“Ride #30: One Soggy, Unstoppable Century”

Anybody who reads this site regularly knows that I love cycling. Time on the bike keeps me in shape and my spirits high (ahem).

I'm not, however, one of these knuckleheads who thinks that any time spent on the bike, no matter what, is good time.

Actually, I need to correct that. I doubt that anybody really thinks that way, but some cyclists like to pretend they do. It makes them look more committed, or more manly, or whatever.

Bupkus.

My ride in the 2003 King's Tour of the Quabbin -- and I'm speaking very specifcally about the riding, not the event or the people or the experience as a whole, just the ride -- was an absolute disaster. A nightmare without equal. Undeniably the worst ride I've ever experienced, bar none. (Everything else was great, and I mean that.)

Before anyone mentions it: yes, it's true that in 1998 I had a huge accident with lots of broken bones. That wasn't a bad ride, that was a bad accident. The Quabbin, though... this was a bad ride.

Soggy

First of all, it rained. A little rain on a training ride, or at least on a course you're familiar with, is OK. You know where the dangerous spots are, what to look out for. This was something else entirely. I didn't know the course (none of us really knew it like we know our training routes). The rain started at exactly the moment we reached the first SAG stop, for Gatorade and muffins (and Fig Newtons!), and didn't stop until long after we were all home again.

Most of the roads on this route are very poorly maintained, and the pouring rain made it very difficult to watch for pot holes and broken pavement. Your shades (glasses) are almost impossible to see through, but if you take them off your face gets pelted with rain so hard on the downslopes that it feels like pebbles. My shades rode the last 70 miles in my saddle bag. The pain was better than not being able to see at all, and I had plenty of other problems to worry about.

Stopping Power

Next there were my equipment problems. I took my bike to the local bike shop -- Rose City Cycle, just a mile from my house -- for new brakes on Thursday. They had them done in less than two hours, and they seemed to work ok that afternoon. Unfortunately, they hadn't tightened the nut enough on the new pads, and it wasn't long before I was riding with literally no brakes. On a 100-mile hill ride, in the rain!?

To demonstrate my lack of stopping power (in case anyone thought I was exaggerating), I rode up next to each of the guys in my group (Jim Boyko, Jason Cicero, Steve Harper, and Steve Davis) and squeezed both brakes with maximum force, without slowing down at all.

When we stoppped for lunch, Steve D. looked at my brakes and noticed the missing nut. The convenience store (where we were eating) didn't have one to replace it, so he rode on ahead -- with my brake pad -- to find a garage or store where we could buy the nut.

This meant I had to catch up with Steve without any brakes at all. Literally. This was the most "unsafe" I've felt... perhaps ever. The store where we ate lunch was near the top of a hill, so all I could do was hope (and pray) that there were no sharp turns before the next rise.

We caught Steve again at ~63 miles, at the second and final SAG station. He had checked the only store, but couldn't find a nut that would fit, so he took one of my mostly-worn pads off the back brake and put it on the front. This gave me a fraction of the stopping power I should have had, but infinitely more than I'd had for most of the ride so far.

Steve was tired of all the stopping, so he rode on ahead. Shortly afterwards, something else went wrong with the brakes, and they stopped working again. I could hear them rubbing, but I wasn't slowing down.

My solution? Squeeze the lever with my left hand, and reach down with my right to apply extra pressure directly to the pads. It worked! Though obviously a dangerous way to stop, it was certainly better than not stopping (or slowing) at all.

Yes, all of my fingers are still attached (and I can still count to ten).

Rose City Cycle is going to be very nice about entirely fixing all of the problems with my brakes, or they're never going to see me again, and I'll never recommend them to anyone. Brakes are very important, obviously, and my brake problems definitely fall squarely on their shoulders. I'll post more after I've spoken with them.

Let Go, Cleatus!!

I crashed twice, but neither time was due to a lack of brakes! My left cleat must have had some sand stuck in it (or something, I don't know), because it was very difficult to disengage from the pedal.

The first crash happened when I stopped to, uh, water some bushes, just after it started raining. I hit some deep, loose sand, the bike started to fall left, and I couldn't get my foot out to catch myself. This gave me my only wound of the day: some nasty scrapes on my left leg, just below the knee. Nothing serious, and it didn't hurt, but it looked ugly.

(Steve has pictures of this wound, I'll post them when he sends them to me.)

The second crash happened just as we were entering one of the Quabbin Reservoir access roads. Same story: deep sand, and I couldn't catch myself with my left leg because the cleat wouldn't let go. (Even in less panicked circumstances, I'd have to twist and yank with all my might to get it free.) No wound this time, but it was embarrassing.

On the Other Hand...

As I said, the only problem with the tour was the riding. Everything else was great! I hadn't met Jason, that's certainly one of the hilights of the trip. (He has a beautiful bike, too.) I hadn't seen Steve Harper in ages, and it was great to see Davis and Boyko, of course.

The scenic parts of the ride were excellent. I'd never seen the Quabbin Reservoir, except from the highway at a distance. Jim told me that they (intentionally) flooded five towns when they built the reservoir during the Great Depression (which reminds me of the massive reservoir they're building in China right now, which will displace 20,000,000 people).

After the ride, we had dinner at Jim Boyko's parent's place, and they treated us to burgers and fried clams from a local restaurant. Jim's wife Katie was there, which was very cool. We were friends growing up, but I haven't seen her much since they married, and I'd never met their twins.

Speaking of the twins... Steve D. was playing with them, and asked one, "What does a rabbit say?" In the half-second before she answered, I couldn't think of a good reply, but she said, "What's up, doc?" What a riot! She got cows (moo), pigs (oink), ducks (quack), and everything else right, too.

Other Things to Remember

• Coasting past everyone else (literally) on the downslopes. That's my Mass Advantage.
• Boyko shivering so hard at lunch time that he almost vanished from sight.
• Trying not to think about how much I liked Cicero's bike.
• Not bonking after drinking a Sobe, in spite of Boyko's prediction.
• Wondering if and when we'd ever see Davis again.
• Riding up to the tower at the top of the hill overlooking the water, and Davis pointing out that I have two gears on the front (I thought I'd shifted into the easier gear already. Oops!)
• Shaking the hand of Jim's dad. Very cool. He has an excellently firm shake, and looked me right in the eyes. He's the only person that did that all day, to my memory. Also found out that he used to be a professional water skier!

The End

I'm glad I went. The rain and the equipment problems were maddening and incredibly dangerous, and Route 202 is twenty miles of death-around-every-corner, but I'm still glad I was there. These guys are my friends and brothers, and I'll do just about anything to spend a day around people with whom I have so much in common.

Also, I've proven to myself that I'll be able to handle the PMC's back-to-back centuries.

Will I go again next year? That probably depends on the forecast.