NCBC Morrisville 600K in photos

NCBC Morrisville 600K underway!

The Morrisville 600K is underway! RBA Alan Johnson sent them off right on time, and the pack arrived in Carpenter "gruppo compacto" at 06:10. A few out-of-state visitors were in the mix, including Maile and Carol from DC Randonneurs. Even Wes was riding, marking his first ride on the route since The Greatest Comeback Ever in 2007. Looks like he picked a good weekend for his return: temperatures were in the low 60s and mid-level clouds may keep them out of the sun.

I leapfrogged the group down to Chealybeate Springs where only 4 riders passed before I had to leave. Wes rode by, saying the main group had gotten off track, but had returned to the route. Off track?! Can't wait to hear how that happened! We've been doing this route since, well- a loonnnng time. More updates throughout the weekend..

UPDATE Saturday 13:30
Wes called, he's trying to make it to Wilmington with a very bad knee..

UPDATE Saturday 16:45
Jerry says he's thinking about riding all night. Doesn't know about Wes' condition.

UPDATE Saturday 17:45
Fearless Leader / RBA Al says Wes made it to Wilmington and will abandon there with volunteer Dan.

UPDATE Sunday 07:15
Jerry called in and is between Erwin and Buies Creek. He's riding solo, and I think he rode all night. He thinks Lynn and Justin may have already finished or are close. JoAnn and Maile are several miles ahead of him, and he thinks a few more may be as well. Mike and a big group were holed up overnight in White Lake and looking for a big breakfast. Overcast conditions and some surprise showers may help tired riders pick up their speed just a little bit. More to come..

Squirrel!

Running jokes are a welcome part of any long brevet. They can really lift spirits in the middle of the night, get everybody laughing stupidly, make you forget the pain in your legs for a few minutes.

Before Saturday's 600K, Branson and I had both seen this clip from an upcoming Disney movie, and the running joke was "Squirrel!" yelled out at random moments, or "I have just met you and I love you!"

Enjoy.

ROMA 600K / May 23-24, 2009

Yeah, I know. It sounds like a dumb idea. Put a brand new saddle on the bike the day before a 600K. But I figured I could put up with anything for a measly 380 miles.

One hundred miles into the ride, I begin questioning my judgment. The saddle feels squishy, like bags of warm jam. It's hitting my sit bones in all the wrong places. I begin calculating how many miles I can ride standing up.

Fast forward to day two, mile 325, and I'm having a fine time with the crew of Branson, Jimmy, Carol and Paul. We're flying along the course, aided by a healthy tailwind. I realize I've pretty much forgotten about the seat. That's about the best you can ask for.

Now for the interesting part. Two other riders on Saturday's 600K were also testing out new saddles. It's fool-hardiness to attempt a ride like this on an untested seat, but a testament to the character of your typical randonneur. After seeing someone ride 200 miles with a broken crank arm and a shoe duct-taped to the pedal, it seems bad form to whine about a saddle sore.

What a great two days on the bike. A big contingent from North Carolina -- me, Branson, Dr. John, Jimmy and Will -- showed up for the ROMA 600K, which launched from Middletown and snaked its way down to Roanoke through the spectacular Shenandoah Valley. Also along for the ride were Paul and Carol, our ride mates from the 400K of two weekends previous, Jon from Virginia Beach and Phil from South Carolina. ROMA RBA Matt Settle also rode the course.

Several of the riders on last weekend's 600K are also signed up for the Shenandoah 1200K, and our route gave them a sneak preview by following many of same roads. It's a challenging course, with plenty of hills, but with natural beauty and quiet back roads by the bucketful. If you're planning the Shenandoah 1200, I have one word for you: patience. You'll likely spend more time on the course than you'd planned. Adjust your expectations and all will be fine.

Okay, ride details. Highlights: the drive up in the church van, where the talk was bikesbikesbikes, the roadside hot dog stand above Maury River, the quick glimpse of truck stop neon at 3 a.m., which meant we were only three miles from our sleep stop, a rock slide that closed the road near Deerfield, Patsy and the chicken salad sandwiches at the ride's end, the truck stop breakfast, the long climb up Fort Valley and the steep descent into a torrential rainstorm, a plate of baked beans at a volunteer fire station, the views from the valley floor of mountains on all four sides, an orchestrated laugh by two locals as we waited out the rainstorm, the long, long downhill roll into Buchanan, catching Matt at the Burger King, trying to find my legs any time Fast Will got on the front, the scent in the air as the roadside flowers closed up shop at dusk. And the company along the way that kept me rolling through the good times and the many low points. Some of those were along rivers.

