Catching Up, But Not Breathing Hard

Okay, it's been a while since I posted something here, but sometimes life gets in the way of writing about it, and I have to set some time aside to step back, breathe, and regurgitate that mess to you my loyal readers.  Well, I hope you guys think it's more than a regurgitated mess, but that's up to you to decide whether it's worthy of 5 minutes out of your own busy lives.

So, this week has been busy, so let's get right to it.  Some of my buddies decided to take up billiards again because of a broken finger received while bowling.  I like pool, my family has a pool table, and I also like anything where I get to aim at something and smack it.  I also like darts, frisbee, and archery.  I haven't picked up a bow and arrow in quite a while, but I still have fond memories (Oooh, pull it out quick, walk it off, it's a good thing you got that tetanus shot).  Take a look at Warren here, punishing those bad balls for being arranged all nice and neat:

 

Action Shot!

 

Remember, last weekend got rained out, so I could actually afford to stay up late and do normal hanging out stuff instead of going to sleep at 10 PM.  But because of all that rain, and that it's still technically winter here in California, a new layer of snow showed up in the mountains I climb on my bike during my daily rides.  See if you can find the snow covered mountain top in this next shot:

 

Me and my shadow.

 

Now, normally, I would have posted something about the snow and how the sun is setting later again, so I can ride after work instead of on my lunch break (yes, I rode on my lunch break, obsessed I tell you!), but that would have happened on Thursday, but my boss had other plans for me for that night: schmoozing with a vendor and his local network of clients.  Now, this wasn't one of the printing industry's usual vendors, whose profit margins are so slim, it's usually just enough to buy you donuts when they come for a visit.  This particular vendor has a suite at the Staples Center, so I had to go to a Laker game.  I know, poor me, going to business meetings late at night after having been up since 5 in the morning, and, of all the the luck, having the meeting downtown.  Well, at least there was a floor show.  Here's the stage:

 

Not TOO bad of a view from here.

 

And here was the conference room:

 

All this and chips too!

 

So, that was a late night.  The Lakers put down the Sacramento Kings by 21 points, and I got to see a fight in the pricey seats right below us.  A Kobe fan was grappling with a Mike Bibby fan.  What I liked too was how Mike Bibby got the loud boos, but the loudest boos came when the referees were introduced and Steve Javey got the worst of it.  Awesome!

I mentioned that the sunset comes later these days, so on Friday, I was able to go a little further on my climbing ride than usual.  The usual is stopping in the middle of Morris Reservoir, but this ride, I got to the dam that fills it up:

 

San Gabriel Dam, the bigger one.

 

I also satisfied a personal goal with this ride: I climbed the whole thing in my big front gear.  For those who don't know, road bikes have more than 9 or 10 gears because they can switch gears, either 2 or 3, up near the pedals.  This gives the cyclist 18 or 20 gears, or 27 or 30.  All these gears are necessary depending on the terrain and how fast you want to go.  The big gear is supposed to be for speed, not climbing, but for strength training days, I try to ride the big gear because, plainly, it's harder.  So, I felt like a stud, yeah!

Friday was a busy day for special foods.  An adjacent department had met an incentive goal, and I had promised them a Sushi boat for lunch if all the quality control checks came back positive.  And they did (I was sure I wouldn't have to dish out for the sushi, but I guess the incentive worked).  So, a big platter of sushi for lunch.  Then a little bit later, we had the office cake for Mike's birthday, which is this Sunday.  There he is, cutting the grub:

 

I'll have that big piece here, and you guys can fight over this itty bitty piece.

 

Our officemates were anxious to fight over that itty bitty piece (I'm kidding of course, I ate the big piece ;) ):

 

Cut that cake already!

 

And, as always, Jenni has to add her special sense of gravitas to every occasion.  Thanks Jenni!

And finally today.  I rode 80 miles today, mostly climbing, in preparation for the Solvang Century in a couple weeks.  Starting from Pasadena, I climbed Salvia Canyon, Lida, Glenoaks in Glendale, the hill next to the golf course in Griffith Park, Barham, Mulholland Drive, Sepulveda Pass, Chevy Chase in La Canada, and finally Sierra Madre in Sierra Madre.  Here's the view of the Hollywood Bowl from Mulholland Drive:

 

I would have shot the Hollywood sign, but there were stairs involved. I was doing enough climbing already.

