A third type of cyclist

“Tell me she was wearing a helmet?” I pecked in the question to the chat line and pinky-fingered, enter. I waited and navigated around my desktop on other tasks. Earlier this morning I watched a classic Tour-de-France stage and have a ride planned with Keith this afternoon. The Tour is once again mired in drug problems. We live in the twilight of idols. The drug scandals bum me out, hurt me inside. We’ve been granted a gift of riding bikes for leisure and fun and sport. They – the cheaters - were bestowed with a special gift and spoiled it. I’m excited to ride my bike this afternoon and tap into the part of cycling that isn’t polluted; what I can do and see and experience when joined to a bike.

The light in my toolbar blinks and I click it open.

“Yes she had a helmet on. I guess it did its job but the force with which she fell was too much” Unfortunately the light in my head doesn’t blink, the light doesn’t go off and I’m not listening. I jot down a response arrogantly quoting five-time tour winner Bernard Hinault. Known as the Badger, or Le Blaireau, he insisted there are two types of riders; those that have and those that will fall. We fall. Scraped, bruised and busted we get back on. I fit into the former. I hit return without thinking or rather, assuming she was okay.

I minimize the window and whirl my mouse pointer to another application, open it and work. Soon I’ll be out climbing Old La Honda with Keith and then descending confidently. A few minutes later the toolbar blinks again. I read, “She is brain-dead. Actually, they called her time of death yesterday afternoon so I guess she is technically dead. They are keeping her body alive for organ transplant. They should harvest tomorrow. The accident was on Sunday and the girls and I have been taking turns sitting with her and caring for her husband. We will continue to do so until they come and harvest her organs. It’s just so terribly sad.”

I read the comment and then keep rereading the first three words. I’m wishing I could somehow pour some inflection, emotion and empathy into the chat line in response. And remove my ignorant quote from the Badger. I can’t. I’m stunned. I’m trying to figure out what to say when another sentence blinks onto my screen. “I don’t care for Bernard Hinault’s thought, by the way. Or maybe I don’t care for the category I fall into. Not now. Not here sitting near her in the hospital room.”

You can tell a little bit about a person by how they ride a bike. I didn’t really know Deb but I often saw her out on the road, riding. She was a hard worker, serious, studious and no nonsense. She pushed big gears. Huge gears. Knee crushing gears. She pushed those same gears at the YMCA spin class where I’d seen her. She sat in front and she hammered until she was spent. It was clear she loved to ride.

We love our bikes. They love us. Wear your helmet, always. PLEASE. Riding our bikes for leisure, sport, fitness and fun is a gift. Whatever combination and at whatever level you do that, wear your helmet, don’t cheat, wear your helmet, don’t cheat, and wear your helmet.

Inventing Spin

6:17 am. An eternity ago I looked over my shoulder at the clock on the wall. It was 6:16 am. I should be out on the road and not in spinning in this Spin class. Based on the first painful 17 minutes of this could turn out to be the slowest hours of my life. Over in Europe the boys in the Tour de France are three or four hours into today’s stage 13 in the Pyrenees. I should be out on the road but instead I’m Spinning.

I invented Spin. Not the exercise bike but getting people together on a bunch of stationary bikes and having a workout together. I’m not running for President or saving the planet like Al Gore but I did invent something, like Al. Or, I’m just spinning this, like Al. We called it Turbo and we didn’t have music or mirrors. In place of the aerobics styled overly peppy instructor (and dj) we had something called a “coach”. This was in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with the triathlon team I co-founded, coached and chartered, Tri-Team Peninsula. We had no idea we had invented something called Spinning, but we did. Somebody else, of course, would market it and make millions.

But we were doing spin before spin was spin. Way before it became a fitness club fad like aerobics, yoga or tae bo-pilates-kickboxing-step-abs-cardio-sculpt-blast class. Tri-Team bought 25 turbo machines and some sets of Kreitler rollers for a few of us purists. Each Wednesday night we did an hour “Spinning” and followed that up with a 3-6 mile run to simulate a triathlon transition. Instead of the weight room style fitness exercise bikes we used turbo-trainers allowing you to make your regular bike into a stationary bike by attaching the rear wheel to a flywheel and drum. You adjusted the tension or difficulty by either shifting gears or by adjusting the tension on the flywheel in back.

Rick Sutton was the Turbo coach. He often rode a turbo during the workouts but he never faced the group like Spin instructors do. He lined up with everyone else and then barked out orders like a team leader in a real peloton. Most of the time however Sergeant Rick treated turbo like a swim coach treats a swim workout. He paced the deck, yelled out splits, looked at body position, screamed encouragement to the group or called out people by name. Those workouts were never boring.

This one is. I’m in the back corner of the dimly lit, beating Equinox Spin Studio. The instructor this morning, Matt, is at the front of class facing the wearied Monday morning Spinners. There are mirrors along the front wall that we, the peloton, face. From where I sit tucked in the corner and angling my bike I’m out of range of seeing myself. But I’m in a great position to watch everyone else watch themselves chasing their imaginary nemesis. Matt doles out a continual stream of tidbits of advice urging us incrementally higher up our percentage of effort and closer and closer to the imaginary rider out on the road ahead.

