Aug. 8: Day zero
BRATTLEBORO — I am freaking out right now.
It's toward the end of what was supposed to be a fulfilling summer that ultimately turned out to be crap. I didn't write any of the articles I set out to write. A bucket-list dream of going to Dollywood got checked off but was a complete letdown. Oh, and my relationship of nine years ended up in ruins (as in “never-to-be-rebuilt because the earth has been sown with salt” ruins, not “hey!, let's go to the Parthenon!” ruins).
And now?
Now I'm freaking out in a hotel lobby in Montreal listening to front desk clerks speaking in French. I don't know what they're saying, because I took Spanish. Dan Cappello, the valedictorian from my high school class of 1995, took French and now he's out - he was obsessed with Jackie O. and Sophia Petrillo, but I was the one whose car got spit on?! - and runs some sort of website for Manhattan socialites. I surfed the website for an hour, and I still wasn't able to discern its function.
Sorry, back to Montreal.
I'm riding out tomorrow with a group of 70 cyclists for a 5-day, 415-mile trek from the location of those two French-speaking desk clerks to Portland, Maine, to raise money to find a cure for HIV/AIDS.
I have no business doing this. I did not train to bike any distance more than 35 miles (tops!) and I was just informed that the mileage for Day 1 tomorrow is 113 miles.
There's no reason to underscore the absurdity of 113 miles. But if I were to take the time to underscore, I might highlight that 113 miles is more than three times as much as 35 miles. (I did the math.)
I might also highlight that people are using words like “drafting,” advising me not to try it for the first time on the ride, which isn't a problem because I don't know what it is and refuse to ask.
I might also highlight that I start laughing anytime someone mentions tomorrow's ride, because I rode 40 miles once and it hurt.
But let's not take the time to underscore the absurdity of tomorrow's ride.
The demographic of the ride is different from the multitude of multiple-day events I have crewed in the past. Only a handful of participants are under the age of 40, many of them female. Young gay men are not the core audience here, which bugged me for a minute, but then that sentiment quickly melted away because someone mentioned tomorrow's 113 miles, and I started laughing again.
I am freaking out right now.
Aug. 9: Day one
So, today I rocked 113 miles. More on that in a few.
It was a pretty uneasy sleep last night: part anxiety, part nearby snoring, part lack of Ken's pillow and Ken's stuffed cow.
This morning, I was just a panic-ridden mess. I thought the clips on my shoes were broken. They weren't. I thought my tires had enough air. They didn't. I thought not eating breakfast was an OK idea. It wasn't.
I rode out with one of the last groups and hated the first hour. Traffic light after traffic light. Clipping in and out.
And, apparently, there are hand signals and things you're supposed to say to other riders.
I was chastised because I should have said, “Car back!” as opposed to my expository “There seems to be a blue-ish car approaching us with some speed from behind and the driver looks angry.”
Then, without warning, the traffic lights disappeared, I found two awesome women to ride alongside, and things started going well.
My line of thought kept drifting back to yesterday's observation that the participants are of an unanticipated demographic. This morning's two motivational speakers were two straight men, one of whom had a coworker whose brother was recently diagnosed with HIV. This ancillary tale didn't really motivate me to pedal.
But I pedaled nonetheless, and I pedaled a lot.
There was one point when I broke away from the pack and was just flying down a highway in the rain. I have passion! I have freedom!
I have...a flat tire!
And not just gradually-deflating-flat. I hit a pothole, and that thing exploded. A crew car stopped within 45 seconds and offered to shuttle me to the next stop. But I resolutely wanted to pedal every mile, so we fixed my tire right there in the rain. And by “we,” I mean “he.”
At one point, it suddenly clicked that he was not only explaining what he was doing, but that he also thought I was listening and learning. I explained to him that I really wasn't in the right place for that info and he was, thankfully, amused.
With my tire now filled with air, I just kept on going. And then, many hours later, I was done.
Now, I'm a little dazed and somewhat embarrassed as, again, I have no business biking 113 miles. But I'm done with Day 1, and I was just informed that the flat part of the ride is now over.
Wait...that was flat?!
Aug. 10: Day two
Fun fact! Ninety-seven miles of insane hills is astronomically more challenging than 113 flat miles.
At some point early in the day, I ended up on my own, and that's pretty much how the day went. Up the hills alone. Down the hills alone. Except that I'm almost convinced that there were no down-the-hills.
Today was marked by myriad opportunities for me to feel like an idiot, every single one as a result of my not knowing anything about bikes except how to pedal and, every now and then, switch my gears.
My bike chain came off. Someone fixed it for me. I pedaled.
The clips on one of my shoes came off. Someone fixed it for me. I pedaled.
