As I rode south towards Apex, NC, I took (voice)notes of a few things:

• There are roosters living within a mile from my house.
• There are very few cars on the road at 5:00AM on a Saturday, but the cars that are there must be very late for something because they are all going very, very fast.
• “At 5:00AM, Roxboro Road ain’t all that bad.”
• It was at this point that I realized that I had to make 30+ miles in 2 hours, saying to myself “I gotta boogie!” and thus getting Weird Al Yankovic stuck in my head for the next few miles.
• In order to get Al out of my head (for, though I genuinely think the man is an absolute genius, the afore-linked song is hardly his best work), I fired up the audiobook of the day: Chapterhouse Dune by Frank Herbert. Unfortunately, in contrast to the extremely high production value of all of the other recent re-recordings of the Dune series, there was one glaringly, painfully, incredibly obvious and yet inexplicably uncorrected problem. One of the readers (out of the four who took over reading duties from each other for a chapter at a time) apparently hadn’t listened to anything the others had read, either in this book or any of the previous five, and was pronouncing many important and distinct words wrong. Painfully wrong. “Sky-tale” instead of “Sigh-tale”, “mah-truzz” instead of “mah-trays”, and three or four other instances that I can’t remember at the moment. It took so much away from the book to hear names and book-specific nouns mispronounced (or, at least, pronounced differently than everyone else) that I almost stopped listening. Thankfully, this particular reader had only a few chapters.
• Riding down NC-55 for most of the way was not nearly as bad as I’d expected, but I was breathless as I was olfactorily made aware of the existence of Durham’s Triangle Waste Water Treatment Plant. Phew!!

I arrived at MCHS in plenty of time, signed in, got my cue sheet, and wondered where Dave was. (wait… wait… wait…) Dave got there in plenty of time too, just without as large a plenty as I had. We both filled up bottles and grabbed a last bite before the start, accompanied musically by the MCHS Band the entire time. I had selected my Cheez-It jersey for the day’s festivities and, due to several entertaining outbursts (yelling “Tequilla!” as the band played the song of the same name, following the Looney Tunes trailer music with a hearty “Buhdee, buhdee, buhdee, buhdee, that’s ALL, folks!”), I became known to the band and their supporters as “the Cheez-It guy”. Dave noted that this was perfect because, in his honest onion, I was “one cheesy cracka!” After a rousing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner (and an appreciation by both Dave and I of the rather slow speed at which sound travels), we were on our way.

The ride itself was largely uneventful, but was not the restful cruise I was anticipating after my 15mph sprint to get there. Turn out that Dave’s bike is a “hybrid bike”, with a MTB frame and road-bike gearings, while my MTB had typical MTB-gearings. Translation: Dave was able to (and did) go much faster than I would have preferred. Oh well.

Highlights from the “organized” part of the day’s ride:

• As expected, Dave and I were cracking each other up the whole time (just like we do at work!), but the best chuckles came when I looked over, saw a rather portly gentleman dressed in camouflage while driving a riding mower around his yard, and said to Dave in a voice filled with wonder and amazement, “Woooooow! That mower is driving around all by itself!!“
• Many folks jokingly complained that my jersey was making them hungry. Next time, I should carry a few snack-packs of Cheez-Its in my back pockets to proffer to such individuals, if not just for the laughs.
• The band had been shuttled past us (cheering “Cheez-It guy!” out the window) to play at the first rest stop where Dave and I asked them to “play Misty for me” and play the “Theme from Shaft”. Ignoring our requests, they decided to play “Money, Money” (which in reality was “Mony, Mony”… ah, kids these days…)
• I managed to get up to 43mph on one particular downhill, but the race-car noise I made while passing Dave sent him off the road thinking I was a real car. Sorry about that, again, Dave.

Dave and I after the 32-miler

Eventually, though, Green Level Rd meets back up with the route I had used coming down. I had planned to simply cross the presumed busy road and use another side road to travel the rest of the way north. I found, however, that this road was not nearly as busy as I had expected, so, after the Greenway and Green Level, I ended up going home the same way I had come, largely without issue or event. All in all, a good long ride.

