Meet the Family

One thing that was cool about this ride was the number of people from Microsoft showing up to ride, and meeting the people on the team who we’d be riding with. And — vanity alert  — I really liked having a few people notice the writing on my legs and saying, "Oh, you must be the Fat Cyclist." Yep, I am now super-famous. Wealth can’t be far behind.

Since Microsoft earned more money (around $50K) for this event than other teams, we got to go off the starting line first, escorted by a group (Flock? Troop? Gaggle?) of Harley Davidsons. I followed the motorcycles with the group for a moment, but we were dropping behind, and it felt like we were going slow. So, along with Nick and an IronWoman named Heather, I jumped and caught up with the motorcycles.

Hey, Everyone! Follow Me!

We were the lead group! I was the lead rider! I am using too many exclamation points! I decided at that moment I would never let a single person pass me the whole day.

The three of us rode together for a bit, then the motorcycles stopped at the side of the road and we were on our own. I kept looking back, wondering how we had gapped everyone so badly, so quickly. Oh well, that was their problem; we were clearly the superior riders.

That’s when a guy on a motorcycle caught up with us and yelled, "You missed a turn! Go back!" I looked back and sure enough, hundreds of people were turning left way behind us.

Note to everybody in the entire universe: I am not the guy you want to ask directions from. I am not the guy you want to follow on a route. I am the guy who uses Mapquest to get to the grocery store.

We turned around and got back on course, now sorted about 100 back in the field. Alas, we’d never regain our

Road Rage, Writ Small

Apart from my boneheadedness at the beginning, we had no real trouble, with the exception of one confusing moment. About 25 miles into the ride we were going through a residential area when we came across a left arrow pointing us into the neighborhood.

I slowed down when I saw the sign; it didn’t look quite like a course marking. This put me near an older woman in a Cadillac at a stop sign, going in the opposite direction. She couldn’t tell where I was going because I didn’t know where I was going. I smiled apologetically at her as I figured it out, then yelled at people ahead of me to come back. The older woman powered down her window and said in a voice filled with a surprising amount of rage, "Bikes are supposed to follow the same rules as cars," she snarled.

I smiled, shrugged, and said "Anteeksi kun en osaa sinun kieltää" ("I’m sorry, but I don’t speak your language."). Knowing Finnish comes in handy sometimes (like, three times in my life so far).

Go Long? Or Go Short?

Nick and I had agreed to be flexible about whether we’d do the 75-mile route or the 100-mile route for Saturday (both of us had family commitments for Sunday so were doing just one day of this event), depending on the weather. Amazingly, the weather had turned out perfect for the day. Cool and breezy, but not a drop of rain.

So as we got to the point where we needed to go straight for the 75 mile course or turn right for the 100 mile course, I proposed we turn right.

"No," said Nick. "I feel as if I might have consumption."

"Be strong," I said. "We can do this. We are manly men, and 75 miles are as nothing to such as we." I thumped my chest, for good measure.

"I can’t," said Nick, sniveling now. "I feel a sinus headache coming on, and the atmospheric pressure is irritating my adenoids."

"I thought you were from Australia!" I was shouting now, full of righteous indignation. "You guys are supposed to be tough! You guys are supposed to eat armadillos and have kickboxing matches with kangaroos? Are you from some hitherto unknown nancy-boy part of Australia that nobody speaks about?"

Nick didn’t say a word in response to this. He just hung his head and went straight.

"Fine," I muttered, and followed after him. "Just so you know, I’m going to make up an entirely different conversation about why we did the 75-mile ride today."

Which is what you just read.

Beautiful Day, Beautiful Ride

To my amazement, by 11:00 am, the clouds had cleared and it was sunny. I had made what turned out to be the exact right clothing choices. Further, I was having a great day on the bike. I felt very strong; the short hills on the course were a blast to charge up and then zoom down. The course itself was gorgeous; I still haven’t gotten over the beauty of Northwest coastal forests and coastline.

Nick at Deception Point Bridge.

Respect

For most of the ride, we were surrounded by riders of about the same speed. With about 25 miles left to go, though, the 75-mile course merges with the 50-mile course and we were now with riders who don’t really consider themselves cyclists — these were people who cared about raising money to fight MS, and so were willing to get on a bike for a day, if that’s what it took. You’ve got to admire people who are willing to go out on a long ride like this. I imagine it’s as difficult for them to ride 50 miles on a bike as it is for me to paddle 50 miles in a kayak. But I didn’t see anyone complaining about it.

Huge props, in other words, to the people who were out there for a person or cause they cared about. I have to say, I enjoyed being part of this cause much more than I expected to be, and I’ll plan to do it again.

Pull & Be Damned

With about three miles left to go, we came across my very favorite street sign in the history of street signs: Pull & Be Damned Rd. Hey, it’s not just a street sign, it’s a riding philosophy. "Hey, Nick, I would have pulled more on today’s ride, but I just didn’t want to be damned."

Shouldn’t that be "Pull OR Be Damned?"

Just after Nick took this picture, one of the spokes on his rear wheel broke. The wheel went seriously out of true and Nick had to release the brake in order to ride the last few miles to the finish line. Nick says it’s lucky we did the 75-mile course or he would have had to ride with a broken spoke for 28 miles instead of just three. I maintain that if he would have ridden the 100-mile course the spoke wouldn’t have broken at all.

Anyway, Nick and I finished the ride — true to the spirit of the thing, I didn’t check my ride time or when we finished — feeling good, and were evidently two of the first ’softies (yeah, Microsoft employees call themselves "softies," isn’t that sad?") across the line.

