Hipster AF

Have you ever shipped a bike? I never had, but I’ve flown with my bike several times and each time I have sworn that I will never do it again. Whenever I rail on about what a royal pain it is to fly with a bike, some person seems to pop out of the crowd to recommend shipping it. “It costs the same amount of money, you get insurance, and you don’t have to deal with dragging it across the airport or finding a taxi/uber that will take the box in an unfamiliar city.” That sounded pretty sweet, so I marked my calendar for a week out from my trip and planned to ship my bike on that day. Here are some things that I didn’t think about when you ship a bike:

1.       You have to take off the rear derailleur to  prevent it from snapping off in the box. You also need a bunch of padding, zip ties, and one of those special plastic things to sit in your fork to prevent damage during shipment. I didn’t have any of that stuff handy and don’t trust myself to pull the derailleur off without breaking anything.

2.       Bike shops need a work order to put a bike in a box. They also expect payment for this service. This costs $60-75.

3.       Since the bike needs to both go into the box, and come out of the box on either side of 2 cross country trips, this means that you will be paying the above mentioned $60-75 four times during this trip.

4.       Some bike shops will not accept the responsibility of having FedEx pick up the bike in their store, so you will need to arrange to have that giant honking box picked up and taken to another location where someone can be trusted to be there for the FedEx pickup "some time before 6pm."

5.       Since you are probably not made of money, you will probably choose to ship the bike via ground, which means that it will take a week on either end of your trip to travel across the country. This means that you will be without your bike for about 3 weeks, 2 of which you will be home wishing you could ride and feeling like you're wasting your summer

6.       You will likely conclude that traveling with your bike is NEVER a good idea, and resolve to only do cycling events within an 8-hour drive. Luckily you live in the west, so all the good riding is within a 12-hour drive anyway.

While my bike was going through this ordeal (traveling from Nebraska to Connecticut, to be specific), my new friends invited me to go on a ride. “I would love to go,” I said. “But my bike is in a box on its way to Massachusetts.”

“Well you’ll just have to miss the marzipan croissants then…” Tom of Maine told me.

“Hang on, you didn’t tell me that there’d be marzipan!” I said. I have this thing for marzipan. I think it’s just the most delicious thing in the world (tied maybe with frosting), and like to pinch globs of it off a roll and eat it plain. I fucking love marzipan more than Oprah loves bread. “I do have a bike…” I told Tom. “But it’s my fixie that I use to ride to work. Do you think there will be hills?”

“Well there’s one hill on Lucas Valley Road, but it’s nothing for you. It’s real short. After that it’s flat all the way through Point Reyes”

The problem wasn’t so much the length of the hill, but that with only one gear if the hill was too steep for even a few feet I’d fail to turn over the pedals and I’d tip over. I had gearing on my bike that let me ride the 10 miles to work at roughly 20mph (48x14, I think), but the largest “hills” on my route to work were 3 freeway overpasses, none of which exceeded 6% incline or a block in length. What would happen if the hill exceeded an 8% grade? Were my legs strong enough to turn over that heavy gear against that kind of resistance? And how long could I stand up to a 5- or 6% grade if it went on and on for miles? Could I do it? Could I maintain the fast cadence that I would need to keep up to go down a hill at 25- to 30mph? The more I thought about it, the more these questions begged for an answer.

I got on Mapmyrun (a service I still prefer to Strava – because it allows me to maintain my privacy) and broke the hill on Lucas Valley Rd into quarter-mile segments  to see the gradient. Mostly the hill stayed in the low single digits, but there was one mile that Mapmy  showed as a 10% incline. Ten percent. For one mile. And then all flat until marzipan. 

Bragging rights. Friends. Marzipan. A chance to work on my weird jersey and glove tan lines…

I had to give it a try.

After driving an hour  to the meeting point in San Rafael, I had to pee like crazy, so while I was in the hipster coffee shop/microroaster, Tom of Maine asked if he could try my bike. “Sure!” I said. “Just don’t hurt yourself. Remember, the pedals don’t stop.” I wish I could have stuck around to see him try to ride my tiny bike, but I really had to go.

When I got back out, Tom asked me, “So tell me, what do you do when you’re on your way to work and you’re coming up to a stop sign?”

