After a 5+ hour car ride home from Trexlertown, my vision is shaking back and forth in a dizzying manner -- In experience I haven't had in a while. I'm not sure what causes it, but it sure is hard to type. The room is spinning slightly and I can't really look at the screen (or anything really), not to mention the rocking back and forth feeling. Odd. Regardless, I feel I may have been somewhat saved this weekend. After a great hike through the woods exploring new (to me) trails on Thursday, I took the same zest for adventure back into the woods on Friday with my mountain bike and my riding pal, Amy. We've both been getting a lot better since we've been riding twice a week, so I thought we'd mix it up a little bit by riding some new single track we saw, as we saw it, making left-right decisions at forks in the trail by what looked the more spectactular. I went down one impressive little descent, Amy conquered another. After about two, two and a half hours of riding, we found ourselves by The Rock, where Evan and I used to sit and enjoy the moderate calm of a Frick evening, or take friends who were visiting from out of town and wanted an alternative to bars or junk food. We eyed the two steep options for descending down and decided to take the long way around instead.
"Just so you know, I'm totally down for riding around, but when we find ourselves here again, I think we could probably ride this. Look at this line here. Or this one," I said to Amy as she placed her bike in the opposite direction.
She came around to my side and gave it a good look.
"Like right here," I tripoded down to a lower point on the trail, "if you can get here and go down this way..." I shifted my weight back and changed my mind." "Actually this feels pretty sketchy trying to start at this grade." I walked down like a baby, like I have been prone to do many a time on steep parts like this.
At the base of the trail, I waited for Amy who was still poised at the top of the hill. I got out my phone to take a picture but when I did, it looked like she was getting off her bike. With a slight sigh of relief, I began returning a text message I saw while I waited for her to carry her bike down like I did. Then I heard a big scream and saw her flying through the air. Her helmet broke, her saddle's bent, she's alive and walking now but has a splitting headache and can't quite piece together what made her fall or what she first hit when she landed. First big crash I think ever for her, and definitely the expected big crash of the season, and not too much worse for the wear. I'm just waiting for mine, I've had plenty of road rash crashes, plenty of scabs, but if there's a crash left in me it's gonna be a doozy.
Later that night, I called Amy to make sure she was okay as I packed the car with Rachel, Eric, and Soupie to head to Trexlertown to race the Nittany Lion Cross race. I was a bit bummed on it since earlier in the week when it became clear we would definitely be staying in a hotel rather than camping (possibly my favorite part of cyclocross season), and it would be a $100/night hotel rather than a $40 one (so $25+tax each rather than $10+tax). As a chronically unemployed and unhireable person, that's a lot of money tacked onto the $28/person drive and the race fees. But I sucked it up. It's not my race, not my season. Not yet, anyway. I also wasn't sure how I was going to fare on the course, because it wasn't jungle cross, which is apparently my sport, and was a pretty roadie-friendly course. I was also falsely under the impression that they were going to be racing the elite women along with the beginners, which I found out wasn't true on the car ride down, which got me a bit more relaxed about the event. Once I saw that yellow tape as we pulled in to park, my blood started pumping a little and I started feeling the good party vibes of the day. I told Rachel I wasn't excited, but I sort of was. How could you not be? I am a human being, after all, not a monster.
After a bunch of fumbling with the registration people who were classically disorganized, I filled out my USA Cycling day pass only to be told it would be $50 for me to race for a day.
"Uhhh.......uhh.....I don't have that much money," I murmured, recounting the $35 in my hands I'd been reluctantly prepared to hand over. "Can you hold on to my license form?"
I rode back to the car, eyes tearing up as I suddenly realized how much I did, in fact, want to race, now that I couldn't (and I mean, come on, I really couldn't spend $50 on a race I would have maybe come in with the top half of the field, maybe; that's money that could go to a plane ticket somewhere, or writing contest entry fees, or manuscript reading fees, or groceries for the week, or anything at all besides a 45-minute bike ride through some grass). Soupie tried to give me more money to pay my way into the race, but I couldn't take it. So I drank a soda and rode my bike around and tried to lift my spirits, and by the time the women's field was lined up, I was excited for Rachel and not feeling too bad about myself.