 

I was a little tired after all that.  According to my altimeter on my bike, all that was over 4400 feet of climbing.  Not bad.

Weathering it

I'm sure most of you have figured out that cycling is classified as an outdoor sport.  Let's all have that "duh" moment, but when most of us hear the term "outdoors", we think camping, trails, trees, backpacks, and boots.  I certainly don't think of skin tight clothing, padding in private places, and shoes that only work when clipped onto a primitive machine.  The clothing for cycling is very specialized, much like football, soccer, or skiing.  But cycling and skiing are called outdoor sports while football and soccer are called field sports.  When you ski or cycle, the terrain is wide open.  Sure, there's painted lines for road cycling, but those lines aren't really for the bikes, they're there to make sure cars stay where they're supposed to be.

But the main problem with outdoor sports, besides the colorful shirts, strange hats, and weird shoes, is that they are outdoors.  Outdoors means weather: too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, too foggy.  All these things can happen outdoors, all of them even in the same day for those of us in Southern California.  That's what happened to me this weekend: I was reminded that my main hobby is an outdoor sport because of rain.  I got rained out on Saturday and I didn't want to chance it on Sunday.  My rides usually start out early in the morning, and that's when the rain was happening.  Both days, the rain stopped around 8:30, but the roads were still too dangerous by 10.  I mentioned that I got rained out on Saturday and I just didn't want to get back on the bike after things had dried out.  Sunday was stupider.  The rain again stopped around 8:30, but the clouds threatened all day, even though it never rained again.  So I called off my ride, but if I had chanced it, there would not have been a problem.  Oh well, hindsight's 20/20.  Besides, I rode 107 miles last weekend, I deserve a break.  At least that's how I justify my laziness to the guilty voices in my head.

But can't you cycle indoors on a trainer?  Yes, you can.  This kind of exercise program is called spinning, where you lock your bike onto a machine that allows your back wheel to spin as pedal, you can control the resistance, and pedal hard and fast.  I say you can, because I can't.  Why not?  I hate them.  I really, really hate trainers.  Really, really, honestly, really hate them.  It's not even rational.  Okay, so there's gotta be a story here, right?  Yes, of course, there is.  I have not been on a bike trainer since April 29th, 2004.  That's the day I broke my hand which eventually required surgery.

Now, most of my friends say that I should come up with a better story about my bionic hand and cool scar, but honestly, I like the ridiculousness of reality.  Plus, there were witnesses, not just to the lameness of the accident, but what a tough little bugger I am when it comes to pain.

I did not learn how to ride a bike until the year 2003.  I did not own a bike until the year 2004.  That's the same bike you see in all the pictures I've posted here.  I had not broken a bone in my entire life until April 29th, 2004.  That is the day I got my first clip-in pedals installed on my bike to be fitted.  Mike and Warren were with me.  We had just ridden 42 miles with my plain old pedals, and we went to the shop where I had bought my bike.  After 3 months, they, and I, felt I was ready to clip in to my bike.  The pedals were installed, and as the sales guy and Mike were chatting about our ride, I attempted to clip into the right pedal.  It just was not working, and I began stomping on the pedal to get enough force onto the clips.  Bad idea.  I stomped and finally felt the shoe clip on, but I had stomped so hard, the bike had become unbalanced on the trainer.  Well, I tried so hard to clip on to the pedal, there was no way I was going to learn to unclip in the second it was going to take for me, the bike, and the trainer to hit the ground.

Mike and the sales guy were standing to my left side, and I was falling to the right.  They both literally had that "Nooooooh!" moment in slow motion as they saw me topple and crash into a rack of little kid mountain bikes.

