I can turn 65 miles into 100... TADAAAA!

Well, I finally got my new bike. It is a Specialized Tarmac Rival. If you want to see all the details you can look at the Specialized's wrap sheet (for some reason my computer only wants to go to the Spanish page, sorry). The cool stuff I can say without mispronouncing something is that it's all carbon fiber, ultegra whatever, and 17 lb fully dressed. And it's a girl. I'm not one to name bikes, but for some reason, even tough I finally wound up going with a boy's bike, this one's a girl.
Here's a real picture of mine, getting ready to take its first real ride.

Wednesday I took one look at the weather forecast for Thursday, and told my boss that I was not going to be in tomorrow. The forecast called for sun and highs in the mid 60's!!!!!! The only problem was, I didn't know where to ride. There are no group rides on Thursdays at midday, at least none that I know of, so I was on my own. Where the hell was I going to find 80-100 miles, preferably in a straight line? Short of taking my bike onto the interstate, I had very few options. So I decided to give the cue sheet thing a try.

If you don't know what a cue sheet is, it's a list of turn-by-turn directions for a ride that someone has already mapped out. I'd resisted cue sheet rides in the past because I have the worst sense of direction ever. Really, no kidding, worst sense of direction ever in human history. No exaggeration. I'm not the best at following instructions either. I chose a ride for a century that I had wanted to do, but probably shouldn't because of its proximity to Vineman. It goes from Walden Pond to Mt. Wachusett (the word "mountain" used very loosely). Over the whole course, you are fabled to gain and lose 7,000 feet. You can see the cue sheet here. When you look at the cue sheet, the first thing you'll notice is that it's LONG: 110 turns to be exact. The next thing that you'll notice is that you're very rarely on the same road for more than a mile. If you take the time to check out the provided information itself, you'll find that the abbreviations and shorthand are confusing at best. Nevertheless, I printed up the 3 pages it took to reproduce all 110 of these directions, and headed for Concord.

Once I found somewhere to park at Concord Carlisle High School that didn't require a permit (what kind of high school has a sophisticated fob-sensor-based entry for its parking lots?!) I was off and rolling. I clipped my cue sheet to my brake cables and set off. Okay, first directions, go right on Thoreau. Well that's not where the front entrance to the high school was, that was on Walden road, but I found a back exit, that did, in fact, lead to Thoreau, and went right as told. First disaster evaded, we're off to a great start. Next direction: Cross Rte 2. I rode down Thoreau in the direction it told me and... the road ended. Well fuck, what now? So I reset my garmen (so I could still follow the distances on the cue sheet) and turned around. This time I went to the other entrance and started on Walden Rd. This DID in fact cross Rte 2, and I was on my merry way. The next several directions had me continuing straight and I handled those just fine, but when we got to the first turn, I missed it. When I hit a t-stop and was NOT on the road I was supposed to turn on, I stopped to regroup. I rode back several miles, and didn't see the road I was looking for. I turned around again and rode all the way back to the T-stop, still no road. I stopped and asked a woman who was mulching her yard for directions. She knew one way to get where I was going, but not the way on my cue sheet. This would be a pattern over the course of the day. "You're really far off course," she said. This would be another theme throughout the day. I guess that people just assume that if it's more than a mile, it'll just be too much of a pain to give you the directions for how to get there. When I finally found the turn, the cue sheet said I should have only gone 3.9 miles. I'd already covered over ten. Well shit, it doesn't get much better than this.

Me and my bike, my bike and me. I didn't take any pictures during the ride, so I'll give you pictures of me and my pretty new bike to look at instead. I think this was supposed to be "staring off into
the distance, inspired". It came out like, "Mommy, I lost my
ballooooooooon!"

