearly as humorous as Bill Bryson’s [which include prohibitions against photographs of the food, flocked wallpaper, live entertainers, bloodstains on the walls, or staff you can overhear talking in the kitchen]. My rules, though, may be a bit more practical. I asked the teenager behind the counter what he thought was the best thing on the menu. He broke into this wide Ritchie Cunningham grin, and with a little gleam in his eye, declared without a hint of hesitation, “The Super-Deluxe burger. With fries. Oh yeah.” It was just like when a customer at the bike shop asks me to tell him about my bike.

The kid did not steer me wrong. I love a good burger anyway, but the whole time I was eating it I was envisioning this guy back in the kitchen, inspired by my order to make a Super Deluxe for himself. He’s smashing down the patty with his little steel spatula, almost in tears, murmuring to it, “Oh, yeah, that’s it, boy, that’s my half-pound of grade-A American beef, oh, and let’s grill those onions!” He does a little spin, maybe, then flips that patty over with the skilled flick of the wrist that has become his trademark, and he can just envision the delectable grease slowly soaking into the sesame-seed bun.

This is my memory of Wells, Nevada. I remember it was late in the afternoon, but still sunny, and nothing struck me as unpleasant in the slightest. Granted, I wasn’t expecting the earth to move for me; I was just glad to get out of the car and have some food and get some rest. When I read Bryson’s account of Wells, an unsettling question crept up on me: what would that teenager at the café think, reading about the “sorriest, seediest, most raggedy-assed town” our critic had ever seen? Would this guy go on thinking it’s even worth bothering trying to do right by snooty tourists? Does Bryson assume the citizens of Wells are all illiterate?

Reading this book, I am frequently reminded of Peter Jenkins’ travel book, A Walk Across America. Jenkins isn’t as funny as Bryson, to be sure. In fact, he admits in the first chapter that prior to writing the book, he had no idea how to construct a sentence. But it was enjoyable reading, anyway, and the author wasn’t so cynical. And yet, didn’t these guys tour the same country? How much of what they reported was based on what they’d hoped to find? Jenkins said his whole purpose in walking was to find out, as he hoped, that he was wrong to be ashamed of America. Bryson, on the other hand, seemed intent on proving beyond reasonable doubt that this country is going to hell in a handbasket (whatever that means).

The two writers’ methods are quite different. I saw Jenkins give a lecture once, and found him really charismatic. As you can read about in his books, he talks to people wherever he goes; lived with various folks here and there along the way; and even did his best to fit in at the cult-like commune called “The Farm.” He’s a real people-person.

Bryson seems like the opposite. He’s seems like kind of a loner, who doesn’t recall much dialogue other than brief exchanges with service-sector people whom he seems to always conclude are incompetent. His modus operandi is to drive from one tourist trap to another, silently build his case against the stupid tourists there, get back in his car, and drive on. The only distinguishing feature that separates him from his fellow tourists is that he takes mental notes and contrives clever ways to deride them later, while the tourists just putter around, buy souvenirs, and quite possibly enjoy themselves.

I also have to wonder if Bryson doesn’t actually look for trouble, in the service of his art. Maybe he chose the 4-Way Café because he predicted it’d be lame, which would give him a cleverer story than my admittedly sentimental, cloying one. I also suspect Bryson exaggerates a bit, and possibly even fabricates details. Consider this passage, about another place he ate at:

I was the only customer in the restaurant. I was quite clearly the only thing standing between the waitresses and their going home … The waitresses stood against the wall and watched me chew my food. After a while they started whispering and tittering, still watching me as they did so, which frankly I found a trifle unsettling. I may only have imagined it, but I also had the distinct impression that someone was little by little turning a dimmer switch so that the light in the room was gradually disappearing. By the end of my meal I was finding my food more or less by touch and occasionally by lowering my head to the plate and sniffing. Before I was quite finished, when I just paused for a moment to grope for my glass of iced water somewhere in the gloom beyond the flickering candle, my waitress whipped the plate away and put down my bill.

That’s definitely some funny shit, but I’m not sure I believe it. Consider Bryson’s qualifier, “I may have only imagined it,” about the dimmer switch. If what follows had actually happened, he would have no doubt that a dimmer switch was involved. If not, what could possibly account for the room getting so dark? I think he introduced this idea of a gradually darkening room on a lark, and developed it for maximum comedic effect without worrying too much about veracity. I could be wrong about this, of course, but at least my theory would help explain why nothing like this ever happened to Peter Jenkins, or to me.

When you really stop and think, in fact, the whole premise of this man’s book is absurd. What we have here is an expatriate, coming back for a visit in order to write a book about the place he has forsaken. When he describes towns like Wells, it’s like he’s run his experience through a filter of disgust and complaint. I almost wonder if he’s being careful not to enjoy himself too much here, so he won’t have any regret when he returns to England. If that’s true, perhaps we might conclude he’s more of an anti-travel writer than anything.

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