I usually remember my falls, the pain of joints hitting the ground in awkward positions, but this time, all I felt was my hand being bent in a way I had not felt before.  Oh, there was pain, but to Mike, Warren, and the sales guy, they could not tell how badly I was hurt by my reaction.  My two middle fingers got caught in the spokes of a wheel, and were bent at a strange angle.  Even though I was in a lot of pain, I knew they were dislocated, so I pushed them back into their sockets and felt them click into place.  I thought the shifting I felt in my hand were just the knuckles grabbing the bones again.  According to my surgeon, that's probably when the second break occurred.

I immediately went into shock, but never having been in shock, I didn't know what was going on.  I began to sweat and the world became very bright.  The sweat happens because of a whole mess of adrenaline being pumped into the blood stream so an injured animal can ignore pain and either run away or fight its attacker.  The pupils of the eye dilate in the presence of adrenaline.  I picked myself up, after learning how to unclip from the pedal while lying on the ground, asked for some ice or at least the bathroom, and ran cold water over my hand.  At the time, I thought that I had at least sprained it while dislocating the fingers.  After ten minutes, while drinking some water and flexing my hand, the brightness went away, I got back on the bike, and finished fitting my pedals to my cleats.  I never cried out in pain.  All I said was, "Whoa," right before I pushed my two fingers back into place.

That night, I wrapped my hand in an ace bandage, iced it, and thought everything would be okay the next day.  Well, bruising started showing up in my other knuckles the next day, so I went and got x-rays.  My doctor was surprised that I had waited over 24 hours to get looked at and asked if I was taking any pain medication.  Just advil, for the swelling.  Well, he said, I'm giving you an appointment at the orthopedic center so they can set the bone, but they won't do anything until Wednesday.  I broke my hand on Sunday.  My hand was immobilized in a splint, and I was told to keep it elevated.

On Wednesday, I saw the orthopedist, they saw the x-ray, and the doctor immediately gave me back my co-pay, told me she could not set the bone with how badly it was broken, and set up a new appointment with a hand surgeon an hour from then.  When doctors start giving your money back, you know it's bad.

I then went to the hand surgeon, he saw the x-ray, made me curl my hand a few times, and then he said that I had two options.  I could let it heal how it was, but the break in the third metacarpal was such that my middle knuckle was already shorter than it was supposed to be.  Also, if I let the bone heal without setting it properly, I would always have a piece of bone sticking into the middle of my palm.  That's when I said, "Cut me doc, I can take it."  He recommended surgery to put screws in the bone, at the most two, which would never come out, but I would have a perfectly set bone and full mobility to my hand.  You see, the break was at such an acute angle, twisted in a spiral, that there was no way to set the bone externally.  Here's a picture of the hands of the bone, so you get a better idea what was going on.

 

 

The third metacarpal is right in the middle and it was snapped like a chicken's drumstick.  They couldn't operate for a week, because they had to wait for the swelling to go down, so for another week, another splint, and I could now feel the bones grating against each other because the swelling was going down. *Shudder*  Well, the surgeon's one hour surgery and one to two screws at the most, became a ninety minute surgery with five screws stuck in the bone.  During the surgery, the doctors found another break, and had to get my parents' okay that I would probably agree to more screws.  I'll tell you at another time how I was still getting calls from work while I was getting prepped for surgery, even taking a call while I was tying my medical robe with one hand.  Try not to leave that image in your head for too long.  Surgery was fun, even that last little shot in the butt to make me "feel relaxed."  I closed my eyes with a big splint on my hand and woke up with a bigger splint on my hand.  All in all, I only missed 3 days of work.  I was just a little groggy the day after, and vicodin is fun drug to have in your system.

Rehab was great, like going back to preschool, playing with blocks and putty.  But what sucked was no exercise for 4 months.  Not being on the bike, even for a rained out day, reminds me of those 4 months.  And the scar on my hand reminds me why bikes are for the road, not for spinning in place.

Tour de Palm Springs Eternal

This weekend I rode the Tour de Palms Springs Century, 102 miles of desert road fun.  Because I rode to the start and back to my hotel from the finish, it was really 107 miles, but let's back up and start the story on Friday.

I took some pictures from my daily ride, which I did not neglect, but I had a new ride buddy who wanted to get his legs warmed up for the ride the next day.  Michael from work followed my wheel on our flat course as we looked at views from the Santa Fe Dam like this:

 

That's not smoke is it?

