Reflecting on the Ride of Silence (May 2011)

It could have been just another evening group ride assembling at a local park.  But, it wasn’t.

There was something in the air.  Something other than the cold that pierced two layers of technical fabric and the dampness that trapped it there.  Another unseasonably cold and overcast mid-May day was slowly fading away without a moment’s reprieve for the sixty eight riders assembled at Recreation Park.  It almost seemed fitting for the somber ride we were about to set off on.

I had never ridden with the members of the Arlington Heights Bicycle Club before.  While I couldn’t be certain that they weren’t an unusually quiet and reserved group, I suspected otherwise.  At least on any other night.  The night of May 18th was certainly an exception.  This night wasn’t about the people gathered together to ride.  This night was about those people that would never be there to ride again.

Aside from the club members, the group was an interesting cross-section of serious, recreational, and hardly-ever cyclists.  I immediately struck up a conversation with an enthusiast who was so passionate about time trials and triathlons that he commuted to work each day on a $7000 carbon race bike, just so he wouldn’t miss any training opportunities.

Next to him was a husband and wife in their thirties on a pair of mountain bikes.  Neither was dressed warm enough for a ride in 50-degree weather, but they soldiered on nonetheless.  There was a gentleman in his late sixties riding a woman’s model comfort bike that he obviously borrowed.  A father and daughter duo arrived sans helmets – he on an old ten-speed and she on a fixie.

Every person in attendance had a reason for being there.  One young lady had lost her father three years earlier to a freak cycling accident.  Others were there to honor someone they knew who had been badly injured or killed on a bike.  I’m sure that there were a few there, like me, who were fortunate to have never experienced the loss of a close friend to a cycling accident.  We were riding to assert our right to be on the road.  We were hoping to make a statement to every motorist who passed our silent group.

Riding in silence is more difficult than it would appear.  A big part of group riding is communication – both verbal and non-verbal.  On this night, we had to settle for the non-verbal and hope that the less experienced cyclists among us would catch on to our hand signals.  They did.  No one collided during any of our stops.  Pothole crashes were also averted thanks to considerate forewarning.

The silence forced me to refrain from admonishing motorists who, despite a block-long line of cyclists riding two abreast, still zipped past our group as if we were just one long parked car.  These were neighborhood streets, mind you.  There was absolutely no need for anyone to maintain a 30 mph clip in the oncoming traffic lane only to make a turn in another two blocks.  Cranial-rectum disorder runs rampant among many impatient motorists.

A couple of club members rode tandem bikes singly to honor the silent rider.  The empty “stoker” seat represented every rider that could no longer be with us.  This was a very fitting tribute.  I can’t speak for everyone, but it certainly reminded me of why we were riding.

Silence is sobering.  While many onlookers and passing motorists cheered us on, the entire 8-mile ride was eerily devoid of sound.  Always in tune to the rhythms of the road and braced for the traffic approaching from behind, I found myself unaffected by normal noises.  I was on auto-pilot.  I held my lane, kept my position in line, and signaled my turns almost by rote.  My mind was elsewhere.

I can’t say that I was lost in deep reflection on those that would never ride with us again.  Try as I may, my mind will never allow me to dwell on such sadness for very long.  My thoughts tended to be in the moment.  I felt an overwhelming need to protect our little group as we pedaled the quiet suburban streets at dusk.  I was ready to place myself and my bike between every cyclist and any impatient, inconsiderate, self-absorbed motorist carelessly careening through life as if they were the only one on the road that mattered.

I’m no martyr.  I am a parent.  This is just normal instinct.  On this night my senses were heightened.  The silent rider on the tandem next to me was a constant reminder of how vulnerable we all are when we’re out on the road.  We can be taught to ride safely, to make ourselves visible, and to obey the rules of the road, but we’re never really protected from the worst drivers around us.  Maybe that was my most sobering reflection while out on the ride.

I am grateful to have ridden with the other 67 cyclists as we honored those that can no longer ride.  I sincerely hope that our procession through the streets of Arlington Heights caused at least one motorist to reflect on the importance of sharing the road.  With luck there will be many others that read about the Ride Of Silence in local papers like the Chicago Tribune and begin to start showing us all a little more respect.