Turns out that it was no mist, however… it was drizzle, which turned into full-fledged rain about two miles from the house. I was also heading to my church’s Men’s Group meeting before work, so I made a half-mile deviation to IHOP (where we meet) and walked in completely soaked. An hour later, I was mostly dried out, but called a co-worker who lives near my house to ask if he would stop by and pick up some more clothes for me. He did. (Thanks, Dave!) There was a “biker’s breakfast” at Five Points downtown, with coffee and pastries and (most importantly) bike techs from a local shop. I stopped by, had some food and drink, talked to a bunch of other bike-to-workers, and had the techs look over my bike. Rode the rest of the way to work without any issues and changed into wonderfully dry clothes when I got there.

What I didn’t mention above was that my Men’s Group meets at 6:00AM, so, in order to get there on time, I got up at around 4:30, and I hadn’t slept that well the night before. So, as 5:00PM approached, I held a “Twitterpoll” and asked my friends:

TwitterPoll: Biked to work thru rain after 4 hrs of sleep. Wife nearby w/ station wagon. Do I ride , or get a ride home? Need answer quick.
4:05 PM May 15th from web

Three responders all said “ride”, but the final (and only significant) vote came by phone:

TwitterPoll Update: Wife brought no book to daughter’s swim practice, expected to talk with me instead. Looks like I’m getting a ride.
4:30 PM May 15th from web

So, met the wife at a nearby parking lot (there was a Bulls game, so no getting the car anywhere near my office), popped the bike in the back of the car and went home. A fitting end to a very interesting but ultimately unrealistic experiment in greener commuting.

One final thought that occurred to me while riding: when considering the “greenness” of biking to work, do they include the extra electricity needed to (a) wash the increased amount of laundry generated (change at work, change again at home after work) and (b) heat the water for the extra showers taken (one extra at home after work, would have taken one at work if we had a shower in the office)? I understand that the emissions generated by the electrical plants can be treated/scrubbed/whatevered at a central point that would not be possible/feasible to do at every tailpipe and that fossil fuels are a limited resource, but still… I never got the feeling I was saving energy, just spending it differently while taking a lot more time to get back and forth to work.

Also, for the second time this week, as soon as I got home, I hopped into the car and drove almost all the way back to the office to pick up my eldest daughter from her dance lessons. Again, I would have picked her up on my way home had I driven to work so, for the day, net emissions difference is near zero. Oh well…

 

Today’s ride to work was different in the following ways:

1. Breakfast: Today, I ate some.
2. Clothes: Yesterday, it was t-shirt, sweatpants (brrr!), windbreaker, bike socks, and bike shoes, with the backpack loaded with jeans, work shirt, “normal” socks, and sneakers, plus shorts and another t-shirt for the ride home. Today, it was t-shirt, jeans, normal socks, and bike shoes, with the backpack carrying two work shirts and my sneakers. I carried two shirts in case the lighter of the two was a wrinkle-fest. Both came out of the bag fine, so I left one of them at work for tomorrow. I was desperately missing the shorts for the trip home, so I’ll add those back tomorrow. All-in-all, it worked out pretty well.
3. Route: I added the extra 0.6 miles through Argonne Hills to again avoid some hills and some traffic. I may have added some time, but it also added peace-of-mind.

The ride home was a bit different too:

1. Delayed: After work today, there was a Bike-to-Work Week gathering at a nearby bistro (which, oddly enough, used to be a bicycle shop). As I usually ride solo, I thought it might be interesting to connect with some local riders, and so I went, intending to chat for 15-20 minutes and then head home for dinner. An hour later (oops), I called Shannon and let her know I’d be a bit later than usual and got back on track for home.
2. A little crazy: Seeing that the traffic was lighter than yesterday (because it was later than yesterday… duh!), and since I was late for dinner, I decided to be a little crazy… from Leon Street to Carver Street, I sprinted down Duke Street (four lanes, 40mph) as fast as I could in the empty gaps between the groups of cars created by the traffic signals (i.e. light turns red, traffic on Duke Street stops, I turn into the now-empty street and go as fast as I can until the cars catch up and I pull over, waiting for the next red light gap). It was fun, and likely faster than my pace yesterday, but not so much so in either case that I would want to do it again. Been there, done that, moving on.