Everyone crashed or mechanicalled. Nobody did well (Rachel actually finished in good standing, but she had a pretty major crash and is pretty bruised up). The field was dry and dusty and as people rode, the grass tore up under their tires. It was also the first official race of the year, with a lot more people racing than last weekend, and no one seemed to remember how to ride their bikes. The women were having a hard time climbing up the first punchy little hill, and guys were having a hard time turning after descending the same punchy little hill. Everyone was turning wide and taking down course tape, tripping over the barriers, and having a hard time keeping their lines. Probably for the best that I stayed on the side lines drinking a beer at the beer tent and cheering on my friends, counting the seconds between them and the wheel they were chasing.
Today, we were gonna go mountain biking but it's a bit wet outside from the rain last night. The Steelers are on. I gotta pack for Boston. And tonight, Repo Man.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
the silver lining: my first cross race.
I didn't want to shade this post with this brighter one, nor dishonor my last post by continuing with chitchat about how September hasn't been so bad so far. But September hasn't really been so bad, so far.
Pumpkin beer is back. It's still hiding, it's still a slick shadow dancing on buildingsides as I pass. It also doesn't help that I don't hang out in bars, or particularly like them, or go to neighborhoods where the bars are that have this sort of thing. But last night I fell asleep on the couch with Evan watching Airplane! with a barely-finished bottle of Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale. (lookit them hotlinks!) The Punkin isn't my favorite, because Southern Tier's Pumking Imperial is. But still, there's not much better with cuddlin' up with a hot babe on a chilled Saturday night with a delicious beer and a funny and emotionally calming (if a bit misogynistic) flick. Drinking the same beer while writing a blog post doesn't have quite the same zest, but it's a good life I live, regardless of the many shortcomings that have been abridged here on this blog.
Another highlight of yesterday was that I raced my very first Cross Race. I rode my good sturdy San Jose (single speed, steel), with flat bars. Typically, I've been told, this would have been a big of a disadvantage, but there was some serious single-tracking and rooty business and I think the mountain bike set-up was to my advantage, especially since I've been mountain biking a few times a week. The race was in Ohio, at Manatoc, a beautiful course with a pine forest, two sand pits, some barriers to prance over, a gravel pit, and wide swooping stretches of grassy field. I came in about 17th out of 38, and crossed the finish line with a woman right in front of me who was also a beginner (the other of the three total women racing yesterday was a few people back). Every time I saw a wheel I caught it, and once I caught it I tried to pass it. Every time I saw someone coming up behind me I rode faster. And when it was just me on the open trail I thought about Brian, about the pain of being beaten to death, the pain of loss, about Brian's wonderful family and that asshole Toppi who murdered my friend, and any pain I felt in my legs just turned crist and irrelevent.
I saw Jen (the beginner broad who beat me) cutting up across me right as someone said, "this is the finish" and it didn't register that it was the real finish, the end-of-the-race finish, and didn't sprint to beat here 'til it was too late. No problem, though, it was fun and we hung out for a bit afterwards and talked about how awesome it was. It also showed me how much harder I need to, and more importantly am able to, push myself physically in order to get better "results." I have absolutely no concept of where my absolute threshold lies, and usually ride at what I consider "comfortably painful." Feel the burn and all that, but nowhere near wanting to puke. I might never get to that level. I might be physically both above and beyond that point so that my insides can never be sickened by the pressure thrown upon them by my mususcular aptitude. I actually think that's a bunch of baloney but maybe I'll figure it out at cross practice on Tuesday.