A footnote: For several of us, the 600K completed our Super Randonneur series for 2009. For Dr. John, it was the completion of his second SR of the year. A big congratulations to him.

"Look! Buffalo, Bill!" / Tar Heel 200 Permanent, May 12, 2009

They say when planets align, things happen. I don’t know about heavenly bodies. But I was on semester break this past week. And brother Bill was in town. Any time Bill and I’ve gotten together in recent years, we’ve done at least one longish bicycle ride. When we visit, the bicycles get dragged along. The only thing different this year was that I was a proud new Permanent owner, so you know what that meant.

Unlike brevets, RUSA members can schedule Permanents to be ridden at any time with permission from the route owner. In recent years, for example, some of our ingenious local riders have scheduled Permanents at night as a respite from the summer heat. Check out Mike D’s report of a midnight excursion, Blackbeard’s Permanent, from Raleigh to the inland coastal waterway, or –B’s account of the Kerr Lake Loop Permanent “Post Card” ride.

Permanent owners are generally an accommodating lot. But ownership has its privileges. It’s simpler than simple to set up a ride. After deciding when you want to ride, all you need to do is print a card, sign a waiver, and write yourself a check.

Check out Bill’s ride . . .

. . . a 1984 aluminum SR900 Cannondale road frame with an Easton carbon fiber front fork and down tube shifters. He built his own 36-3X spoke wheels with Velocity Deep V rims and stainless, butted Wheelsmith spokes and Phil Wood hubs. The Suntour drivetrain with triple cranks and an 11-28 freewheel is anchored to a Phil Wood BB. Bill’s sit bones are keen on the Brooks Professional leather saddle.

This would be Bill’s first randonnée this year. Obviously, the cycling “season” is shorter in Wisconsin than in North Carolina. Bill used to commute by bicycle to work even in winter, except when temperatures sank below 20 degrees, although his real winter exercise and passion has been cross-country skiing. Ten times he’s completed the annual American Birkebeiner, a 54km cross-country ski race.

The forecast for this past Tuesday looked promising, the first dry day since Bill arrived. So we jumped. Bill is not a time traveler and parts of him were still stranded somewhere off in Central Time. Thus we decided to shove off at a civil 8 AM Eastern Time, allowing Sol to sweep away the last bit of fog and coax the start temperatures up into the low-50s.

Bill at the start. We’d experience a 25-degree warm-up under mostly sunny skies.

The Tar Heel 200 starts in Benson, NC, in Johnston County and heads south through Harnett, Cumberland, and Bladen counties. Plenty of opportunity for viewing nature. We saw assorted types of ferns along the road, yellow thistles, Carolina roses, not to mention Spanish moss draping from trees on River Road in Bladen County. Perhaps we’d even get a glimpse of buffalo as we passed the Jambbas Ranch in Cedar Creek.

“Look, Buffalo!”

I’d promised Bill a flat route as an inducement to ride. But as we approached Tar Heel, Bill was on to me. He’d apparently been able to perceive an elevation drop and called my hand. Indeed, there is an undeniable elevation decrease of 118 feet from Benson (elev. 243) to Tar Heel (elev. 125) spread over a distance of 100 kilometers. But how did he know? A water specialist, I’m guessing he spilled some Gatorade in Benson and watched it follow us all the way to the Cape Fear River.

Near Tar Heel, we witnessed truckloads of little piggies that would eventually be going to market. I recall Branson mentioning that the local slaughterhouse is the largest in the world. Indeed, according to Wikipedia,

The largest slaughterhouse in the world is operated by the Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, North Carolina. It is capable of butchering over 32,000 pigs a day.


Bill cruising on the return on River Road in Bladen County.


Trivia question: What is the preferred energy food of some Wisconsin randonneurs?


The Civil War battlefield hospital at Averasboro on the return.


Courteous driver passing on the NC Scenic By-Way section near Averasboro Battlefield.



Bicycle art in Erwin, a couple of blocks off the route and across from the Pizza House,


where we would regroup the next day, along with Deborah, for a meal.

I’m lucky to have family members that not only understand randonneuring but encourage such ridiculousness. Even so, we randonneurs do get genuine and timely positive affirmation when we ride. Call it “positive en-route affirmation.” You know, those spontaneous remarks made by unsuspecting convenient-store clerks and bystanders the very moment they realize just how many miles we’ve ridden! I’ve learned not to brush these animated and sometimes very colorful comments aside, just because they didn’t come from a friend, family member, or colleague, someone I’d wished I’d heard it from. These real-time comments are not only authentic but couldn’t be more well-timed. My advice: Revel in them.