Tomorrow, now that I’ve seen the quality of the roads on the route, I’m gonna change it up again by riding my road bike instead of my mountain bike. Should be a bit faster… we’ll find out tomorrow…

First word: Chilly! It was only about 50° when I left this morning… a bit nippy considering I wanted to not work up a sweat on this ride.

Second word: Panniers! If I had to carry my laptop, clothes, paperwork, etc., back and forth to work every day on my bike, I certainly would not want to have to do it on my back. The straps on my backpack rubbed something awful, most of what I could see in my helmet mirror was my backpack, and that darn thing was heavy!!

Third word: Traffic. Commuting in to work in downtown Durham from anywhere a few miles north of I-85 means spending at least a mile (likely more) on a fully utilized four-lane blacktop. Fully utilized by people who generally aren’t all that happy to be utilizing it at that very moment and more than likely aren’t all that happy to see a bike in front of them. Granted, I didn’t share the recent experience of my friend Adam (nor his ensuing deep thoughts, though I enjoyed reading them), but let’s just say I wasn’t feeling the love…

Once I got off Roxboro Road, everything went pretty well. Once I got to work, I thought of another word:

Fourth word: Breakfast. Sure, I didn’t want to be riding with a stomach full of eggs and sausage or anything, but i could have at least packed a PB&J or something. :/ Thankfully, a co-worker brought in cupcakes.

Around 5:45 (leaving time for some of the traffic to thin out), I went home:

And of course, a few more words:

Fifth word: Uphill. Turns out this word was wrong… the overall route was fairly flat and had an overall downhill tendency on the way home. It felt uphill though. Maybe it was that I was riding harder (knowing I could be sweaty when I got home), maybe it was that it was hotter (75°), maybe it was that it was at the end of a full day rather than at the beginning. Whatever the reason, it felt more difficult. (It wasn’t because of the bag, anyway… I left most of that stuff at work simply to I wouldn’t have to bring it back on my back the next day.)

Sixth word: Map. I tried a few slight variations on the return trip in order to avoid a few hills and some traffic. What I actually avoided for about a mile was the way home. :/

On an ironic note, today was more an exercise in exercise rather than in greener living, as my daughter still had to get home from dance lessons. After a quick shower and a haircut (thanks, sweetie!!), I got into the car and drove 2/3 of the way back to work to pick her up: something I usually do on the way home from work on Tuesdays (without taking a special trip). Then, upon arriving home, we realized that she left something rather important back at dance, so I got back into the car and went back to dance all over again. So much for saving the planet…

(Yes, yes… I understand that “horsepower” is strictly a measure of power and applies just as much to my bicycle as it does to my car, but it’s catchy… work with me here…)

Anyway, um… where was I… oh yes… today. Today, instead of riding my bike to work as planned, nature intervened. A light, persistent rain throughout the Triangle area has put the kibosh on open-air transportation. What’s a little rain you say? Well, were we talking about a recreational or work-out ride, I’d tell you that a little rain means nothing. However, as a condition present during an hour-long ride to work, where I’d have neither towel, nor shower, nor change of clothes waiting for me, it’s a deal-breaker. Oh well…

Tomorrow looks to be much nicer… we’ll see how my plans fare then.

As April doesn’t have any “naturally occurring” holidays, I decided not wait until the last minute again, checked the weather forecast, and took a day off work to do my ride.