A fun thing about racing (besides the race) was that I was no longer a spectator but I was a part of the event. People cheered me on during the race. Others saw me riding by during my cooldown and said, "hey you did great out there." I met the other two women who were racing in the lower level with me, and I met another woman who had just gotten into mountain biking this summer and loved it. I raced with her husband, who'd been to New Mexico (I was wearing my lucky Zia kit) and talked about the sky, the air, the enchantment. It was nice to not have a dog, a fiance, a poem or essay to manage in some way (remember the time I lost all my paperwork for class at a cross race a few years ago and couldn't critique anyone's work for two classes? Probably not, but I do). I don't usually care about being part of anything and even when it's my party I honestly feel detached on some level, but after the bad break-up with August I felt great comfort in these strangers' support and kindness.
Next weekend is Nittany Lion Cross, the official first race of the season. There's already 20-something broads registered in the CAT 3/4, some of them probably a hell of a lot faster and more fit than I am. So this week, there's a lot of anger, frustration, and pain to ride through to build up my endurance, fitness, and apathy to pain for next weekend. I am also getting a new bike which may or may not be built up in time. It's a Redline Conquest frame, with blown out Campy parts that, at least when in good condition, are too good for anything I'd ever want to do to a bicycle.
Now, if I can just squeeze a good tour in before the snow falls I'll be in good form for my depressing winter hybernation.
Pumpkin beer is back. It's still hiding, it's still a slick shadow dancing on buildingsides as I pass. It also doesn't help that I don't hang out in bars, or particularly like them, or go to neighborhoods where the bars are that have this sort of thing. But last night I fell asleep on the couch with Evan watching Airplane! with a barely-finished bottle of Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale. (lookit them hotlinks!) The Punkin isn't my favorite, because Southern Tier's Pumking Imperial is. But still, there's not much better with cuddlin' up with a hot babe on a chilled Saturday night with a delicious beer and a funny and emotionally calming (if a bit misogynistic) flick. Drinking the same beer while writing a blog post doesn't have quite the same zest, but it's a good life I live, regardless of the many shortcomings that have been abridged here on this blog.
Another highlight of yesterday was that I raced my very first Cross Race. I rode my good sturdy San Jose (single speed, steel), with flat bars. Typically, I've been told, this would have been a big of a disadvantage, but there was some serious single-tracking and rooty business and I think the mountain bike set-up was to my advantage, especially since I've been mountain biking a few times a week. The race was in Ohio, at Manatoc, a beautiful course with a pine forest, two sand pits, some barriers to prance over, a gravel pit, and wide swooping stretches of grassy field. I came in about 17th out of 38, and crossed the finish line with a woman right in front of me who was also a beginner (the other of the three total women racing yesterday was a few people back). Every time I saw a wheel I caught it, and once I caught it I tried to pass it. Every time I saw someone coming up behind me I rode faster. And when it was just me on the open trail I thought about Brian, about the pain of being beaten to death, the pain of loss, about Brian's wonderful family and that asshole Toppi who murdered my friend, and any pain I felt in my legs just turned crist and irrelevent.
I saw Jen (the beginner broad who beat me) cutting up across me right as someone said, "this is the finish" and it didn't register that it was the real finish, the end-of-the-race finish, and didn't sprint to beat here 'til it was too late. No problem, though, it was fun and we hung out for a bit afterwards and talked about how awesome it was. It also showed me how much harder I need to, and more importantly am able to, push myself physically in order to get better "results." I have absolutely no concept of where my absolute threshold lies, and usually ride at what I consider "comfortably painful." Feel the burn and all that, but nowhere near wanting to puke. I might never get to that level. I might be physically both above and beyond that point so that my insides can never be sickened by the pressure thrown upon them by my mususcular aptitude. I actually think that's a bunch of baloney but maybe I'll figure it out at cross practice on Tuesday.
A fun thing about racing (besides the race) was that I was no longer a spectator but I was a part of the event. People cheered me on during the race. Others saw me riding by during my cooldown and said, "hey you did great out there." I met the other two women who were racing in the lower level with me, and I met another woman who had just gotten into mountain biking this summer and loved it. I raced with her husband, who'd been to New Mexico (I was wearing my lucky Zia kit) and talked about the sky, the air, the enchantment. It was nice to not have a dog, a fiance, a poem or essay to manage in some way (remember the time I lost all my paperwork for class at a cross race a few years ago and couldn't critique anyone's work for two classes? Probably not, but I do). I don't usually care about being part of anything and even when it's my party I honestly feel detached on some level, but after the bad break-up with August I felt great comfort in these strangers' support and kindness.