Special thanks to Gary Gilbert, the members of the Arlington Heights Bicycle Club, Village Trustee Joseph Farwell (and his daughter, Molly), the bike patrol officer who lead the ride, and all those who braved the weather to show their solidarity and respect for both those who can and can no longer ride a bike.

Please take a moment to visit the Ride Of Silence Honor Roll.

Keep riding and be safe!

(Nearly) Every Day in May - Part 1 (May 2011)

On the first day of May I became optimistic again.

The unseasonably cold weather of April was now behind me.  It was time to stop muttering to myself “eight measly days”.  That was all either the weather or my work schedule would allow in April.  Eight days.  Ten hours in the saddle.  One hundred and forty nine miles on the odometer.  This was a very disappointing start to the season.  I turned my hope to May.  Spring would surely arrive in May.  It had to.

One thing was certain; I was not riding inside again.  So long stationary bike.  Goodbye Y.  My three to four days of cardio were going to be performed outside.  Whether it was a 30-minute sprint around the forest preserve loop or a two-hour ride over the backroads of Barrington, I would be on my bike, taking in the fresh air, and constantly moving forward.

I awoke that morning in a hotel room in Minneapolis, fumbled for my phone, and pressed the icon for the day’s weather.  Thirty five degrees?  Mornings are usually colder, but thirty five?  That’s barely above freezing.  The temperature would most surely rise as the sun came up.  This was not a good omen for the start of May.

Just as I started feeling sorry for myself I remembered all the people who had signed up to ride the Iron Man and Iron Crotch rides that day.  I had run into several of them at the bike expo the day before.  Many had traveled from out of state, excited to kick off the season with an epic ride.  This was Minnesota.  It was early spring.  A little cold and a little wind wouldn’t stop anybody.  Snow would literally be icing on the cake.

That’s when it hit me.  If you want to ride, you need to get over yourself, take what the weather gods serve up, and just get out there.  No more excuses.  So what if you need to wear tights?  Who cares if you need to pull on a long sleeve jersey and jacket?  You’ll warm up once you get moving.  Get out there and ride.

I kept checking the temperature as I ticked off a day’s worth of to-do’s at my desk in the hotel room.  Hour after hour, it didn’t budge.  Thirty five and overcast.  The wind was gusting up to thirty five miles per hour out of the northwest.  Meanwhile back home in the Chicago suburbs, the temperature was climbing through the mid sixties.  By the time I got on the road shortly after noon, Minneapolis was locked in a winter day and I wouldn’t arrive home with enough daylight to enjoy a spring day.

I had vowed to myself to ride every day in May.  No exceptions. 

May doesn’t begin on the 2^nd or on whatever day is convenient for me.  I needed to find a place to ride while driving home.  I decided to stop in Reedsburg and ride the 400 Trail.  Forty eight degrees with a strong wind gusting up to twenty five miles per hour in Wisconsin was still better than thirty five degrees with thirty five mile per hour gusts in Minnesota.  Yes, I was still wimping out  by choosing Wisconsin over Minnesota.  What can I say?  I just don’t have that Nordic blood.

For the next eight days I would squeak in a ride whenever and wherever I could.  A fast seven miles on the Paul Douglas Trail, a few thirteen mile jaunts to and around the Cuba Marsh Forest Preserve, a longer ride on the Paul Douglas with a stop for a haircut, and a nice thirty four-mile road ride.  I even carried my bike along on a trip to Macomb when I visited the Western Illinois University campus with my son.  While I didn’t have much time, I still managed to log nearly ten miles on rural roads with some pretty steep hills.

Then I got hit with a twenty four-hour bug.  My limp and achy legs weren’t going to spin a block, let alone a mile.  My head was so congested that it felt as if it were in a vice.  Not an ideal physical state for riding a bike.  The chain had been broken.  It would now have to be “nearly” every day in May.

Why should missing one day matter anyway?  If I didn’t ride another day over the next twenty three days it would still be the same as all of April.  Sure it was only one hundred and twenty one miles, but that’s still fifteen miles per day.  Why wasn’t that enough?  Why isn’t it enough if I don’t ride every day?

As with everything else, I guess there’s a long and a short answer.  The long answer likely involves my purple Spyder bike, missing out on the 90’s, and suffering a heart attack at 43.  There’s probably more than one blog post involved in finding the long answer.