The ride from Durham to Siler City was great. Wooded back-roads laid along smoothly rolling hills. Of all the rides I’ve done so far (not just counting my 2009 century rides), this is the ride I’d most like to do again. Last month was nice enough, but was a little busy; the previous two ended with me riding south on 501 from Roxboro to Durham… I hate that road. Anyway…

Got started at a *very* late 9:00 AM. I actually wasn’t sure I was going to do the ride at all… the forecast for the following Monday was a bit better (a la “warmer”), but I had sorta forgotten that Monday was my eldest daughter’s “half-birthday”. (I decided, very early on, that if my daughters’ birthdays were a special day with everyone, their “half-birthdays” would be a special day with just me. No school, no work, doing whatever they want.) So, I hemmed and hawed and took my time getting started (until things were a bit warmer). As such, and knowing this was an out-and-back ride as well, I didn’t stop much on the way down, planning to stop and take pics on the way back.

Had to stop for this one though:

Made it to Siler City a little after 1:00PM and started heading towards the center of town (and the 50-mile point), keeping an eye out for a good spot for lunch. A bit shy of the target, I found the place… the place where I was to have my repast: Johnson’s. Johnson’s is a little hole-in-the-wall, looking very much like a boxcar-style diner, with gen-u-ine retro fixtures and an extra helping of Southern hospitality. They’re open only four hours a day and there’s a 30-minute wait for a booth! Thankfully for me, counter seats are open to anyone as they become available, so I did not have to wait long to receive my serving of the house specialty: cheeseburgers.

[Stuff to remember, again, #1: Meaty, greasy sandwiches do not make for the best ride food. They are quite tasty, though.]

So, after polishing off an “all the way” cheeseburger masterpiece and a couple of sweet teas, I availed myself of the facilities, asked them to re-fill my bike bottles, and was back on the road a little before 2:00PM. Almost immediately, I heard sirens, and watched as, for the next 15 minutes, law enforcement and emergency services vehicles sped past me (as I dutifully pulled over to the side of the road and stopped, of course). It wasn’t long before I found out why…

At 1:55 p.m., 22-year-old Anthony Shane Ferguson of Silk Hope Gum Springs Road was traveling on Silk Hope Road on his motorcycle.

A vehicle driven by Kristine Linn Keeter of Burlington was turning into Silk Hope Grill when she failed to yield right-of-way to Ferguson’s motorcycle and the two vehicles collided, the Patrol reported.

Ferguson, who was a firefighter with the Silk Hope Fire Department, was ejected from his motorcycle and died as a result of his injuries.

(Quoted from the April 23, 2009, edition of The Chatham News. I’d link to the article, but their archives are subscriber-only. Oh well… their loss…)

The incident served to remind me that I must remain vigilant while out on the roads because others will not always do likewise. I ride with a helmet-mounted mirror and probably spend a quarter of my time on my bike looking backwards. I also check out the size and conditions of most roads I ride on before my ride via Google Maps’ “Street View”.

Continuing on, I came across the following…

• Houses I want to live in…



• Athletic bovines
• Music lovers
• Typically North Carolina middle-of-nowhere street names
• An apparently dangerous mineral formation:


To me, this says "No Trespassing! Beware of Rock!"

• “Het Landhuis” and the “Het Landhuis Barn”, whatever they are…



• A Funny home sign and a cool mailbox:



• That gargoyle (and his twin) again:



• And, finally, a new housing development, perfect for someone who had better leave a comment on this blog entry…

Some thoughts had while riding home…

• A framed review in Johnson’s said that their cheeseburgers “sell like hotcakes”. Where and when were “hotcakes” ever so popular as to be a fast seller? Anywhere? Anywhen?
• Riding through North Carolina pasture land on a warm, sunny day is simultaneously beautiful and revolting. The same rolling fields that are a joy to look at smell absolutely atrocious. Also, bicycles do not have windows you can roll up.
• I am finding that a firmly delivered “STOP!!” appears to do more to dissuade a chasing canine than planning a firmly delivered foot.

Oh… and I almost forgot…

[Stuff to remember, again, #2: Sunscreen.]

