MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 4

Sunday Morning

Picking up from the Start on Sunday morning, the rain stopped mere minutes before packs of Riders began to depart from LaGrange. I was in the third shift, and was soon rolling down an extended decline out of town. When I hit around 23 mph, the front wheel started shimmying violently. I hollered "stopping!", dropped both feet on the ground whilst simultaneously applying handbrakes (try that sometime) and brought the bike to a stop along the side of the road without managing to take anybody else out. Thinking the shimmy was a fluke, I tried rolling again, but the symptoms re-occurred. I could find nothing wrong, so I flagged a SAG wagon, we threw my bike in back, and I was now rolling towards the first rest stop, knocking about 10-12 miles off my Ride, not to mention my weary backside.

A mechanic at the Rest Stop could find nothing wrong, but tightened the inset screw at the base of the handlebars, and I was soon on my way. That symptom was a new one on me, but I experienced no other breakdowns, and not a single flat tire. That was a lucky break because the ride this year seemed plagued with many more flats than in years' past.

While the mechanic was working on my bike, I took the opportunity to try to call and text some folks to update them on my whereabouts. No luck. See, my beloved Motorola Razor is on its last legs, steadily losing functionality more or less in direct proportion to the frequency with which I drop it on the ground. In fact, after so much abuse, it's hilarious when I do drop it. Whereas before it would simply bounce around, picking up yet another ding on the surface, it now explodes into four different pieces, and some reassembly is required. Intermittent failures are now total, such as the inability to scroll through menus or use the phone book. I also can't get the number 9 on the keypad to work except intermittently, and it has a tendency to insert a 6 instead, causing me to dial quite a few wrong numbers. All of the folks I mis-called were polite, and several seemed thankful for the call, like they didn't get too many. It's strange to think that in our communication saturated society that too few calls would be an issue, but there it is. It's also strange how you don't realize how dependent you are on your celly until it starts losing features.

So in a nutshell, my cell phone essentially allows me to do three things: receive phone calls, make calls to friends as long as they don't have any 9's in their number, and read text messages sent to me as long as nobody is expecting a response. So, sorry John Holmes and John Breland if you haven't heard from me: y'all having 9's in your number is a deal killer as far as the Razor was concerned.

Just for grins, I purposely dropped it on the ground at the rest stop prior to lunch to see if that would shake things up a bit and improve performance. I reinserted the SIM card, battery, backplate and faceplate, but no luck. Note to self: get new cell phone next week.

The rest of the trip into Bastrop for lunch was a chill, wet and slightly claustrophobic experience, not the least because the skies were overcast and everybody was a little goosey about the wet ground and the considerable speed you could accumulate on the downhills. I actually applied handbrakes all the way down the 500 yard long downhill you hit just before the Buescher State Park split, foregoing the thrill of hitting 45 mph so as not to discover whether that shimmy might decide to do an encore. At 45 mph, I was going to have precious fewer options than at half that speed, and none of them involving a happy outcome.

I also blew off Buescher State Park and its scenic hills, opting for the more gradual incline of the surface roads outside of it, and within about an hour was into lunch. Soon enough, I'm back out on the road, and the miles are coming harder now, no doubt due to the combination of a lack of hill training and, of course, the never-ending hills and damnable headwinds that comprised most of the Sunday ride. I couldn't fault the hills; they were there first. The headwinds we started hitting around Mile 20 were another matter altogether. I make a mental note to ask the Ride Committee if they maybe can't do something about this for next year.

With 36 miles to go, I started doing a countdown. The winds had dropped, and I managed to lurk onto a reasonable Pace Line going about 18 mph. Sweet, I say to myself. At this rate, I'll be done in two hours. Shortly thereafter, the Pace Line sped up, and I was unable to keep up with them. I've now slowed down to 16 mph, but at least I covered four miles. Some quick math reveals that if I can just sustain that speed, I'll be into Austin in two hours. Soon enough, the winds return, and every Rider is slowed, some more than others. I covered another 4 miles, but now down to 14 mph. At this pace, I will be done in two hours.