My bike chain started making a ton of noise. Someone fixed it for me. I pedaled.
Within all the pedaling - and there was a lot over 97 miles - I came close to exhausting my musical theater repertoire, I drew my next tattoo in my head, and I actually thought, “Hey! Look what you can do if you put your mind to it!”
Anyone who knows me has concluded that I'll never get offered a job at Hallmark, so that schmaltz was uncharacteristic.
But it was a genuine thought, and that was sort of cool.
Aug. 11: Day three
Today flat out knocked me down.
I pedaled only 59 miles, significantly less mileage than other days, but the hills were beyond insane.
There were at least three points today where one hill crested into another hill, which turned out to be an anthill at the base of an Everest.
This ride, today in particular, has turned me into a cussing machine. I kept getting more and more frustrated, and cusswords started flying out of my mouth with reckless abandon.
Then I would get angry, as if someone had done this to me. It was just a rough ride, and I'm not starting to get nervous about tomorrow's 106 miles.
In inter-rider news, my two fellow riders and I have labeled a group of three riders “Team Germany” because they always blow by us on the road without saying anything, and because we assume that they have a history of fascism.
At dinner tonight, we tore down that wall, and Team USA- naturally, us - and Team Germany ate together with a few other riders who I decided were UN Peacekeepers.
Team Germany turned out to be, of course, lovely. Lovely to the point of our telling them about the whole “We-didn't-know-you-but-we-assumed-you-were-fascist” thing.
Hurrah for meeting new people. Almost makes the 106 miles tomorrow seem less daunting.
Almost.
Aug. 12: Day four
I can't write a ton today because I'm plum-tuckered out, and I'm close to passed out in a tent in a trailer park on Luau weekend somewhere in Maine after having pedaled 106 miles.
That the previous sentence is true is just incredible.
The ride today was fine. There were rough tough hills, but it never felt like it was an option to give up, even though that option really was on the table.
Tomorrow's ride is 50-ish miles, which is still longer than any of my training rides but feels distinctly doable given the hundreds and hundreds of miles I have already logged in the past few days.
I also learned today that my bike has a gear I hadn't previously discovered. The result had me sailing down long stretches of road. I call it “Henry, my happy gear.” Better late than never?
Not a ton else to report. I spent most of the day riding with a dreamy, budding city planner whose partner was always riding a half mile ahead.
Becoming invested in a fleeting interaction with an unavailable gent is a special kind of sad, but one into which I threw myself completely as it propelled me along.
I think it's time to just finish this ride tomorrow and see what I take with me from this experience.
Aug. 13: Day five
There is no earlier lie I can tell in an entry than the date, and thus I seem to be starting out this final entry with a big ole fib. The ride ended yesterday, and I'm sitting in the hotel restaurant with my continental breakfast before me struggling to wrap this account all together with some insightful witticisms.
I feel empty.
The last 50 miles were mostly fine physically. I'm chafed (emotionally, too), my left knee and I are in a fight, and my quads and I broke up on Day 3.
But still, I pedaled.
In a fitting display of international unity, Team USA and Team Germany rode together for the entirety of this last day. We were like a gang, albeit a non-threatening one that you and your elderly neighbors could totally take down. It would have been amazing to have pedaled together the whole ride, but I'm appreciative for the time we had together.
After we finished 414 miles, the police escorted all 70 riders the last mile to Closing Ceremonies.
It was a nice mile.
It would be ideal to write all about how Closing Ceremonies was cathartic, but I can't, because I missed most of it. About two minutes after the proceedings commenced, the dreamy, buddy city-planner and his partner grasped each other's hands, and I immediately lost it. Tears-running-down-my-cheek lost it.
I kept thinking, “I do not want to go back to my routine, to my life, to what lies imminently ahead. At all.”
It was so overwhelming that I simply had to walk away.
And that's why I absolutely detest these rides: they end. I like who I am here, the people who surround me, the interactions I have. I don't have to weed anything out to put things in perspective, as I do at home.
I get the concept, but that doesn't ease my frustration.
What if I just don't go back? What if I stay here in Portland?
What if I asked Team Germany and my teammates on Team USA to stay with me?
It is supremely anger-inducing that those questions amount to absurdity, to the silly musings of a sore-all-over rider.
I just looked at the fading stamp on my left wrist from the gay club we all went to last night and sighed audibly, loud enough that the waitress in this hotel restaurant thought I wanted another croissant.
I'm convinced that somewhere in that sigh is the answer: the answer to rebuilding the ruins, fixing the flat, achieving inter-country collaboration, finding my happy gear, and, above all, perpetuating that which I don't want to end.
The only thing I can do is keep on pedaling and maybe, just maybe, I'll get there.