(I arrived home once again bearing the solar markings that could be left only by a cycling helmet on one who has been facing the same general direction for most of the day.)

Until next month…

All in all, it was a fairly uneventful ride. NC98 is a fairly nice road, with only a few busy sections, mostly at interchanges with larger roads. The heaviest traffic I experienced was all within 5 miles of home. :/ Dealing with Roxboro Rd at commute time is a giant pain in the neck.

The “bubbles” in what was supposed to be an out-and-back ride (at around 7, 65, and 81 miles) are where I “unintentionally took an alternate route”. Okay… I missed a turn and found myself lost. Special thanks to Duke OIT, without whose Blackberry (with mobile Google Maps installed) I’d never get to where I want to go.

Some thoughts:

• I’ve got to get lip balm and sunscreen into my bike bag. My lips are fine now, but I’ve got a pink nose and “cheek triangles” (from where the helmet straps weren’t).
• If I’m ever going south of my home on another ride (which I most certainly will be), I must leave earlier to avoid that crazy Roxboro Rd morning rush.
• “Eating” an energy gel is akin to eating toothpaste, save that toothpaste doesn’t leave your fingers feeling sticky afterward. I think I’ll stick to bars, thanks.
• A fried pork chop sandwich, while very tasty, may not be the best mid-century-ride lunch fare.
• I can’t wait until the weather is such that I don’t have to have three layers to get through a day-long ride.
• While I am fully aware that it was most certainly in jest, I was somewhat heartened by the cat-call I received from a passing SUV in response to my cycling garb.

Anyway, I got home safe with no mishaps and fun was has by all.

Having no Duke holidays in February, I took a day off of work to get February’s ride under my wheels. It again started much later than I had planned (8:15AM vs 7:00AM, again), which again meant that I’d be finishing after sundown. While (again) non-optimal, it was worse this time. “Why?”, you ask? Read on…

Started out pretty well: not too cold (the main reason I had picked this day for my ride: No balaclava necessary this time, but definitely needed my ear-warmers), and rolling on familiar roads for the first 10 miles or so. For the next 10 miles after that, my only problems were that I couldn’t get TwitPic to work from my BlackBerry Curve and that I had missed a turn. The missed turn was easily remedied thanks to a pretty good idea of where I was headed in the first place and (mostly, I must admit) mobile Google Maps. Then, upon reaching NC-86, the fun started.

(Note to self: When the Weather Channel web site bothers to put the work “WINDY” in the graphic for the weather conditions, they don’t exactly mean it would be a nice day to fly a kite.)

NC-86, being fairly wide and well-traveled, has much of it’s surrounding trees cut back about 15 feet or so on either side. This makes for a perfect “channel” for the crazy-strong headwinds that were present that day to race right down and say “Hi!” to me nearly the entire way to Virginia. Now would be a good time to remind (or inform) anyone who might actually be reading this that I ride a mountain bike–not a road bike–which means I’m largely upright, with my torso acting as a sail in those stupid headwinds. It took me six hours to go the 50 miles from home to Danville. It should have taken me four hours on a normal day and five hours on a slow day. It also meant that there were only four hours left until sundown–not nearly enough time for me to make the remaining 60 miles before dark.

It’s also a well-documented fact that headwinds experienced while traveling one direction NEVER result in tailwinds when traveling in the opposite direction. :/

On the way back, I stopped in a Burger King (at 5:40 PM and near the 85 mile mark) for some nice, warm, salty, warm, deliciously warm french fries (did I mention that they were warm?). I called my wife, seriously considering asking her to simply come pick me up there, even though I was still five miles short of an “official” Larry Schwartz Year-Rounder ride. I “manned-up” though, and simply asked Shannon to call me when she had picked up our oldest daughter from dance class an hour later to check my status.

An hour later, the temperature had dropped a full ten degrees, from the mid-40s to the mid-30s, and it was now pitch black outside. When my wife called, I asked her to stop at a service station (located at the corner of the road I was on and the road we live off of) where we would decide if she was heading home, or coming to get me. It should take her 15-20 minutes to get there from dance, and if she were to pick me up, I’d have to find a decent stopping point (namely, one where I could get a receipt to mark the location/date/time of the end of my ride).