You can see where this is going. Each successive loss of just 2 mph in speed every four miles left me an unchanging two hours away from the Austin Finish, and sure enough, the winds picked up with a vengeance, slowing me to 12, then 10, then 8 mph. It was like I was in an episode of Twilight Zone, where you can not only contemplate Infinity, but actually effing experience it! Suddenly, declaring to myself - "I've only got two hours to go!" - as I had twenty miles back was no longer a cheerful and good thing, but an acknowledgment of the distinct possibility that my speed would slow relative to the remaining distance until time and space themselves ceased to have any meaning. My "progress" in the previous 20 miles left looming in my mind the ignominy of having the last SAG wagon haul my butt to the end, just ahead of the 92 year old guy from New Jersey that comes out and completes the entire ride every year.

Not exactly the scenario Einstein had postulated, but close enough.

Gloomy, I pulled into the Next-To-Last rest stop, mostly because it is gleefully advertised as such by the volunteers who man it, several of whom hold up big cardboard signs proclaiming "Only 16 miles to go!" I wanted to smack them. Instead, I picked up on their cheerful vibe, downed one last handful of cookies, and decided to go for broke. I had been nursing a twinge that felt like a cramp in my right calf for the previous hour, but decided to hammer it until it locked up or let me go, determined not to cover the next 8 miles at an average speed of 4 mph, and still theoretically a depressing two hours from the finish.

For what it's worth, the last 16 miles were relatively easy. I stood in the stirrups on every uphill without cramping, and I was within two miles of the finish in about an hour, the Austin cops cheering us on with one shouting out "nearly there, nearly there", and high-fiving Riders stopped at an intersection. The Pack resumed on the green light, heading down a hill, and just like that we were at a full stop again. A Rider was down, but this was no leisurely exercise as had been the others. There were at least two paramedics and two Rider parameds working on the Rider, and there was a definite urgency about their movements. The cops diverted us around the ambulance, everybody made an effort not to gawk, and a thousand silent prayers went up simultaneously.

Within minutes I was rolling down the long entry chute at the end, lined with hundreds of cheering folks. Edging over to the left, I stuck out my hand and did a continuous High-Five with a couple dozen folks along the fence as I rolled to the finish, managing this safely until I came to the inevitable road-block of Bright Room photographers occupying the entire left half of the Finish Line, stacked three wide, four deep, and clicking away like crazy.

I clipped out one last time and zipped directly to the vans prepped to take our bikes back to the Starting Points in Houston. Once again, a cheerful 16 year old grabbed my bike, reminded me to take all my valuables, and bundled my bike on board. I moseyed over to the Continental tent for one last sign-in and trooped directly to the showers, intent on catching the first available bus so as to get home at a decent hour.

While in line for a shower, a handful of us circled one of the Top Fundraisers - his Rider Number identifying him as such - hoping to catch some tips on elevating contributions from, say, "Decent" (my current status) to Club 300, which is $3,500 or more. The Top Fundraisers are deep into five figures territory. The conversation, though, is all about the just-completed Ride, and pretty soon I'm into and out of the showers, seeking my last beer before the Bus Ride, and looking around the Continental and St. Arnold's tents for anybody I know. No such luck, so I gimped on down to the bus line, my luggage stuffed with extra Continental T-Shirts that our organizer Beth was pressing on everybody, along with a couple packs of Continental playing cards that might be a collector's item one day, assuming they consummate a proposed merger with United Airlines.

Don't do it Continental. A little belt-tightening and innovation is the sure path to future profits, and need I remind you that Chicago is not exactly a bastion of free enterprise.

The bus pulls out of Austin around 4:00 pm, and the ride back to Houston is accompanied by a free movie that is so awful that I can't even remember what it was. I turn to my seatmate, and we strike up a conversation that lasts maybe a half hour, after which time I'm prepared to sack out for the rest of the bus ride home, along with 80% of the folks I was riding with. Three hours later, we roll into the Omni Hotel, Sharon is waiting for me, and I head on home.

Life is good.