Was this a trick question? “Ummmmm… I slow down, brake a little bit…” I’m too old to ride without a brake. That’s just a useless risk. “…look in all directions to see if a car is coming, and I go if no one’s there. If there’s a car coming, I try not to clip out. I can’t really do a track stand that well, but I can pedal r e a l l y slow.”

“You don’t ride around in circles?”

“No, why would I do that? Then I probably won’t be facing the right way when the light changes.” You see, I’m not a hipster. I ride a fixed gear because it’s fun and because it’s less to maintain. Okay, fine, also because it gives me street cred. But on the biggest commuter bike trail in Silicon Valley, most people don’t even know the difference between an e-bike and a rollerblade, and they’re scared of spandex, so there's no cred to be had. So mostly I just ride it because it’s fun.

Lucas Valley Road, as the name suggests, is where George Lucas has his compound… er… “Ranch,” and it does go through a redwood grove that does seem like the setting for a fairy tale, but that’s where the famousness stops. It’s just one of those roads that everyone rides, and if you're from around here you'll find yourself on it someday or other. With my one gear I was having trouble riding at the boys’ warm-up pace, so I noodled on up the road doing my own thing. I wound up towing a stranger for several minutes, and when the road started to get steep enough that it was faster to be in a low gear than a big one he came around and said, “Your bike has no gears.”

“Well, no. It’ doesn’t," I agreed. I don't know why, but when people notice that I'm not riding a geared bike their first comment is always to tell me so. Like I might have forgotten it at home. He was using a similar tone to when I tell old grandmothers on the bike trail that they're wearing their helmets backwards. "My boyfriend back there, the one with the Irish accent? He took my road bike away and said that I couldn’t have it back until I firmed up my big, fat ass.” The stranger looked at me, nonplussed. The uncomfortable silence went on for too long. “My bike is being shipped out of state right now,” I admitted, to cut the tension. “My friends promised me that this was the only hill.” Some people have no sense of humor.
"Oh," he said. There were so many directions that that conversation could have taken, but I was not expecting it to go nowhere. I figured that he must have the personality of a raw potato, and was glad that I wasn't going to be stuck making small talk with him for the next half an hour. 

Shortly after that, the hill started in earnest, and my new humorless “friend” rode off out of sight as my cadence dropped to about 25 RPM. I had my Garmin screen set to show me the current incline, and I don’t know how accurate it is, but I was seeing numbers touching 11% and 12% for a few seconds at a time. It was like doing heavy single legged squats over and over. Every pedal stroke felt like it would be my last. I was sucking wind like a vacuum cleanter, and my arms and back were getting sore from pulling on my handlebars for leverage. Eventually I had to pull over. I sat and caught my breath for half a minute, and then was dismayed to find that the top was only around the next bend. George had passed me during my breather, and we sat at the top waiting for Tom (who had stopped off to buy a granola bar) while I sat there and gasped and waited for my hands to stop shaking. That was it. I’d done it! It would be "all flat" from here on.

We rode down the hill, and on for several miles until we reached one of those little towns that is no more than a crook in the road, that I’m always so surprised to find so close to large cities. I don’t know Marin County very well, but there was some discussion about going to Reyes Station (Tom’s idea), or follow the Marin Century route to Petaluma (George’s idea). Since the boys were technically training for the Marin Century, somehow George won out. I can’t blame him. They had a limited time to get the right training into their legs, and it would be shitty of me to insist that they do a junk ride because I’d insisted on joining them on the wrong kind of bike.

“Is it flat, George?” I asked.

“It’s the kind of flat where there’s an incline…” he equivocated. I gave him a dirty look. But the Irish have drier senses of humor than mine, and George was unfazed. So it was going to be one of those kinds of rides, where I didn’t know what I was in for, and bargained with the devil at every step that if I could get through this one part, then it would all be easy from there. Of course it never works that way, and shortly we hit another hill. Let me be clear: these weren’t enormous hills. They were short and not terribly steep, and it would have been a relatively easy ride on a road bike. But the next hill (which spent more time than the last at double digit inclines) had me digging deeper than I had in a very, very, very long time. I made it up this one again with only one rest break, but I could tell that I didn’t have another effort like that left in me for the day.

“Hey, you guys. You told me that you would wait for me at the top of the hills…” I gasped when they reached the top to find me waiting again. "But..." gasp "to wait for me..." suck "you would have to pass me" hork.