 

Yeah, that actually is smoke from a brushfire in Rancho Cucamonga from last week, but look how clean and clear the rest of the sky is.  Nice.  Oh yeah, the public utility finally finished that solar panel substation:

 

"Solar energy is a pipe dream." Homer Simpson

 

Eh, not so much Homer, but every little bit helps.  So, Mike got so jazzed from his little taste of bike heaven, that he blew himself out doing the 65 mile version of the Tour, but I'll come back to that.  We had a small caravan forming (two cars) after work, that was Mike and me in one car and the Cotas and Christina in the other car.  But before the trek started, I had to start carboloading.  Thank you Domenico's for taking orders by phone:

 

Appetizing, no? Uh, no.

 

Sometimes food is not about the taste, but the fuel.  Let's just say the garlic bread helped, and I had no problems with my glycogen stores the next day.  Wait a sec, I mentioned Mike and me in one car, but there should have been another name.  Yes, where was Warren?  Unfortunately a family situation arrived on his doorstep the night before and his weekend plans were dashed.  And that's all I'll say in polite company.

So, bring on the traffic!  Thousands of cars, on the same stretches of freeway, all going in the same direction, yay!  We had to stop at Del Taco for bathroom breaks, bad food but lots of calories, and a cup size that went past large and headed straight to Macho.  I am not kidding, Del Taco's "large" is called the Macho.  While waiting for people to order, I took this picture.  Yes, I'm obsessed, but just look at the picture!

 

Pretty, pretty gears.

 

We got to Palm Springs around 9-ish, just as our other friends were receiving their food at the restaurant we were supposed to meet at, but knew we couldn't, hence the downing of the Macho.  But we still got to hang out for  a bit, I drank a glass of red wine, and we enjoyed our friends' company as we caught up and strategized for the coming ride.  We all went to bed too late, but that always happens at these organized ride events.

Saturday morning, 4:45 AM, yowza that's early.  Unfortunately that's only a little bit earlier than I usually wake up for work.  So, not so much of a problem.  I woke, I showered, I dressed, I got my bike stuff together, and rode to the start, which was two and a half miles away.  Start time for the full century was 7 AM.  I got to the start and met up with my ride buddy Sebastian at 6:55.  Sebastian and I did our first century together last summer, and I had not seen him since August.  I could not believe it, but work schedules and lives of the employed being what they are, it was not too hard to understand.  I'm just glad he told me he had shaved his beard, otherwise, I would not have recognized him.  He looked like a baby!  As if I should talk, but the only way you could tell that I was the older of the pair was the jaded shield of cynicism that lay behind my eyes.  Ha, I kill myself.  But really, we look like the same age, you'll see later, but I'm 32 and Sebastian's 23.

So we rolled out with a mass of people.  Helping us start was the Palm Springs High School Marching Band.  Did I mention this ride was a big deal to the whole community?  TV cameras, retired sports personalities, cheerleaders and pageantry teams, and winter formal queens and her courts were all present. Cheesy, but the dirty old men, me included, did not mind having the high school girls checking us out. 

I could not wait until we hit the windmills on the course because that's where the first hills are, and that's where the chaff starts to separate from the wheat.  Otherwise it's just too dangerous.  We had people falling over at stoplights 2 miles from the start because of being nervous with all those people around.  That used to be me and I scared myself out on the road.  Once the mass of riders started getting spread out, we could breathe easier.

Sorry, I've got no pictures of the windmills.  It was hilly, and I was enjoying the climbing and the passing of the pokies.  The road also seemed to be the new jackrabbit graveyard.  I passed 3 very large poor bunnies on the side of the road.  Sebastian and I stayed together until we got to the hills, but then the billygoat legs took over and I didn't see him again until the first rest stop.  Next, a definition: SAG stop - Support And Gear.  These stops had all the important necessities: food, mechanics, fluids, and port-a-potties.  Here's the masses enjoying the grub:

 

Funny hats, colorful shirts, uncomfortable shoes: My kind of club!

