Very relaxed and gentle recovery ride
This ride was very easy after yesterday. Beautiful sunny day, quiet roads, just gently spinning along. There’s definitely something mad with the Garmin estimate of calories used though. According to the Garmin, this ride was 1000 calories! That’s completely bonkers. I’d be surprised if it was a third of that.
Training Ride (wet)
Did this ride this morning on the wet horrible roads round Cambridge. Stats not so good and was suffering from a hangover which never helps. Only two months until the Liege Paris trip so there’s going to have to be more and more of these unfortunately…
Nice short training loop
After coming back from the USA, I needed some exercise. This is my standard 30k loop and I’d like to be able to do it in under an hour. Once managed 1 hr 4 minutes but this time 1 hour and 15 minutes.
First training ride of the season
Garmin Connect – Activity Details for John Lane’s short loop
Just did this shortish ride this morning with some of the guys who are doing the Liege Paris ride this year. It was so cold this morning. My feet feel like two blocks of ice and despite hot hands I really suffered with my thin gloves. Also, not very fast due to having a cold and my ribs hurting on the way up hills. Whinge whinge whinge…anyway might try and get out on Sunday to do some more before heading to Chicago.
New England Day 4
Naturally, I can’t talk about day four with out talking about the night of day three. And what a night it was. While I was writing the last blog post and having a shower, Lee, Terry and JJ were ensconced in the lounge drinking a lot of wine so when I turned up everybody was pretty merry already. Kandi (and I have to point out that I had done Kandi a deep disservice by spelling her name as Candy which isn’t nearly as germanic as “Kandi”) took us to our table and we proceeded to have a riotously funny meal. Terry told very very funny stories, we butted in with stupid comments and we all laughed and laughed.
The food was um germanic. Erhardt is certainly a “master of german cuisine” (with all the baggage that comes with that title). The wines were generally good and certainly copious. The desert wine was not good but by that point we were so busy laughing that we really didn’t care. Erhardt redeemed himself by bringing his “Fennel Tea”. This was rocket fuel. We found out later that it’s Bacardi 151 with some fennel seeds in it. For those of you who don’t know, Bacardi 151 is 75% proof alcohol and it’s also the only drink that the manufacturer fits a “flame retarder” to the bottle.
Finally we retired outside so I could have a cigarette. No one else was smoking. Just me. We put a dent in a bottle of Glenmorangie which I had been carrying around and drank and laughed under the stars. How fun it was.
The following morning was a bit less fun. You’d think that a group of successful, intelligent men who had combined experience of over 200 years on this planet could work out that truly excessive drinking and energetic sports don’t really mix. We’d started out with the intention of doing the Mt Washington part of the route. This involved a fair bit of climbing and a fair bit of apprehension from the team. I got a bit confused since we were actually going up Mt Everett to get to Mount Washington which isn’t actually a mountain but is a little tiny town. Mt Everett is the highest mountain in the Taconic Mountains. Or something. However, it’s a long and gruelling climb especially with a head ache and (in my case) a rather sore knee. We made it and then did the nice descent to the Bash Bish Falls. There’s a great view over the falls into Connecticut. It was also an opportunity for us to laugh at JJ’s sunglasses. They’re Oakley "Thump glasses. Sunglasses with an MP3 player built in. Sunglasses with an USB port. Sunglasses so stupid that they’re already being offered at half price on eBay. The sound quality is reasonable but as Samuel Johnson said about women preaching “it’s like a dog walking on its hind legs. It’s not done well but one is surprised to discover it done at all.”.
Then we did a few long rolling roads and a quite a long way on the train tracks which have been converted into bike paths. It’s a great idea. Trains can’t do very steep hills so the grades are easy and there’s no traffic. However, there are some other cyclists which one has to be careful about. JJ ran a 6 year old cyclist off the road but it was only fair because he wasn’t going very fast and his bike didn’t have a carbon frame. I mean, what does the kid expect?
Ultimately we ended up in Kent which is a small CT town with a great Pizza place where we ate Pizza and drank beer and reviewed the day.
Now I’m in the Virgin Lounge at JFK thinking back over the trip. There are lots of observations I guess: cycling in the US (or at least where we were) is good. The roads are generally quiet and the drivers are generally very careful passing cyclists. Most of the roads we cycled on were well paved and well signed. People in general are very friendly as usual. The foliage at this time of the year is stunningly beautiful. The food portions are huge and it’s impossible to go into a calorie deficit no matter how much exercise you do.
Surprises? Apart from the overwhelming saltiness of Erhardt’s sausage stuffed veal for me anyway (and maybe for JJ) it was just how amazingly rural the US can be. We were no more than 2 hours from New York or Boston at any time but there were huge tracts of primary forest. Remote hamlets, houses on their own. Very low population density I guess. As a consequence of the low population density, the mobile phone coverage is absolutely crap. Just nothing.
Finally, a huge thanks from me to Lee, Terry and JJ. Lee for arranging all the logistics. Hotels, restaurants and, of course the fabulous Carlos who drove the car were all down to Lee and it worked perfectly. Terry for doing the routes which is about the most important thing in a bike trip. The routes were judged perfectly and allowed us to really enjoy the days. JJ for flying all the way from the UK to even up the numbers between the UK and the US contingent and also for sharing his deep knowledge of the life and times of W H Auden with us on a number of occasions.
But of course the main thanks just goes to all of them for making the trip so much fun. I honestly don’t think I’ve laughed as much for a long time. To spend four days with three smart, quick witted, informed, funny and rude guys was a real joy. Thanks.
Photo Album as usual.
New England Day 3
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.
XKCD- Klout May 18, 2012
- Felidae May 16, 2012
- Kickstarter May 14, 2012
- The bacon May 11, 2012
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