Right away I had to give up on any aspirations of speed. My feet were aching and I had to keep taking mini frewheeling breaks to take the pressure off of them (I think it was the brand new shoes). There was a headwind, and not only did I have to read my cue sheet, and spot arrows that were faded, covered in sand, or gone entirely, but the first chunk of the ride took me over some of the world's worst pavement. I think some of it might have been the original asphalt from when paved roads were brought to America, with layers upon layers of uneven patches along with fresh potholes. You can't pedal over that crap. All I could do was hold on tight to my handlebars and stand up to try to let my knees absorb some of the shock so I wouldn't get a pinch flat on some unavoidable pothole. This asphalt vomit tends to only be on the right side of the road, though. Near the center line pavement tends to be clear and glassy smooth. So whenever possible I'd ride out to the center of the lane, but inevitably a car would come up behind me after about 10 milliseconds and I'd have to go back to the asphalt vomit. I would try to hug the shoulder and will the car past me as fast as possible. Come around quickly please, I muttered as my brain was rattled free and my teeth banged together. But nooooooooo. While European drivers will speed past you the first chance they get leaving you a roomy 14 inches of wiggle room, Americans wait behind you until they can pull ALL THE WAY to the other side of the road and pass you slowly and cautiously. As if I needed 10 feet to ride next to a car safely? And how exactly is driving into oncoming traffic safer than coming within an arm's length of a cyclist for 3 seconds or less?

Some of these speed variations are due to hills. Many of them, though, are the direct result of me saying, "what the fuck?" and then pulling a U-turn.

I settled into a rhythm and all was going fairly well until I came to the right turn onto Long Hill Road at about mile 20 according to the cue sheet. Well, there was a sign that said Long Hill Road, but it was straight ahead, not to the right. I followed Long Hill Road anyway, maybe it was one of those "trick" right turns. Then I was supposed to bear left. I found no fork. By the time I saw an address again, I wasn't on Long Hill Road anymore. Shit. I asked a dog walker, and he told me to go straight back the way I came, which I did. No Long Hill Road. I turned around again. If there's one thing I hate more than getting hopelessly lost, it's getting hopelessly lost and having to backtrack over shitty pavement uphill. This was some of the worst pavement of the day, and it was uphill BOTH WAYS, meaning that there was a climb and a descent in each direction. I stopped and asked directions again, this time from a woman cleaning out her car. "I don't know any Long Hill Road," the woman said. "Where are you trying to get to?" I explained that I wasn't trying to get TO anything, I was trying to follow this rout, because if I left it, then I'd really be in trouble. I read her the next few instructions. "Bolton center?!" she said. "You're way off course, honey." How could that be? I'd been on Long Hill Road only about a mile ago. She gave me directions back to Rte 117 where the rout would cross later so I could try to pick up from there. "... and that'll put you on Main Street..." she said.
"Main Street?" I asked. "Isn't that just about half a mile that way?" I'd passed it on my first trip through the Land of Shitty Pavement.
"No, no, you're looking for Main Street, Bolton, honey. You're in Hudson." What the hell? I knew I'd been following the directions right, how did I wind up in the wrong TOWN?! I tried to show her my directions, hoping it would refresh her memory on where Long Hill Road might be. "Oh, I don't know the names of the streets in Bolton," she told me. "Just go to Rte 117 and you'll be able to find your way from there." Crap.

This map really doesn't do justice to how lost I got how many times.
For a better map, click here. And for a map of what I should have
done, click here.

The woman's directions held true, though, and I was able to find my way back to the rout. (On the way back I would find that her directions spit me on Rte 117 only a block from Long Hill Road.) After that, the terrain started getting hillier, the headwind started to pick up, and my directions got worse. Golf courses had given way to farms and orchards. There were fewer streets and even fewer signs. I was higher up now and there were fewer trees and I could see tiny little mountains in the distance. One of my directions said, "Turn left at... NO SIGN", but then offered the helpful hint "Mary Had a Little Lamb sign". Huh? When I finally found the road (thanks to some rare arrows that had survived the winter), I didn't see anything saying Mary Had a Little Lamb, but the street itself did have a perfectly visible and legible sign. Go figure.

I was starting to get a little worried. I was pushing 50 miles and still hadn't gotten to the far point at Mt. Wachusett. I'd already gone nearly 20 miles farther than the directions said, and would probably get lost more before all was said and done. I started to imagine what I would do if I either bonked or got stuck in the dark. I could just picture the phone call I would have to make, "Hi, Dad, I don't know where I am or what town I'm in, but I see moo-cows. Can you come pick me up?" I came upon this funny junction between 2 highways where the directions were only "go left around island". That could have meant a lot of things. I interpreted the cue sheet as best I could and rode past several on ramps for interstates and large highways, and then the road turned mean-looking with 3 lanes in each direction and Jersey barriers in the middle. I looked at the Garmin, I'd just clicked over 50 miles. Fuck it, I'm going back, I thought, and cut across 3 lanes to make an illegal U-turn.