Shortly after hanging up with her, I blew a tire in the middle of nowhere.

Had I mentioned that it was pitch black and 34 degrees outside? I had? Good. Wouldn’t want to leave something like that out.

So, sitting on the side of the road in the cold and the dark with a flat tire, I realized that, while I had enough distance to count the ride (~93 miles), I had no way to prove it without getting a receipt. I also had no way of telling my wife where I was or how to find me (other than telling her “keep driving and look for me on the side of the road”, of course). I had to repair my tire. Right then, right there. Great.

Had I mentioned I’ve never changed a tire while on the road before? No? Good. Wouldn’t want to leave something like that out.

Amazingly, though cold and dark (not the weather… I mean me; my mood was now very cold and very dark), I managed to change my tire in about 15 minutes and get a few miles down the road before my wife called again. I was now completely ready to be picked up… I just needed to find a place to get that blasted receipt. I asked Shannon to simply head north, looking for a cyclist riding south on the other side of the road. I’d call her if I found someplace to stop before she found me. I ended up stopping at Blalock’s Store in Rougemont, NC, about 12 miles short of my initial goal. This was still plenty of distance, but then I wondered, worriedly… “How long did this take me?”

(Here’s where the title begins to make sense. I hope.)

In order to count for the Larry Schwartz award, the ride must be done at an average speed–including stops–of 8.33 miles per hour. Thanks to the headwinds, the hills, the fries (mmm… warm), and the flat, it took me almost 11 hours to go 97 miles. That works out to… (carry the 4)… 8.81 mph. A bit too close for my comfort, but thankfully close enough to count. Whew.

The rest is pretty boring: Shannon and the girls pick me up, I toss my bike in the back of the station wagon, apologize to the girls for their sudden loss of headroom, collapse into the passenger seat, and tell my wife everything I just told you on the way home.

I got started much later than I had planned (8:15AM vs 7:00AM), which meant I finished after sundown. Not a disastrous turn of events, but definitely non-optimal. Riding in the dark in the morning is definitely less harrying than riding in the dark at night.

It was also much warmer than I had planned. This I had no problems with whatsoever. It started out as cold as I expected—around 32° F—but went all the way up to 49° F by 4:00PM, at least 7° warmer than I had prepared for. The fact that I was generally comfortable, leaning towards chilly, throughout the ride tells me that I had not actually prepared for the temperature I was expecting and that God took pity on me.

Honestly though, I didn’t expect it to be this cold:

The overall ride was fairly uneventful. Some thoughts…

• For some unknown reason, I felt the need to explain to each of the cashiers I “met” why it was that I needed a receipt. Only the first one seemed to care at all, and he actually remembered me when I saw him at the end of the ride (it being a loop and all, the last stop was the same as the first). Of course, dressed as I was in helmet-hair, clear cycling glasses, 3/4-finger cycling gloves, a day-glo yellow safety vest, sweats, a windbreaker, and neoprene shoe-covers, I was probably pretty hard to forget!
• I still hate racing dogs. Not as in “I hate greyhounds”… rather, “I hate pedaling for all I’m worth when I’m already tired to avoid having to kick blindly at the head of an idiot canine who seems to find me threatening and is chasing me for all they’re worth.” To make matters worse, the new shoe-covers make it a bit more difficult to free my shoes from the pedal-clips, so the kicking part, were it needed, would be hit-or-miss. (Get it? “Hit-or-miss”? Golly, I crack me up…) Thankfully, this only happened once this trip and I had enough gas left in my tank to outpace the dog… no kicking necessary.
• Two days later, my knees are still not pleased with me, particularly the right one. Perhaps I should start a glucosamine and chondroitin regimen? Perhaps not.

So, that’s January. Any suggestions on where I should go for February? I’m thinking Virginia, possibly Danville.