Next weekend is Nittany Lion Cross, the official first race of the season. There's already 20-something broads registered in the CAT 3/4, some of them probably a hell of a lot faster and more fit than I am. So this week, there's a lot of anger, frustration, and pain to ride through to build up my endurance, fitness, and apathy to pain for next weekend. I am also getting a new bike which may or may not be built up in time. It's a Redline Conquest frame, with blown out Campy parts that, at least when in good condition, are too good for anything I'd ever want to do to a bicycle.
Now, if I can just squeeze a good tour in before the snow falls I'll be in good form for my depressing winter hybernation.
The cloud
The end of August was lionesque. Not like sunbathing its mane on the high plains of Africa (well maybe a little) with the whole safari at its roar. But like the moments after the kill, with pups waiting hungry nearby, and hyenas festering, and no place to bring the dead, already-rotting antelope for the pups to eat in safety without being scooped up by one of many surprising predators, and in the end there is a tree to try to get the kill up, try to get the pups up, and it manages somehow and barely, relying on its own ladylion ways to survive yet another pitiful day. Maybe I'm projecting. Life is hard sometimes.
I didn't get the dreamy job I'd trying for since May (and of which I feel I'd been robbed, honestly and bitterly). My good, old friend Brian passed away. Was murdered. That seems like such a bad way to say it, but it's true so there's life. Brian and I had known each other since we were probably 14. A lot of my friends from Weymouth went to school at BC High and I met him through them, probably through the internet and then we met officially at a punk show at the 1st and 2nd church. He was a big guy with an honest heart and I never heard him say anything bad. We hadn't talked too, too much over the past few years because I've lived far away, but almost every time I came to visit, I saw him, even if only briefly, and life was good. So now, by contrast, its just that much worse. There's something missing from the world that not enough people feel. Like knowing a species has become extinct. Or like having that favorite mixtape with the only known copy of that song you woke up to every morning, not knowing who played it or knowing any of the words because it was in a different language, but it was the only song that could start the day, and one day the tape ripped and with it went the ability to sing the mornings through. Only, the hope with the species is that another one will be discovered, or that it's evolved into something more sustainable. The favorite song could be heard sung by some busker in the Harvard Square T terminal some Christmas Eve as you're finishing up shopping, and the singer knows who wrote the song and has a copy of the cd in her pocket. The thing with a murder is there's no chance for evolution, no hope for a carbon copy. It's just over. That thing in my life that I loved is just gone. Gone.
I didn't get the dreamy job I'd trying for since May (and of which I feel I'd been robbed, honestly and bitterly). My good, old friend Brian passed away. Was murdered. That seems like such a bad way to say it, but it's true so there's life. Brian and I had known each other since we were probably 14. A lot of my friends from Weymouth went to school at BC High and I met him through them, probably through the internet and then we met officially at a punk show at the 1st and 2nd church. He was a big guy with an honest heart and I never heard him say anything bad. We hadn't talked too, too much over the past few years because I've lived far away, but almost every time I came to visit, I saw him, even if only briefly, and life was good. So now, by contrast, its just that much worse. There's something missing from the world that not enough people feel. Like knowing a species has become extinct. Or like having that favorite mixtape with the only known copy of that song you woke up to every morning, not knowing who played it or knowing any of the words because it was in a different language, but it was the only song that could start the day, and one day the tape ripped and with it went the ability to sing the mornings through. Only, the hope with the species is that another one will be discovered, or that it's evolved into something more sustainable. The favorite song could be heard sung by some busker in the Harvard Square T terminal some Christmas Eve as you're finishing up shopping, and the singer knows who wrote the song and has a copy of the cd in her pocket. The thing with a murder is there's no chance for evolution, no hope for a carbon copy. It's just over. That thing in my life that I loved is just gone. Gone.
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