I suspect that the fact that we didn’t have to do another 75 mile ride the next morning had something to do with it.

Today’s weight: 168.2. For lunch the day before the ride, my old work team bought be a "go away, fatty" lunch (Malaysian). Then my wife and I went to dinner (Mexican, natch) that night. After the ride, Nick and I had big greasy burgers and fries. Yesterday, I ate nonstop. Gee, I wonder where that weight gain over the weekend came from?

Lance, have a seat. We need to talk. No, not later, son. Right now.

Lance, your friends and I have seen news stories about you coming out of retirement and racing in the Tour de France next year. To tell the truth, you’ve got us all worried.

No, we’re not worried about whether you could win an eighth Tour. The fact is, none of us care. Well, that’s not true. Your friend Al Trautwig cares, but he’s not really the guy you want to impress, is he? The truth is, you’ve definitely hit the point of diminishing returns on Tour wins. Not a single person in this room — put your hand down, Al — will think you’re a better man for winning eight times instead of seven.

I know what L’Equipe said. Yes, I know it was rude, and you’re striking back the only way you know how. But you need to start looking at the bigger picture.

Think back for a minute, Lance. A year ago, you were hinting that you wouldn’t race the Tour in 2005 — that you’d take a year off. You milked the "will-he-won’t-he" publicity for all it’s worth for as long as you could, then went on Oprah — Oprah, for crying out loud! — to reveal the stunning news that you’d once again do the exact same thing you had been doing for the past six years. And you said you’d be done after that.

And now you’re doing the same thing, Lance. You’re coyly telling us maybe you’ll race or maybe you won’t. Your reason may be different, but if you show up on Oprah again, nobody will be on the edge of their seat about why.

You know, Lance, it’s not even so much that you’re coming out of retirement. It’s why. If you had said, "I thought about it and I love racing too much and I don’t want to quit after all," we would have understood. But racing for revenge? Lance, you’re not in high school anymore.

Think hard for a second, Lance. A magazine in a different country said it thinks you took EPO. So how will racing again prove them wrong? If you win, they’ll say you’re doping. If you lose, they’ll say you lost because you finally came clean. And meanwhile, you’ll have demonstrated that all anyone needs to do to get Lance to jump is write an accusatory article. That’s hardly a position of power, Lance.

You know what we think really bugs you about that article, Lance? It’s that the article isn’t about what you’re doing now. It’s about what you did — past tense, Lance — six years ago. That article made you realize that the only Lance they care about is the one who’s racing. That no matter what you do from now on, it won’t matter to most people as much as what you’ve already done.

I think that you’re not afraid articles like this one are going to continue to be published. You’re afraid articles like this are going to stop. And then, sometime after that, articles about you will stop altogether. And you know what? They probably will. This year, next year, whenever.

Unless you come up with that cure to cancer you keep talking about. I suspect you’d get a fair amount of publicity for that. Maybe you should focus on that for a while.

And there’s one more thing, Lance. You kind of wore out your welcome last year. It’s not like by the end of the Tour last year anyone was saying, "I wish we could see Lance do this one more time." (Al, now’s not the time. Sit down, Al.) Phil and Paul were exhausted from saying your name nonstop. Your teammates were exhausted from riding for you nonstop. The American public was just glad that the Tour was over and that now they could forget about cycling forever since no other Americans race bikes at a top professional level.

Oh, they do? My bad. What are their names?

Huh. Never heard of them. We’re getting off-track here anyway.

We threw you a retirement party, Lance.  You see Jan standing over there by the lamp? He was there. See Phil and Paul by the window (cute of you to wear matching shirts, guys)? They were there. See George in those wacky Oakleys he wears? He was there. We were all there. We let you give a speech.

We gave you presents, Lance. It will be awkward if we have to ask for them back.

(Lance, my weight today is 163.8 lbs. Just thought you should know.)

Kool-Aid Dose #1

On Labor Day, Matt and I went on a 20-mile ride along some of the country roads around Sammamish, Redmond, Carnation, and Fall City. The weather went out of its way to be perfect, and I had hand-picked a course that was almost ridiculously scenic. By the time we had gone five or six miles, Matt was going on and on about what a great time he was having. And then at the end of the ride he talked about how great it is to go biking and see the country and how we’ve got to go again soon.

That’s a good sign.

Kool-Aid Dose #2

Flash forward to Tuesday evening. Matt e-mails me saying that things have come up, he won’t be able to bike in to work with me the next morning. Then, at 7:30 the next morning, right as I’m about to take off for work, Matt calls. He’s managed to juggle his schedule, so he can ride in after all.

That’s a really good sign.

Kool-Aid Dose #3

Yesterday, on the ride home from work, I started talking to Matt about trying to make it up Thompson Hill Road — a very steep hill about a mile long — with just one stop, instead of two. "Go slow, use a low gear, try not to go anaerobic," I advised.

Matt churned up the hill in a low gear, and got past the first point where he usually needs to walk it. I expected him to get off between there and the second place he’d been dismounting, but no. He kept climbing toward the second place he usually stops. Matt wanted to clean Thompson Hill.

As he got to the final third of the climb, Matt started wobbling. That’s when I told him something important: "You’ve still got one more gear you can go down." Matt shifted into his granny and pulled to the top. He was suffering, but he put his head down, and he cleaned it.

Matt’s hooked.

Today’s weight: 164.4 lbs.