Instructor Matt has a microphone on the end of a little boom anchored from his ear. His voice is slicing through the music with instruction as well as visualization queues. “We are on a long straight road. Out ahead of us is another lone rider. We are going to catch him increasing our effort each 3-5 minutes by 5%. We start controlled at 60-65% and we’ll move it up to an all-out effort.” One song is fading out and Matt works his Ipod click-wheel. A techno-fied Bee-Gee’s song pounds into the room. He says “Let’s go get that other rider”.

I’m fighting myself about whether the clock has stopped and if seconds and minutes are still ticking by. They are. Time is moving. But time is moving slowly. Of course, that isn’t true. Time is, like change, constant. It doesn’t go on break, speed up or slow down it doesn’t keep track of itself. We do that. This morning I’m fighting time, pushing time, doing anything I can to not surrender to time.

I’m having a tough time with the visualization. I decide to add in some cool wind. This helps and I put my head down and relax my arms, neck and breathing. My legs go to work. I add more mental pictures. To my left there is a lake. The road is flat but I’m passing through a plateau in the mountains. There are white caps on the lake and the wind feels like it is coming off the hills, over the water and rising from the pavement. The peaks rise around me their summits disappearing into clouds. I look over to my right and see that a 200 pound woman has pulled up alongside me. I’m not imagining this. She is compact, breathing hard and close. I settle in with her. She appears confident in her bike handling at this pace and on this flat stretch of road. She is wearing a heart monitor. It reads 160 beats a minute. I marvel at her 60-65%. I give her a nod and a smile. She heaves out a nervous half smile obviously after her own lone rider up the road.

There are many styles in Spin class. Most of the styles have little to do with biking with cadences bouncy and too high or knee-busting and too low. Nearly everyone is sitting like upright children in high chairs, handlebars draped in white cotton gym towels to collect the spills and sweat that will soon have every soaked and stained. I keep my head down and keep moving.

The imagining works and I finally claw my way up to the rider I earlier conjured. The sweat is pouring off me. The woman next at me looks at my straining face and smirks and nods again. I catch a glimpse of her heart monitor. 160 beat a minute and holding. I should be in better shape. I should be stronger. I will be stronger. The clock moves by 6:30 am and I hear the instructor say there are hills coming up. I look over at Mrs. 160 and wonder what hills she imagines ahead. I know mine will be a tornado of switchbacks and steep pitches. I sit up and grab some water and prepare to begin climbing as soon as the instructor says “go”.

Vortices

Last year I traveled with my brothers Steve and Scott to Viet Nam. We spent time in and around Ha Noi, out on Ha Long Bay and up in the mountain towns of Bac Ha and Sapa near the Chinese border. Short vignettes below. Also links to Scott’s radio food tips and his recent Rotary video production as well as pictures from Steve.

Scott's Radio Food Tip #1 - Sapa
Scott's Radio Food Tip #2 - Travel
Scott's Radio Food Tip #3 - Coffee
Scott's Video Production
Band of Brothers 2006
Steve's 2005 Makong Delta and HCMC Pictures

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Between a split of land on the mighty Red River a village was founded. On a shred of land rising above a sliver of marshes a town grew. Skirting a knob of land among title flats, scattered streams and lakes a city occurred. From a network of foot, cow and duck paths to a loose agglomeration of towns and conjoined streets, to an immense estuary with it own ebbs and flows. Partly laid out in geometers, but mostly growing like vines, Hanoi, is the city between two rivers.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

On the edge of the old quarter of Hanoi, on the banks of Hoan Kien Lake an old "Viet Man" paces reciprocating arcs. On the Red River long-stanchion blades and foot driven oars mint systems of vortices that fall aft tracing out fading and flattening conic sections flailing about one another. Throughout the city, flotillas of bikes and moped, bucket-like cyclos, carts, cafes, streets, push and bump below the rigging and spars of electrical wires and clothes lines and through alleys combining into a tangle as vast and inextricable as characters on a page must do in the eyes of an unlettered peasant…Us.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

At an intersection a boy smiles. His gums support a rubble of teeth shouldering their way to pink gaps and deciduous ones flapping like brothel signs on skin hinges. Precocious sots peer quick faced as I pass basting their sentences together through white smoke of cigarettes and industry turning the sky into a blazing spark shot. Motorcycles tethered by a traffic light mingle and jostle like a nervous horses heaving at the sound of distant guns. Knees pimple through plastic ponchos draped against a constant rain. The light changes. A red flag with a single yellow star snaps straight with a pop. They’re off leeched against a sky of matted reticule of taut jute.

”The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Like jumping fish they go about difficult tasks and matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must observe and learn. Given enough time, enough points, one can begin to draw a mental line from the bridges spanning the river, to the wickered and walled gallows of the old quarter, to this street corner. Plotted out one begins to understand a little about what these people fear, whom they love, how they live. And though it is impossible I want to see everything, taste, smell and touch all, and alter nothing.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”