“Claire, you are officially my hero,” Tom said, ruining the smack talk I was hoping would keep me going.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I have any more of those left in my legs,” I admitted. “The next one I’m probably going to have to do some walking.”

Indeed, the next one I did have to do some walking, because I found that if I couldn’t go on and had to pull off in a flat spot, it was very hard to get moving again. I would clip in my good leg at the top of the pedal stroke, and have until that foot hit the bottom to clip in and draw the pedals through the dead spot at 6 and 12 o’clock. Time and again, I would miss the pedal entirely, or get stuck in the dead spot and be forced to clip back out before my bike tipped over. Finally I managed to get clipped back in, and ride up and over the top. This time the boys were already off down the other side, and I had to chase to catch up. Thank god they weren’t being princes. I don’t think I could have been polite if I’d felt like I was the one holding everyone up.

Much to my relief, when I caught up with the boys again we were on the edge of town, and town meant food and drink. Another challenge of riding the wrong bike was that my fixie doesn’t have a bottle cage on it. I had a bottle in my jersey pocket, but the riding had been too up and down for me to trust myself to ride one-handed for long enough to grab a drink. Same story with food. We’d only ridden 27 miles, but they had been hot, exposed, and metabolically tough and I was ready to drink a horse trough of water and then eat the horse.

Giant sandwich installed in my gut, lubricated by about a liter of fluids, I was feeling more optimistic about the ride back. I don’t know if the next hill was the worst we saw, or if I was just the most tired. I made it about 2/3 of the way up before the pedals would turn over no more, and I had to put a foot down to keep from tipping over. I walked while I recovered and the boys passed me. But then when I was ready to ride again, I couldn’t remount. I tried again and again, but I just couldn’t get the pedals moving enough to get clipped in. I could have turned downhill for just long enough to get clipped in and then turned back around, but I didn’t want to give up a single inch of my hard-won elevation. I started growling and screaming, but that had no effect. The hill remained despite my aggressive posing. Eventually I had to keep walking to a spot that looked a bit flatter. But I still didn’t have the power in my legs for the 2 big pedal strokes it would take to get clipped in and moving again. I ended up walking probably about a quarter mile until it flatted out near the top before I could finally re-mount and save my dignity.

When I got to the top, the boys were long gone. But George had reiterated again and again that “at the bottom of the hill there’s a sharp left at Hicks Valley Rd, so don’t miss it.” I came down the hill to find George there waiting for me at the turn. “Where’s Tom?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know. When I got here he was gone. I’m afraid he might have missed the turn and kept going straight.” Neither of us had cell service, which is the most lonely helpless felling in the world. We stood there for a few minutes trying to decide what to do, but what solution didn't involve a cell phone?! None. it is impossible to problem solve without a cell phone. George wanted to go looking for him down the wrong road. I was in favor of staying put.

Finally I admitted, “George, I’m too gassed to do any more hills than I have to. How about I stand here and wait for him in case he comes back through here, and you ride a mile or so up the road and see if you can find him?”

While I was waiting for the boys, a group of charity riders started to accumulate at the same intersection. You know those know-it-alls who have been riding for like a year and a half, have done a metric century or two, and fancy themselves experts? Charity jerseys and Izumi shorts and neon jackets covered in reflective shit? The folks who leave the visors on their helmets even though they don't own a mountain bike? You’ve seen them before… Well it was that group. 

“Yeah, dude. That went on fucking forever,” one of them said.
“Yeah! Ages and ages. It never ends,” said the guy with the more authoritative tone. He was probably the guy who had done two metric centuries since he started riding and was training for his first imperial century. He was probably authoritative enough to pump his own tires without letting all the air out when he was done.

“I think that’s the steepest thing I’ve ever climbed,” said the less annoying one.

“The steepest thing I’ve ever climbed is that bit at the top of Diablo…” said The Expert.

According to Mapmy, the road to the summit of Mt. Diablo reaches 27%

Okay, pause here: Mt Diablo, at just shy of 4,000 ft is one of the most ridden mountains in the Bay Area. It is not an overwhelmingly steep climb for the first 13.5 miles or so, but it has a very, very steep driveway about 200 yards long up to the observation tower at the summit. Diablo takes most novice riders about 2 hours to climb. If this guy had ridden Diablo, then what was he doing bitching about the 1-mile/500 ft pimple that we’d just come over? And was he really comparing the wall-like monstrosity at the top of Mt Diablo to the little incline we’d just gone over? What a twerp.

