Because I ride alone a lot, it’s always nice to chat it up with other riders when meeting by chance at a rest stop.
This past week while at the turnaround point of my regular 51-mile ride up to Folsom Lake and back, I met up with a couple of old guy riders like myself taking a break, and we had a nice time trading war stories.
To keep their privacy, I’ll call them Luke and Joe.
Joe is a guy that has passed me occasionally on the trail going about 20 mph. He’s medium height, trim, tan, rides with a blue sleeveless jersey and wears black running shorts instead of lycra pants. I remember the first time he passed me. I think I sped up to catch his wheel, and may or may not have passed him. But either way, I couldn’t keep his pace. When I saw him later at the turnaround point, I was miffed that this dude had dropped me so easily, like I wasn’t even there. Kind of a bruised ego thing. I just licked my wounds, and didn’t try to start up a conversation.
This time at the rest stop, Joe rode in after me. He and a cyclist couple talked of some rider they’d passed on the trail that hadn’t given enough room in the lane on a blind curve, and had ignored Joe’s yells to move over.
“I was yelling at him, and he heard me, but he wouldn’t move,” said Joe. “I stay off the median line. There, I just hug the fence.”
“Hard to believe how stupid some of the people on the trail are,” said the woman cyclist. “That guy needs to be talked to.”
Then Luke rode into the rest area, a big, tall cyclist in a black kit on a black bike. I recognized him as someone who works at a grocery store I regularly go to.
I chat him up, and soon Joe, Luke and I, three older cyclists who love to ride, are trading stories. Joe’s a big talker, and he takes the lead.
Joe also rides a regular 50-mile ride, he said, and also mountain bikes. He’s a retired government number cruncher who used to put together budgets. He aims for a 20 mph pace on the bike trail, and says, “The only one I race against is myself.” Still, at his pace, he’s very hard to pass. You’d need to be doing a 21-23 mph pace to do that. Hell, on my best days I can do an 18 mph average.
“If I don’t ride, I don’t eat,” says Joe, which I think may be literally true, because this guys seems like a possessed Spartan on a bike. Don’t know exactly how old he is, but he looks too young to be retired. I’m thinking he’s gotta be the fastest older rider on the trail. Borderline maniac, in a good way.
But Joe does show some humility. He tells of riding with a group of “serious studs” who had invited him to grab their wheel on the trail. He did, but soon found, “My legs couldn’t go as fast as theirs!”
Ahh, youth.
“I take my bike out and push it to the front door,” he says of what sounds like most days. “And if I’m not too tired, I go.”
We talk about riding with and against the winds, which have been more common this year, making riding the trail a bit more challenging.
“I’d rather there be no wind,” says Joe. One time I was riding like a god with the wind at my back, I mean, like a god, flying along when a squirrel tried to run through my front wheel and didn’t make it.”
He pulls from his saddlebag a folded up photocopied picture of his bike right after the accident, taken by a photographer who happened along the trail. The squirrel somehow got between two spokes of his front wheel, and was then slammed up against the top backs of his forks, snapping them completely off the frame. Joe said the front of the bike, wheel and all, just disappeared. He rode the handlebars into ground and flew off, scraping up the back of his left shoulder. Other than that, he was OK.
He got a new Trek with his insurance. He never used to, but now he brakes for squirrels. And he has a higher spoke count on his wheels.
His new bike is equipped with electronic shifters, which he likes. He says they shift under load without a problem, and that has led him to shift a lot more than he did when manual shifting. It goes thousands of miles before its battery needs a recharge. He doesn’t have disc brakes on his new bike, and rides on 23mm wide tires.
On his mountain bike he likes his 29-inch rims and loves the tubeless tires in the dirt, since he’s never had flat with them. Oh, once he did, but says he was able to keep enough air in them to ride, not walk, back to his car.
We talk about riding on roads with car traffic, and Joe declares to keep from being run off a two-lane highway, “you’ve got to own the lane,” so that cars have to go into the oncoming lane if they want to pass you.
We all agree that the fewer cars encountered on a ride, the better.
We all mountain bike and trade tips on some good local trails.
Luke asks if we’ve ever ridden the Flume trail on the northeast shore of Lake Tahoe. I have, and if you take the upper part of the trail, which Luke did, there’s an amazing panoramic view of the Lake. This trail has lots of sand, which is the decomposed granite from the rocky mountain terrain, and it can make for treacherous riding.
Luke says on the way back down the mountain he hit a stretch of sand at high speed, and crashed after touching one of his brakes. “It was a great ride until then,” he says.
“Sand is not your friend,” says Joe.
We all agree that speed is needed to get through sand, or the bike will bog down fast, and almost always go down.
I tell of a great mountain bike trail in the area that neither guy has tried. It has tough climbs and plenty of technical stretches of trail.
“I’m not big on technical trails with crazy climbs,” says Joe. “I’m not proud, I’ll just get off the bike and walk it.” Better than crashing out of control over a cliff, he says.
As for fast descents on a road bike, Joe says he’ll never push the speed up to 40 mph or higher for one reason: “If I fall, I’m going to be messed up.”
Talk turns to the home mortgage meltdown and a few other takes on current events. Then we all have to move on. We shake hands, exchange names, (Joe says we’ll never remember them) and ride off.
Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on a bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely and don’t forget to have a blast.
-- Mark Eric Larson
No comments:
Post a Comment