 

Of course, the food and the drink is important, but here's where all the hanging out and resting really happens at a SAG stop:

 

Hey, that guy on the right isn't doing what I think he's doing, is he?

 

So, it was mainly at the SAG stops that I would regroup with Sebastian.  He's strong on the flats and the downhills, but hummingbird hearted billygoat over here likes any road with an upward angle.  For the first half of the ride, I barely saw Sebastian.  After each SAG stop, at the first roller, I was gone.  I tell you, rolling hills are great for light climbers like me.  Because, it's on this kind of terrain that I can go paceline surfing.  The trick to riding fast, if you're not that strong of a rider, is to find a group that is just a little stronger than you, sprint to catch its tail, and draft at the back or the middle of the group.  And that's exactly what I did.  I usually look for some strong tandem bike group, but I couldn't find any, but this strong cycling club was slowly passing me as I cruised up an incline, and I thought, "Here's my Maverick wave!"  I ramped up to catch them at the top of the hill, and caught the tiger by the tail with my teeth.  Now that was a wild ride.  Half an hour's worth of Indian pacelining at 35 miles an hour.  Normal pacelining is when the leader of the line peels off the front and his second then becomes the leader.  Indian pacelining is when the guy at the back sprints to the front to become the new leader and slowly keeps increasing the pace with each new sprint.  This pace line was dripping with testosterone, so there was no way that I was going to avoid my turn at the front.  After I did, I was done in, and I lost the tiger's tail when I went to the back of the line.  But, man, that's what the training is for, to keep up with those guys a little longer each month.

So, then it was lunchtime, and time to just get home.  No more proving one's cycling worth, just pedal and hang with your buddy and whoever else you pick up along the way.  The SAG stops were actually more enjoyable this year because each stop had live music provided by a local high school band.  The lunchtime SAG featured a band director from my generation,  because he was making his poor band play Bohemian Rhapsody, Offspring, and Billy Idol.  Yeah, really, that was my reaction too.  This SAG stop at mile 71 featured this band playing jazz standards in the shade:

 

The band is behind all those screaming fans, I mean, their parents.

 

Well, what about the ride conditions?  What was the road like?  For the most part, the road was great, not crowded with cars, and offered great views of the high desert mountains and the desert, along with whatever walled-in communities they keep building out there.  Like this shot:

 

So crisp, so clean!

 

Here's me, kind of enjoying the scenery:

 

"I hope this turns out, because I almost dropped this camera."

 

And so, Sebastian and I made it back to the start about 8 hours after we started, but only 6 hours actually riding our bikes.  Except for horribly cracked roads between mile 75 and 87, the last half of the ride was drama free.  We did see some injuries on the road: I saw the aftermath of a crash and Sebastian saw the ambulance take her away (I was about 20 minutes ahead of Sebastian at that time, thank you pace line gods!) and there was another pickup along the cobbles of the Coachella Valley.  But we avoided flats and injuries, which made for a very enjoyable ride.  Sebastian did get some sun though.  Don't laugh too hard, because my tan line was worse, and there is photographic proof, but you won't see it here.

 

Looking good Sebastian!

 

Obviously, we survived, kicked it poolside and hot tub, er, side, and relaxed a bit before a whole mess of mexican food found its way inside me along with a couple of margaritas.  Overall, a great day.  So, how did Mike do?  Well, he told me he cramped, and had to granny gear spin his way home.  This is what happens when you start out too fast.  I actually felt this happening to me among the windmills in the first 20 miles of the road.  I had so much energy and felt so good, I wanted to blast those rolling hills, but I knew that I had 85 miles to go, so I toned the machismo down and let those triathlete guys go ahead of me.  Grr, I hate it when I get passed on a hill, but sometime you have to take the longer view and accept the level of your abilities.  When you find out how to do that, please let me know too!

Road Rash and Road Kill

Okay, you might be thinking this is the entry where Joe writes about sports injuries and compares them to the poor dumb animals he finds on the side of the road, but you'd only be half right.  Yes, I'm gonna write about all my favorite spills, but on today's ride, I was the road kill.  No, I was not hit by a car, but I was run over by another bike.  I will explain all in a few short paragraphs.