As for the short answer, short is the answer.  Available daylight in spring is short.  A warm enough temperature during available daylight is short.  Time spent not working is short.  Summer’s short.

My patience is also short.  I can’t wait until the weather is warm enough for both early morning and early evening rides.  I daydream of Saturday mornings along the Fox River Trail with my long-time friends who take cycling a little less seriously than I do.  I imagine the faster pace of a Sunday morning group ride originating from one of my customers’ shops.  Then there are the all-day fundraising rides and all-week adventures like Tour de Kota and RAGBRAI.  

These days can’t arrive soon enough for me.

As I sit here, nearly half-way through May, I find myself contemplating whether or not to brave yet another sub-fifty degree day with winds gusting up to twenty five miles per hour just to keep the latest string going.  I was lucky earlier in the week with back-to-back eighty degree days followed by another back-to-back pair in the seventies.

Has an early taste of summer made it impossible to put the jacket back on and suffer through spring?  I guess we’ll find out in part two…

First Ride Of The Season (April 2011)

When the calendar reaches March 21^st, I become anxious.  I’m not talking “little kid on Christmas Eve” anxious.  It’s more the stereotypical “junkie on a crime drama” anxious.  I’m wearing a rut in the carpet pacing back and forth in front of the window, peering through the blinds for Mother Nature to deliver my fix.  “Bitch better get here soon or I’m about to go all kinds of crazy!”

If I haven’t been out on my first bike ride by the time the calendar officially announces the arrival of spring, my mood darkens and my nerves become frayed.  Irritability sets in.  I’m a powder keg in the middle of a place where there’s lots of dry stuff that burns easily.  Some brave soul needs to scoop me up and carry me outside before it’s too late.

Each and every day that passes without a ride is a day lost to eternity.  My already short season is being pilfered right under my nose and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it.  Sure, I can bundle up, toughen up, and take whatever the weather gods can throw at me.  Plenty of better men (and women) than I do it every day in urban centers like Minneapolis and Chicago.  Riding in suburbia, I just don’t want to create a distraction for unsuspecting motorists who are concentrating intently on applying make-up, shaving, eating breakfast, and reading texts while they happen to be behind the wheel of a two-ton assault weapon.

Twelve days had passed without a reprieve from thirty degree weather.  Each new morning brought the dreaded realization that it would be another day of working out at the gym.  At some point, you begin to feel like an understudy for a Broadway production.  You prepare.  You rehearse.  You improve.  You perfect.  And then you wait for your time in the limelight.  But that time never seems to come because Donny Osmond likes doing three shows a day, seven days a week, and he never gets sick or takes a vacation.

Don’t get me wrong, training is important.  It strengthens the heart.  It improves breathing.  It conditions the legs.  It keeps you in shape.  Properly motivated, you can progress past that insurmountable plateau.  You can simulate just about everything riding indoors with the notable exception of the wind.  Unfortunately, riding without the wind is like stepping out on a stage without an audience.  You remain completely detached and disconnected until you feel the energy in the air.

It’s the energy in the air that makes cycling sensational.  The moment you throw a leg over your bike, you feel the air on your skin.  As you roll forward you feel the breeze on your face, even if there isn’t any wind.  You create your own wind as you slice through the air with each pedal stroke.  Each of your senses comes to life as you propel yourself onward to your destination, even if you’re going nowhere in particular.

There is no sensation on a stationary bike at the gym.  Your eyes aren’t scanning the horizon, glimpsing the periphery, or surveying the path unfolding in front of your front wheel.  Your ears aren’t serenaded by the sounds of nature while simultaneously in tune with the hum of an approaching car.  You aren’t exchanging crisp, clean, outdoor air with the carbon dioxide you expel from your lungs.  You aren’t smelling the wildflowers and trees coming into bloom.  You aren’t tasting spring.

At the gym, your bike doesn’t sway back and forth beneath you as you adjust your cadence to the slightest change in the terrain.  The gym bike remains perfectly stationary.  It is stiff, still, and devoid of any feedback as you pedal endlessly without moving an inch.  Even if your stationary bike is your favorite road bike mounted on a trainer in your basement, it still remains relatively lifeless.  There is a familiarity about it, but it’s like date night at home; you’re spending time together watching a movie you’ve seen one hundred times before when you both would rather be out dancing.