We experienced some positive en-route affirmation on our ride. The regular at the Erwin, NC, control at mile 111 asked me where we’d ridden to that day. When I responded, “Tar Heel,” she exclaimed, “You mean you rode to Tar Heel near Elizabethtown?” To which I simply replied, “Yes, that Tar Heel.” For emphasis, Bill added, “And back.”

At the last control at the Benson Burger King, when it dawned on the cashier signing our cards just how far we’d ridden that day, she blurted almost in disbelief, “You rode how far?”

Burger King employees hanging out with and providing positive en-route affirmation to rock-star, randonneur cyclists. Although they forgot to ask for my autograph. I'll be back.

A fun and memorable day on the bikes, we finished the ride almost two hours slower than the time-trial record for the course set by Lynn, Byron, Jerry, and John a month ago. Now all I have to do is to decide which bike(s) to pack when I visit Bill later this summer. Like our rides last year, the upcoming one should be fun, too.

ROMA 400K / May 9-10, 2009

Sometimes getting there is half the fun. Sometimes it's a considerably smaller fraction than that. Like those times, say 1 a.m. in the morning, 20 miles from your destination, when the warning lights come on and the instrument panel is dominated by a big red flashing STOP, and the temperature gauge pegs hard in the red zone and the sickening smell of coolant seeps through the air vents.

Branson and I made the 300-mile drive to the ROMA 400K,for a 7 a.m. start at RBA Matt Settle's home in Strasburg, Va. The plan was to get to Strasburg at 1 a.m., grab a few hours sleep at the Fairfax Inn. But with Branson's car on the fritz, we got stranded in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express in Woodstock, a few highway miles shy of our ultimate destination. The perky desk clerk told us, "I just rented the last room an hour ago!" Thanks, helpful information.

Branson got a couple fitful hours of sleep in the car while the engine cooled off. Branson can sleep anywhere. Me? No luck. Sleep deprivation is a side effect of randonneuring, but I like mine during the event, not before it. When you line up at the start already exhausted you're in for a long day.

We nursed the car a few more miles up the highway, finally ditching it a truck stop parking lot ...



... and cycling the final 7 miles to the start.



What's 7 miles before a ride of 250 miles? Umm, 7 miles.

The ride began at Matt's beautiful country house off Back Road, just outside Strasburg. He and his friend Patsy served up pancakes and coffee to the 10 riders on the ride roster. Nice!

Branson is known as the Bull City Biker. Here he is saying hey to one of his peeps.





Nice accessories.

It's always fun to hang with the cast of characters that wear the randonneur badge.


There was Lisa, who likes to listen to Italian and Portuguese pop music in the car.



There was Russ, looking European with a Swiss wool jersey and a cigarette dangling from his lips.



There was Carol, the transplanted New Zealander who could charm a polar bear out of its fur coat.



There was Paul, aka The World's Greatest Randonneur, riding with platform pedals, no clips, and steel baskets fore and aft, on a bike I would be chasing for much of the ride.



There was Lothar, my old flechemate, a master of the droll one-liner.


There was Andrea, with her infectious laugh.



And Greg, who would overcome one of the biggest mechanical challenges I have ever seen. Here he is with Matt and Patsy, who checked on riders as we came up Capacon River Road.



There was Jon, a phenomenal rider I know from the NC series who was off the front from the start and would finish three hours before us.

A short pep talk from Matt...



.... and off we went, with lots of bantering, joking as we rolled down Back Road....



...until we hit the first hill of the day, Wolf Gap, a challenging climb of 3 miles or so. I'd seen this hill before on Gappity Gap. It hadn't gotten any smaller. We splintered a bit on the hill, with Andrea and Greg going off the front.

Much of the first 300K was designed by flechemate Lynn K, and the course quickly earned the nickname of "The Mother of All 300Ks." I see why -- like the mommas of years gone by, she's liable to rise up at any moment and dish out some tough love to those who challenge her.

Our first control was a restaurant, 43 miles in. This would be the first of five meals I ate during the ride. I needed every one of them. It's here that Lisa began to talk of tossing in the towel. Her feet were killing her, she said. Lothar, dipping deep into his psychological tool bag, talked her out of it with equal parts of badgering and cajoling.