My standard picture-taking face. Mom hates it.

But following the reverse directions was even more confusing than following the directions the first time around. All those streets looked the same, there were new forks where there had never been forks before, and everything was backwards. I had to think for a good long time to figure out that I would have to look at the street name from the line ABOVE and the turn from the line BELOW and reverse it in order to find my way back. If I thought the directions were hard to follow on the way OUT I was really screwed now.

I was also having nutrition-related issues. That morning I had made a bunch of date rolls: pureed dates with lemonzest, almonds, and coconut oil rolled in shreaded coconut. The coconut on the outside was my idea, because although delicious, pureed dates have the sticky, squishy texture of cookie dough, and I'd spent all week trying to find a way to package them to go so they wouldn't stick to everything. The coconut seemed to work pretty well, and I'd packed about 8 of them in my bento box. The biggest problem I ran into, though, was that they were still soft and difficult to grab on the go, and my fingers kept sinking into the date blobs and coming back with chunks of dismembered date roll. After a few rolls, not only were my fingers sticky and black from road grime, but my brake levers were sticky too. To make matters worse, I'd put the bento box in the corner between my seat post and top tube, and my legs kept knocking my arm out of the way every time I got a good grip on the suckers. I stopped at a gas station and bought Gatorade and water and moved my bento box to the front half of the top tube. There was a less obvious reason for this, too: I had to pee, and I was unwilling to leave my bike unattended while I locked myself in some bathroom. I figured that if it got too bad, I could always "christen" my bike with "processed Accelerade". Luckily, it did not come to that, although it might have made a better story if I did. I almost "let loose" a couple of times, but the idea of riding around it wet shorts (even if I rinsed my crotch with water from my water bottle) just seemed like it would add another annoyance to an already annoying ride.

This pose was not my idea.

And I still kept getting lost. At one point I went for miles looking for a cross street to the street I was on (Hudson Rd.), only to realize that there were TWO Hudson Roads on my cue sheet and I had skipped ahead and was looking at the wrong line. I had to backtrack for the millionth time. When I finally got to the OTHER Hudson Rd., it was nowhere to be found. I rode up and down the same street from end to end 3 or 4 times before I found a woman walking a 6-year-old on his bike. "Excuse me, do you know which way Hudson Rd. is?" I asked. She did and pointed back in the direction from which I'd come and preceeded to direct me several turns back to the OTHER Hudson Road. I explained that she must be mistaken, that my directions said it crossed this road that we were on.
"Well, I live on Hudson Road, and I know it pretty well. I'm sure it doesn't cross this road," she assured me. I showed her my directions and we tried to put our heads together about how to get there. She affirmed that she was right, showing that the directions followed the same rout she was giving me. I explained that I was following the reverse directions and that that was, in fact, from whence I had come. "Well, (Andrew, stop playing in the dirt!) where are you trying to get to?" she asked.
"Concord Carlisle High School," I said.
And then she pronounced the famous last words, "(Andrew, put that down!) Carlisle, that's a REALLY long way away." Every time someone had said this today it had been shortly before they shrugged their shoulders and said they couldn't help me.
"Well, how about Walden Pond? Can you tell me how to get to Walden Pond?" No, she didn't know how to get there by back roads, but she could get me back to Rte 117. That was on my directions, and that went by Walden Pond. Okay, sure, fine. I'll just take 117 back. At least I'll know that I'll be able to find my car again someday, I thought. We chatted a bit more about how I'd been lost and how she had a terrible sense of direction and how I had a terrible sense of direction and did I want to come back to her house, her husband was much better with directions. Then she started giving me alternate directions, even more complicated than the last ones. This woman was a talker, it seemed she could spin off ways to get to 117 for hours, but she didn't know where Hudson Rd. was. It MUST have been out there, because I'd found it on the way out. "No, it's okay," I said. "I've been lost for about 40 miles today, I just want to find my car before it gets dark."
I thanked her and started to get back on my bike. "How far have you gone today?" she asked. "Andrew, don't throw sand!" she added.
I looked at my Garmin, "80 miles." If I said it nonchalantly enough maybe I could avoid the You're Crazy or the Are You Going to Be Okay? conversation. I always get uncomfortable trying to explain that 100 miles isn't all that big a deal without being arrogant or condescending about it.
"Wooooooooow," she said. I tried to hurry up and find the cleats so I could be off before she asked me something embarrassing. Just as I was pulling away she called, "My son wants to know how long you've been riding."
"5 hours!" I said, surprised myself. Crap, it was after 4 and I STILL didn't know how far away I was or how to get back to my car.