By the first weekend in April, I was more than ready to take my best girl out on the town.  With a high hovering around fifty degrees and a strong wind out of the northwest, my riding buddies politely declined my invitation to double date.  I can’t say that I blame them.  It was far from the shirts-off, sunny days of summer.  The sun was hiding behind some heavy gray clouds, leaves had yet to even form buds, and no one had bothered to check the condition of the bike path, let alone prepare it.  Undaunted, I decided to venture out on my own.

The moment I rolled down the driveway I felt instantly alive.  My mind was focused.  My senses were alert.  My feet began dancing on the pedals.  I felt the crisp, cold air against my cheeks while the tailwind propelled me rapidly down my street to the menacing two-lane road that stands between me and cycling nirvana.  When the traffic in each direction cleared, I took a deep breath and pedaled furiously along the heavily traveled state highway someone conveniently forgot to add a paved shoulder to.  An easy right turn at the stoplight and I was safely on my way down a tree-lined, rolling, lightly traveled secondary road with a 2-foot shoulder.  Four miles, a stop sign, and two traffic lights later, I was at the forest preserve trail.

I love paved bike paths that loop around a forest preserve.  No matter which direction you choose to ride,  you will always encounter an equal amount of wind resistance.  Not really giving it much thought, I chose to ride counter-clockwise.  The first two miles were directly into the wind as I traveled straight west through the open prairie.  It was cold and it was certainly more strenuous than the ride down, but it was bearable.  As soon as I hit the curve that carried me south, the resistance was gone and I was ready to fly.

The wind can be your invisible friend or your elusive enemy.  When it’s got your back, you’re invincible!  Everything comes effortlessly.  You race through the flats.  You zoom down hills.  You even power up short climbs.  You forget that your invisible friend is even there and you begin to suffer delusions of grandeur.  As you pedal more furiously, dopamine surges and you literally begin to feel intoxicated.  The passing trees don’t become animated like the ones in H R Puffinstuff, but they do seem less ominous, even without any leaves.  It’s still very early spring and everything remains dull and gray.  For a moment, though, I can actually envision some color, although nothing remotely psychedelic.

The endorphin high I was experiencing quickly evaporated when I hit the next curve and headed back north.  My invisible friend was no longer pushing me along.  He suddenly became the middle school bully.  He shoved his palm into my forehead and held me at arm’s length as I attempted to evade his stronghold.  The more I pushed against him, the more he pushed back.  I flailed away spastically only to realize that I would tire out long before he would.  As I dipped my head lower I could feel his control weaken, but he was definitely still in charge.  I geared down, picked up my cadence, and moved slowly homeward.

The last half of my ride was unpleasant.  I was cold.  I was expending a great deal of energy.  I was going nowhere, very slowly.  It was ten times more difficult than any hill simulation on the stationary bike.  It wasn’t solely about pushing hard and feeling the burn.  It wasn’t about enduring pain while strengthening targeted muscles.  It was more about enduring sensory overload.

Everything I had felt while zipping down to the bike trail – the breeze on my face, the clean air in my lungs, the taste of spring – was still there.  Instead of being inviting and invigorating, it became frustrating.  I still desired it.  I still could feel it.  I just needed to work physically harder to appreciate it.  My body was being asked to multitask, to dig deep into its physical reserves while still enjoying the multisensory experience that I had been longing for all winter.  I was experiencing pleasure and pain simultaneously.

When I arrived home, nose running, ears red, and a chill setting in from the sweat trapped between my wool jersey and rapidly cooling body, I took a deep breath.  As my heart rate returned to normal, I felt a wave of calm envelop me.  I felt a surge of energy return as I adjusted to the inside temperature of my house.  I felt alive for the first time in many months.  My spring had finally arrived.

As I write this, spring has taken yet another shot at depressing me.  I have only been out eight times in twenty six days.  There have been entire week long stretches where only the most diehard among us would dare venture out.  There is but one day in the next week’s forecast that doesn’t show rain and a temperature approaching sixty degrees.  It’s aggravating.  It’s annoying.  It’s frustrating.  But I refuse to be depressed.

I can endure another week or two of indoor cycling.  My turn on stage is coming.  I will be dancing with my bike again very soon.  I just need to make sure that my imagination doesn’t get the best of me while I’m on the stationary bike.  People will think I’m strange if I take a deep breath and savor the rank air of the cardio studio.