She would spend the rest of the ride standing on ice bags ....



... or wading through rivers and streams to cool her feet.



Despite her valiant effort, her day would end prematurely at 300K when she went down on railroad tracks in Harrisonburg, banging a knee and elbow. Here's a shot of the elbow at the finish.



Now for the story of Andrea and Greg. They left the first restaurant a few minutes before the rest of us. I rode up on them at 60 miles. You guys okay? I asked. Well, no, Greg says. He points to his left Dura-Ace crank arm. It's snapped at the pedal hole.



We were all convinced his day was over -- 190 miles with one pedal? No way, Jose. By now, Branson, Paul and Carol had joined us. There was a house just up the hill from where we stopped, and Charming Carol, mustering her best Down Under accent, asked a man in the yard whether we could use a phone to call Matt. The guy seemed eager to help out. The rest of us rode on, leaving Greg and Andrea to sort out the mechanical. And did they ever. Turned out their new friend was a master mechanic. He drilled the crank arm below the pedal bolt and threaded it. Of course, he could only make a right-hand thread, but he took a right side pedal off his son's bike and installed it on Greg's crank. Voila: mismatched crank lengths of 175 and 160.



Somewhere along the way, Russ helped Greg make a power strap out of duct tape. Greg successfully completed the event. I have seen lots of roadside repairs. This takes the prize.

Our DC friends describe the route we were on as scenic. Translation: Hilly....





... but beautiful backroads, including the stretch into West Virginia via the climb over Wolf Gap.





I spent most of the ride in the company of Paul, Carol and Branson. Here's Carol and Paul rolling along one of the rivers.



It's hard to imagine better riding companions. Branson was the class of our little peleton. The season is young but he already has good legs under him. He hurt us anytime he got on the front. Paul, baskets and all, motored over hill after hill. He's the kind of guy that you pray never converts to carbon. And Carol, between very solid pulls, entertained us with stories about her trip to the Great Southern Randonnee and of speed records on motorcycles. I never feel like I pull my weight in a group like that, story-wise or bike-wise. I hope they'll count this post-ride report toward my contribution.

The route climbed back over Wolf Gap and dropped down to a small crossroads store, Larkins, at Columbia Furnace, where we had yet another meal before donning reflective gear for the night portion of our ride. Here's Greg and Andrea suiting up.



This portion of the route followed Highway 42 down to Harrisonburg, then turned around and retraced the route to Columbia Furnace before a 20-mile run up Back Road to the finish at Matt's house. The first portion of 42 was especially punishing with three or four sharp hills but the route leveled out considerably after that, and with a full moon on the rise over the nearby ridges, the riding could not have been more pleasant. We stopped for sodas in Forestville, about halfway down to Harrisonburg.

Here's Paul bowing and scraping in the hope that his dollar bill will be accepted.



We rolled into Harrisonburg, where JMU students, high on graduation and malt beverages, alternately yelled out encouragement and insults as we passed by their front lawn gatherings. Our control was a diner where we refueled on meatloaf and mashed potatoes, washed down with coffee.



The diner booths had long padded benches. I tried to steal back a few minutes of my missing sleep. No luck there. As we ate, other riders rolled in. Lothar was having gastronomical problems, which are every bit as serious as mechanical ones. Apparently he had been unable to eat for several hours. But he was soldiering on, and he would finish with Russ, after getting an anti-nausea pill from Carol.

What to say of the return trip from Harrisonburg? Our little cell divided when Paul and Carol slowed about a dozen miles into the return leg, and we split once more when Branson dropped me on a hill. I poked along without real focus until I reached the Columbia Furnace store, where I regrouped with Branson. The plan was to wait for Carol and Paul but five minutes in the chilly air convinced me it was wiser to roll on, and Branson and I completed the final 17-mile stretch together, finishing up at 4:45 a.m.

We grabbed a few minutes of shut-eye on cots at Matt's house before other riders began to roll in. Then we were all up, gathered around the dining room table, for the post-ride celebration of pancakes and war stories. We capped that off with a sleepy sit down in the sun on the front porch...



... where we said hey to the cat and vice versa.



Remember that broke-down car? We got it towed to a repair shop, where it still sits, and Russ loaded us into his RAV4 for a ride to Petersburg, halfway home, where Branson's better half rescued us. I don't remember much about the drive. I finally got that sleep I'd been angling for.

Another fun day/night on the bikes.



Thanks to Branson and Russ for the company and the pix.