Coyote Flaco was pretty good. Well, to be more precise, the food and drink was good at Coyote Flaco. There was some disappointment expressed about the size of the Nacho Grande starter since it didn’t seem terribly “grande” to four very hungry guys but the margaritas were huge and the wine was acceptable. The main problem with Coyote Flaco was the resident annoying guitarist who spent most of the evening cruising the tables playing faux classical guitar pieces or singing Spanish and Mexican classics at the top of his voice. We tried very hard to avoid catching his eye at any point during the evening. Boy was it annoying although he did have the last laugh. When JJ and I retired to the car park for a cigarette, Lee attempted to pay the guitarist to come out to the car park and serenade us. A good practical joke you might think. However, Lee gave him $20 and then asked him to go out into the car park. The guy made the $20 disappear into his pocket and said “nope” and then zoomed off into the kitchen never to be seen again. No doubt $20 was more money than he’d made in a week. Oh how we laughed at Lee’s expense but since Lee had “borrowed” the $20 from Terry maybe we should have been laughing at Terry.
On the way back there was some talk of going to a bar for beers but JJ and I declined. Lee and Terry stayed out to watch the Yankees win at baseball and to drink a lot of beer. They had world class hangovers in the morning which should mean that I’ve got a better chance of keeping up.
So the following morning dawned wet and cold. We went to a local diner and had the traditional “eggs any style with bacon and sausage” breakfast. Now take note here because the breakfast is going to make another appearance later in this story…
We all got on our bikes with the traditional groans and moans from everybody as their painful butts hit the saddle. It turns out that the Howard Johnson’s in Williamstown is 200 metres from the start of the Mount Graylock climb. So no warm up, just straight into the climb. The first section was absolutely horrible. 12% grades and vicious switchbacks. I got dropped off the back pretty early and just concentrated on trying to keep the pedals turning. I had the lowest possible gear on the bike and still I couldn’t get the bike up the really steep sections.
I had to stop four times. Once for a pee because I thought that I could unload some weight and it would be a bit easier. The second time was on a very very steep section where I just couldn’t keep the pedals turning. The third time was when I hit my red line on the heart rate monitor. My heart was at 175 on a steep section out of the saddle and I had to stop. It was then when the aforementioned “eggs any style with bacon and sausage” made their unwelcome second appearance of the day. As I was leaning over the Armco barrier losing my breakfast a big posse of hairy Harley Davidson riders went past. Those people have very fat arses. I shouted “you should try the biking induced bulimia barf to lose some weight you big fat bastards” after them but I shouted it quite quietly since they were kind of scary and there were a lot more of them than me.
The fourth stop involved the rear wheel slipping on the leaves. The entire road up was covered with slippery wet leaves and if you’re pushing down on the pedals when you’re on a leaf the rear wheel slips alarmingly. Unfortunately when this happened, I fell forward and…err…there’s no easy way of saying this…caught my testicles on the stem of the handlebars. Had I not lost my breakfast earlier, this would have been the moment that I would have lost them. I didn’t quite lose consciousness but it was very sore indeed. The following 20 minutes were like cycling with a couple of red hot coals in my trousers. If any of you reading this have cycled with red hot coals in your trousers, you’ll know what that feels like. Actually, if any of you have cycled with red hot coals in your pants, you’re reading the wrong blog. You want www.i-like-red-hot-coals-in-my-pants.com. Oh and get some professional help too.
Eventually the grade relented a bit and I could at least make forward progress. The early part of the climb was tremendously brutal but the final part was only ugly and nasty. Long 6% grades with rain and fog. I stopped to take some pictures but they didn’t turn out that well because I was shaking a lot.
Finally, after a lot of pain I reached the top of Mount Graylock. The highest mountain in Massachusetts. As I cycled in to the car park at the top I shouted “oh yes oh yes I’ve fucking done it thank you sweet Jebus”. I think the children in the car park might have been slightly offended. JJ and Lee and Terry had arrived a bit before me and were in the lodge eating really really bad food but it sort of didn’t matter. It was done. We sat around in the lodge in front of the fire and tried to recover. A huge fat guy in a red sweatshirt came up to me and said “did you ride one of ‘em bike things all the way up here”? I said yes and he said “I just wanna shake your hand”. How nice. I was actually quite touched. Maybe I was delirious.
Mount Graylock is famous for its panoramic views but the fog made the panoramic views a bit rubbish really. There is a war memorial on the top of the hill which is pretty impressive but it just looked like a lighthouse in the fog. One has to say that for a war memorial, this is unusually phallic in construction.
The stats for Graylock were 16km at an average of 11km/h. Average heart rate at 144 with a max of 175 (I think this was the vomit point). 3000 ft of climbing. These aren’t great stats but given how tough it was it’s not too bad. Obviously Lee, Terry and JJ did better than me on this so their stats should be better.
Terry (in his usual duplicitous way) had told us that the descent was “downhill all the way” neglecting to mention the uphill bits. Hmmm. The decent was cold and long. It could have been great but cycling on tyres less than an inch wide down wet roads covered with very slippery leaves isn’t much fun. We got colder and colder on the way down and had to stop at the slightly sad Visitor Centre at the bottom of the south side just to heat up. There were lots of worthy exhibits about how to make an axe handle and how fabulous the conservation work is in Graylock but to be honest it was all a bit tired.
After that, for some weird reason I got a really good second wind. I was feeling bloody great. It was quite a short route after Graylock and we absolutely flew along. Nice rolling countryside with very short steep sections that you could attack and get to the top before you blew up. Good tarmac. Just perfect. Terry and I blew along Route 7 at super high speed and got to West Stockbridge in good time. The rain stopped, the sun came out, and I think the wind might have been behind us.
We’re staying at the Williamsville Inn just outside West Stockbridge MA. This is a fantastic old inn run by a German couple named Eberhart and Candy. Candy? That’s a German name? Eberhart is a “certified master chef” and so we’ve decided to eat here rather than go into Great Barrington for pizza. It could be interesting I guess. The menu looks great. We are trying to avoid mentioning the war although a few times an involuntary “ya” has slipped into the conversation. We’ve all been sitting in the lounge of the Inn being entertained by Candy’s stories of the novel she’s writing and drinking organic beer. And wine.
So, for me this was a good day. Obviously one might think that losing one’s breakfast on a brutal hill climb, smacking one’s nuts on the stem of your bike and being cold, tired and worn out would take the shine off the day but in fact it was just great. My best day so far. Terry is holding up best of all and Lee’s early bottom problems seem to have subsided. Rather disturbingly the right side of JJ’s body has gone numb from the waist down and I’m getting knee twinges on the steep stuff. I guess you just have to expect this stuff at our ages.
The stats for the whole day are about 4200 ft of climbing. 73km at an average speed of 20.3 km/h. That’s a crap average but given the that the first half of the day was averaging 11km/h I’m not too unhappy about it.
Usual photo album below.
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