This face says: "Have you taken the picture yet? How about now?"

I followed the chatty woman's directions to the OTHER Hudson St and back onto Rte 117. As I was coming out onto the road a pickup or an SUV passed and snapped me out of my own little world when a beefy-looking dude in a backwards cap yelled "HEY!" as loud as he could, then looked at his buddy in the driver's seat like he'd just made the funniest joke in the world. I hate that. Why do footballish thugs think it's so funny to yell at cyclists? Sure, I jump every time (I'm a bit skittish that way), but what's so funny? Why is harassing cyclists such a big joke. Is yelling "HEY!" as loud as you can really supposed to make me feel like a tool? Or what IS it supposed to make me feel like? How does being a dick make you funny? I don't get it.

Up the road several miles I stopped at a light and a guy with fenders and (Rocketpants, correct me on my terminology) paniers pulled up behind me. "How far is it to Walden Pond?" I asked.
"About 3 miles," he said.
"I could kiss you right now!" I said, relieved.
"How long have you been lost for?" he asked.
"About 40 miles out of 90," I said. I thought that at least with a cyclist I wouldn't have to worry about the You're Crazy or the Are You Going to Be Okay conversation, but he did the "woooooow" thing too. Really, it's not that big a deal! Why does everyone act like you're doing some Herculean feat if you ride into the triple digits? Or not even?! All I wanted was someone sympathetic to say, "Wow, that sucks!" No one had had the decency to say "That sucks" to me all day!

Eventually I picked up the scent again and found my way back over the chip seal to the high school without major incident (although I did get lost at least one more time). When I pulled up to my car I'd gone 100.38 miles. According to the cue sheet, my rout should have only been 64.2 miles (32.1 each way). I had been lost for 38.18 miles, probably more since I'd taken the shortcut along Rte 117.

I'm so upset that this one didn't come out because it was the
picture that I wanted most.

I took my bike apart and chucked it in the car along with all the crap from my pockets and went for the world's shortest run-0ff. I was wearing a pair of long-ago retired running shoes that I use for loafing around, so I justified just running from one end of the school yard to the other. I could have run around the track since I was parked right next to it, but there were all these high school athletes down there, and I didn't much feel like doing the Long Brick Shuffle in front of the most critical of audiences. I ran a whopping .65 miles to the exit and back... with a pit stop in the middle lasting almost as long as my run itself. Actually, my legs felt great. The new bike made a world of difference for several reasons (the pedals, the weight, the bigger wheels), and I definitely could have kept riding for hours more. My butt wasn't even all that sore, although a little raw, and my run legs felt good. I might have kept running if it weren't for the 6 hours' worth of urine begging for an out. My feet had stopped aching about half way through, and as I drove home in rush hour traffic and the annoyance of the cue sheet started to wear off, I started to feel pretty proud of myself. In fact, I felt EXTATIC.

When I got home all I wanted was for someone to take a picture of me and my new bike after our first real ride. No one was home at my house, and the sun was setting, so I went next door to ask my neighbor to do it before nightfall. Joe is not one of those people you ask to help you with something if you're in a hurry. He always makes things elaborate and complicated, so that's why I didn't tell him that the flash wasn't on. Thanks to Joe, I didn't walk away with the one photo I wanted, I walked away with a whole album, and most of them were pretty good pictures (other than the poor quality). Thanks to neighbor Joe for most of the photos in this post.