Finally, The Expert and his crew decided to ditch the guy they were waiting for and head back to the car. He was walking, you see, and ain’t nobody got time for that. They would go, get the car, and pick him up in Nicasio. I felt bad for whoever the poor guy was. Cycling is full of kind, accepting, socially-awkward people who just want to geek out about bikes and be your friend. Whoever this guy was, he had gotten in with the wrong crowd, and I hope it didn’t cause him to give up riding. Just as they were riding away, Tom came around corner from the direction we were supposed to be going. “Where the heck have you guys been? Where’s George?”

“George thought you missed the turn and went to go look for you. And here he comes now!” I was very glad to have found friends that not only would wait for me, but would go look for them if someone went missing.

While I had been waiting for the boys, in between eavesdropping on The Expert, another pair had ridden by, coming from the direction where George had gone to look for Tom. These guys were the real deal; fast, clearly racers, and the sorts of guys who could spend just as long talking about their Strava stats after a ride as they’d spent riding. They also had mustaches and their gear was of a brand that I won’t name, but that me and MY friends call “all douched up with somewhere to be.”  I described my friends and asked if they’d seen any of them.  They hadn’t, and they rode on. When the boys and I stopped for more water and a pee break  in Nicasio (it turns out that that was the name of the “town” in the bend in the road), the douchy Strava boys were there too.

“Did you find your friends?” one of them asked. They were douches, but they were kind douches. And anyway, I was wearing a pretty awesome hipster kit myself: all lightning bolts and swirls like the scene interludes in Saved by the Bell. I can understand why they would want to talk to me. I'm obviously very cool.

“Yup. Now we just have to go the 15 miles back to San Rafael.”

“We still have like 80 to go,” he brag-whined. “And we’ve ridden like 70 already.” I didn’t react to this. 150 miles, especially when you’re as fit as these guys are really didn’t impress me. And I was annoyed that he would make such an obvious attention grab. I was wrong. He was a douche after all. The mustache and hair long enough for a man bun (on non-helmet days) should have tipped me off.

The last time I’d ridden the road back to Lucas Valley was the time I had snapped my frame with my snatch, and had to ride a broken frame on a broken crotch for 40 miles (did I ever tell that story here?). While I was lost in the memory of that, the boys sat in my slipstream over some tame rollers. After one of them, Tom rolled up beside me. “Did you hear those guys?” he asked. “They were real douched up hipsters. They  passed you going the other direction when you were going  downhill. When I passed them I could hear something about gear ratios, and then one of them goes, ‘And she had no brake!!!’ I didn’t have the heart to burst their bubble, they were so impressed.”

We all rolled along, quite chuffed that someone in our merry band of misfits had impressed a bunch of hipsters. And an impressed hipster is no real hipster, so we had ridden the world of a handful of real hipster douches. I have to admit, despite getting stuck walking uphill a few times, I felt like I was achieving something significant and was pretty proud of myself. I knew we only had the one hill left, and I wasn’t going to have to do something humiliating like have to call an Uber or something. The final hill came, and my legs burned and spluttered through another several minutes of pain. I kept waiting for the road to get so steep that I would have to walk again, but then I reached the distinctive boulder that I knew was at the top, and pulled over to wait for the boys. As long as I didn’t have to dismount, I could still out-climb them, even with only one gear. Okay, I was going to say it. I was pretty badass.

When we pulled back up to the car after 56 miles and 4000 feet of climbing, I turned to my faithful companions. “Okay, I’ll admit now that it was a mistake and I shouldn’t have done it. But now that I have, I’m glad I did, and I’m glad it’s over.”

“That was quite impressive,” said George, without a tinge of irony in his voice. I would have preferred a little shit talking to take me down a peg, but if that wasn’t available then sincere congratulations were the next best thing.

The whole ride home I couldn’t get over how lucky I was to have started a network of riders who weren’t douches. And I was pissed as hell that it would be another 3 weeks before I got my real bike back. Cuz I sure as hell wasn't planning on doing something like that again.