Day 4 of the Tour de Cure

Start	Finish	Distance
North Conway, NH	Northfield, VT	104 miles

!
Wow. OK, Day 4 is at an end. Official mileage tally was 107.4 miles.

This day, was a long, and very hilly trip west from Attitash over to the Norwich University campus in Northfield, VT. We were allowed to leave pretty early (around 6:30 am) so it was quite cold when we started. I was pretty ready to be wrapped in a down comforter at the ride-out, but that didn't last too long. The first stretch of the ride was through the Crawford Notch. I'm sure that when people were traveling this via horse or wagon or even car, I guess, it seemed nice and "notched" out. But I must say that, for cyclists, it should really be called something like the "Crawford not nearly as bad as cycling straight up the sides of the mountains on either side, but still pretty bad". It doesn't trip off the tongue, but it seems to capture the spirit. Anyway, the Notch was pretty good for warming up (we hit the top at about 17 miles), and the rest of the day (up to about mile 75) was fairly even, although with pretty regular hills to get over. Many of them had some downhills to help balance things out, but for those of you who have never heard me explain why downhills are not as good as uphills are bad, be sure to ask. At mile 75 (or so) at the third rest stop, the woman handling that stop said something like "the rest of the ride is pretty good, but nothing like what you've been through." So I headed out of there ready to finish up the ride. I have no idea what kind of sadist that woman is, but immediately after leaving that rest stop we hit an uphill section that went on, and I am not kidding here, for 11 miles without a break. It just went up, and up, and up. This was by far the worst thing I have ever had to ride, and by this time my legs had pretty much given up complaining. To make a long story less long, that was the worst, but there was more to come. I did manage to finish it, and maybe we should just stop there and move on to musings from the ride.

The hills were bad, yes, but there was also a headwind, a rather severe headwind, all day long. But I promised myself while I was riding that I wouldn't complain about the headwind. So let me instead talk about the beautiful scenery that we rode through. This was classic New England farm country, with corn stalks, and farm houses with flags flying, and clear blue skies with puffy white clouds. And the great thing about it was how the wind seemed to want to acknowledge our ride. "The corn stalks," the wind seemed to say, "should bow their heads in your direction in honor of your ride. And the fluffy white clouds," said the wind, "should come rushing towards you to welcome you. And the flags," the wind declared, "should salute you by flapping mightily in your direction as you ride." So, really, as I said, the day was just beautiful.

Oh, and though I said that I wouldn't discuss the headwind (notice how in the previous paragraph I stayed away from the whole headwind discussion) I will ask the following question. Maybe someone has an answer. Is it possible to not believe in God, and still curse him steadily for 7 hours for sending that damned wind? I admit that I wasn't necessarily cursing a modern concept of God (it could have been some ancient god of wind, if there was one) but when push comes to shove, I clearly believe that someone is deliberately sending the wind to harass me. Not sure exactly what that means. Maybe we can have a group analysis.

So there were, I think, two main musings from the ride today that one or two of you may find interesting, or at least comprehensible.

There were a lot of trucks on the road today. Big trucks, some carrying logs. That kind of thing. (It's OK Mom, don't worry about it.) But when they would go by it started to make me think of the movie Breaking Away (a second mention in this set of entries!) For those who have seen it, remember the scene when our hero, the faux-Italian biker kid is riding down a hill, and he starts drafting off a truck? The truck goes faster and faster, but the kid stays with it, until the truck is pulled over by a police car and the kid goes shooting by. As I was riding today I started thinking how nice that would be. I'd be going 40 mph, then 50 mph, maybe even 60 mph. And so what if there was some dumb kid drafting behind my truck? I can turn on the radio and grab a handful of potato chips whenever I feel like it.
The second musing has to do with outrage. Yes, I'm outraged. The Tour de France is going on now, and the big deal this year is that it's a "clean" Tour. Apparently those riders were unable to turn around without ingesting a steroid of some sort, whether they knew it or not. And now is also the MLB All-Star game. Baseball players, too, appear to randomly swell up to enormous proportions or to grow new heads or whatever it is, because everything that they eat, except maybe for those sunflower seeds, also appears to be made of 100% steroids. So this is where my outrage comes in. I mean, these guys apparently can't turn around without swallowing some kind of growth hormone. But look at me; I'm just some little guy and I've managed to pull my butt over 107 miles through the White Mountains, all without benefit of steroids. And my question is: where are all the steroids? Because lord knows, if anyone had offered me one at any time today, I certainly would have taken it. It's just outrageous to me that steroids appear to be everywhere except where they are clearly needed, which is in my legs. Right now.

OK. I may have run out of things to say about today. However, I don't want to forget to continue with a topic that I started yesterday -- that no one can complain about my lousy limerick until they write me a poem. Happily, there were people who rose to the challenge. I should point out that there appears to be a view among some of them that a limerick must also be dirty, further disqualifying my entry (disqualified now on the counts of not being dirty, and generally sucking.) So, for your reading pleasure, some biking limericks submitted in response.

There once was a man named Leigh Mike
Who set off to ride on his bike
He set off for Maine
and got caught in the rain
and fumed "I should have just taken a hike."

There once was a man from Ridgewood
who rode a bike as far as he could
As he rode in the saddle
and looked at the cattle
if he was a bull he'd have got wood.

There once was a bike racer from Mass
who suffered from horrible gas.
He started to bubble
when he got into trouble
and choked the riders he passed.

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