First, let's talk about road rash.  Road rash is the term used to describe the scrapes received from falling down and sliding on the road.  The faster one is going before the spill, the deeper the road rash because one spends more time sliding before stopping.  Motorcyclists get the worst road rash, which is why they are supposed to wear all those leather clothes.  There is another term called road burn where one is scraped through the clothes, or lightly abraded by the road surface where there is no bleeding involved.

I've got some great road rash scars, mainly on my lower legs, around my knees, one on my hip, one on my butt, a few around my elbows, some deep ones on the back of my hand, and one on my shoulder blade.  First of all, here's what fresh road rash looks like (WARNING: If you don't like the sight of blood, do not look at the following picture):

You should see the other guy!

I've gotten road rash exactly like this one before getting stuck in a rut in Griffith Park and having the front wheel get jammed with nothing to do but fall over.  This happened to me today in Chino Hills next to some road construction.  Unfortunately, there weren't any signs warning us about an open trench, and what looked like some loose dirt and gravel on the side of the road was really a six inch deep dropoff that I slipped into and fell out of.

Falling off a bike is pretty easy, if you think about it.  All you have to do is push the bike away from you and fall on the pavement.  Never hit the pavement with a bike still in between your legs because that is a very good way of getting extra bruising and may be broken bones.  Yeah, falling is the easy part, but the landing and the abrupt stopping is the hard part.

So, I did that and landed on my chest and took the brunt of the fall on my hands and my left knee.  You saw (if you weren't squeamish) how my knee took the abrupt stop and the palms of my hands feel a little bruised, but not so bad.  What was the bad part is that I became road kill after my fall.

One of my riding buddies, Jayne, was following right behind me when I fell.  She saw the bike go one way and veered left to get away from it.  Well, remember, I also went left to get away from my bike, so Jayne had nowhere to go except use me as a speed bump.  I felt her front tire go over the small of my back, and then I felt her and her bike land on top of me.  Jayne was okay, since I was there to break her fall, but I felt some extra pain in my pelvic region and I was eager to make sure that I was still of the male gender.  Yup, still a guy.

So, after a few minutes to shake the cobwebs out, wash the rash (I was riding with women, so I was inundated with handiwipes, antibiotic cream, and bandaids), offered Adrian's magic crash cookie (which I took later, but not at the time of the crash), we were back on our way climbing the, ahem, "rollers" of Chino Hills.  Let's just call it a rolling climb like Mulholland Drive, and we'll leave it at that.

You may ask, is that the worst crash you've ever had?  Simple answer, no, but it would be hard to say which was my worst crash.  My most spectacular crash was when I touched wheels in a pace line on the San Gabriel River Trail and fell halfway down the river embankment.  That crash involved a human chain to get my bike back to the top of the trail and plenty of blood on my handlebars from scraped flap of skin on my finger.  The most damaging crash was tumbling down East Fork Road when my back wheel locked going around a blind curve on a steep descent.  That involved a helmet cracked in two places, ripped up gloves, a hole in my shorts (that's where my rash scar on my butt came from), and a separated shoulder.  I was still able to ride the 30 miles home, but I was very worried that I had broken my collar bone.

But my most expensive crash came when I got this scar:

"Cut me, Doc. I can take it."

That's a surgical scar from repairing my third metacarpal which had broken in two places.  I got my two middle fingers stuck in the wheel spokes of a nearby bike after I fell off my bike, and that little maneuver snapped the metacarpal like a chicken bone.  I'm now bionic since I have five little surgical steel phillips head screws in the palm of my hand.  I was in a cast for five weeks, in rehab for two months, and off the bike for four months.  I could not exercise at all because any exertion would have increased the blood pressure in the extremities, and any swelling near my hand while the bone was knitting would have been, in my surgeon's language, "bad."  I'll relate the details of the crash at a later time, or, if you can't wait, bug one of my friends since two of them were there and the rest have already heard the story.

So, until I can come up with a better nickname, just call me Jayne's Speed Bump.

Riding With Strangers

It happens to everyone at some point.  Either you're walking along, running along, or riding along some smooth, well-travelled road, and some stranger, going almost the same speed as you, will join you for a bit.  I don't know about you, but sometimes this makes me feel uncomfortable.  On a road bike, I do feel safer, just because, as a group, road cyclists are all crazy about riding their bikes, so if you run into one on the road, chances are very good that he or she just wants to ride the bike.  Hardly any chance of chatting you up for some Mary Kay products, or any questions about whether you have ever read the Book of Mormon.  Although, those guys do ride bikes occasionally for their missions, so just watch out for black pants, white shirts, and black ties.

But I've ridden with strangers before, sometimes for more than an hour, without having any meaningful conversation, other than heavy breathing, an occasional "Car Back," an "Are you alright?" if they fall behind during a climb, and a final "Have a good ride!"

Most of the good bike routes around the San Gabriel Valley and San Fernando Valley are known among the cycling community, so chances are you will find other cyclists along your route.  I've acted as tour guide for some guy that just moved to Pasadena and needed to know a good safe road to get to the San Gabriel River Trail.  I passed him in Duarte, and slowed down after we stopped at an intersection and he asked for a way to get there.  So we rode together.  I was still not in that great a shape, so I wanted to work out, but the other dude didn't know that.  So I became a very good listener as Mr. Ex-racer told me his life story for 45 minutes.  I hope he gets back together with his girlfriend, they seemed good together.

The other kind of "buddy" ride that happens is when you don't even talk.  Either you are using the guy in front of you as motivation climbing a mountain, or somebody behind you is using you.  That happened to me the last, and I mean "last" time, I rode Glendora Mountain Road by myself.  It was 9 miles of climbing, with some guy on my back wheel, pacing himself up the mountain.  He cramped a couple of times, so I slowed down for him to catch me again, to keep up his pace.  Sometimes you need someone to push you a little harder than you normally would go by yourself.  But eventually we had to part ways, since I wanted to take a pretty picture of the fog:

 

The fog comes in on little cat feet

 

I never saw that guy again.  I also never saw that pair of shorts, that helmet, and those gloves I was wearing again since I crashed on my way down the back side of the mountain and bled all over my bike for the 30 mile ride home.  But that experience also showed the helpfulness of a group of riders.  Ten riders were on the way up the East Fork road when they saw me shaken up and resting with my disheveled bike and ripped up clothes.  The dudes immediately went to the bike, straightened out the seat, seated the chain, and made sure my remote sensors for my cycle-computer were working.  The only girl in the group immediately pulled out the handi-wipes, the advil, and bandaids.  Gender socialization in action my friends.  As soon as I was no longer in shock, and I felt that I could make it back home, they told me where they were parked (which was on my way to Pasadena), and said that if I found that I was more hurt than we thought, just wait for them at the park, and I could get a ride. 

You see, this is the community of fanatics.  When I bought that bike, I joined a big club, complete with colorful shirts, strange hats, and secret hand signals.

Of course, not everyone is this friendly, or polite even.  As endurance athletes, we can be a little competitive, and if we smell weakness, we pounce.  This happened to me, on both sides, with the same group of riders, in the span of 20 minutes.  I thought I was going to pass some old-timers on my way to Claremont, and I did.  But when they saw me pass them, one of them began pushing their little group so they could pass me back.  Two of them did, but the oldest one couldn't take the pace and hung on my wheel until we got to the little street with all the cafes on it.  Luckily, I was Starbuck's bound and they went to the independent up the street, otherwise there could have been some glaring over our lattes.

Unfortunately for us hetero guys, cycling is very predominantly male oriented.  How could it not be?  You've got your mixture of gear, tools, sweat, competition, and expense that every other male hobby or pastime has.  Because these are the kinds of strangers that I want to meet on the road:

 

Hello, cycling ladies!

 

Well, fortunately, I already know these nice ladies.  Hi Gina!  Hi Kim!  Both married.  Oh well.  Oh ladies, FYI,  if you're on the open road on Saturday and Sunday mornings, you'll have some idea where to find me.