Big Bikes

EFTA NECS #1 Glocester Grind, Glocester, RI
Just Ride Your Bike

The night before a race my preparation routine is incredibly meticulous. I like to go to an afternoon wedding ( like Stefan Scott’s for example) then proceed to double fist Stellas (yes, the other fist held a pint of ice water) at the open bar for four hours, and assemble a pre-race meal comprised of fried Trout cakes, fried fritters (which I thought were vegetarian, but contained pork), deviled eggs, fried veggie dumplings, and the lion’s share of a cheese plate. My stomach still isn’t speaking to me, actually it is…quite loudly, it sounds like Lewis Black with a megaphone, and that’s the problem. In the morning I picked up IBC teammates Jesse and Uri at IBC Newton. I had, in a rare moment of charismatic persuasiveness convinced them accompany me to this event. Action with very little thought behind it, that’s the stuff adventure is made of.

It was a beautiful day in Rhode Island, the recent spring rains bringing the green to the trees almost overnight. The venue was essentially at someone’s house, that’s New England Grass Roots racing for ya. Not much of a warm up was had, just headed out for a pre-ride of the first third of the course. Doug Peckham, the promoter of this event is (in)famous for his sadistic genius when it comes to course design. Design, don’t know if that’s the word, Doug’s courses are more Jackson Pollack than Rodchenko. If I were some Christian-whack-job-primitive on right wing radio I’d dub it something like “Belligerent Design”. Stay with me for a second here…if New England Mountain bike courses were western films Doug could change his name ever so slightly to “Peckham-Pah” and his courses would be “The Wild Bunch” to NORBA’s aseptic episodes of Gunsmoke.

Uri is happy and salty. Uninviting man-made pond. Jesse's wound and sick tan lines.

The first race I ever did on a single speed was Peckham’s “Richardson’s Saw Mill” race. My IF geared bike got stolen, my friend Kurt leant me his Voodo SS, I think it had a monstrous 32 X 18 (if that ) on it. It went well, like punching your fist through a windshield while jacked up on PCP, and the results were about as painful. Back then I was a crazy spinner, a big ring was something to smash on rocks and gash the back of your calf with, so when the trail bit it was as if a million muscle fibers cried out at once and were suddenly silenced. I spent the rest of the race bouncing off rocks like a human pinball and walking, finally getting lapped by the entire sport field as a lovely young lad taunted “They’re catching you!”. I completed one of two eleven mile laps and dropped out before my knees exploded like a small pig in a giant microwave oven. That was the first and last time I dropped out of a race for a non-catastrophic reason. If you call guaranteed knee reconstruction and the transplant and replacement of my lower back with that of a baboon “non-catastrophic”. It took all these years and race seasons to realize that Peckham’s races are the ideal Single Speed races. There are virtually no open areas where the roadies types can whup up on the mountain guys. Sure you can get cranking in the big ring and hit terminal velocity just in time to rail into a rock garden and knock your teeth out but that would be just plain silly. These are “Just Ride Your Bike” courses. If you can clean the majority of the tricky sections, stay upright, keep your bike intact (tall order), and survive ‘til the end you’ll do well.

Oh ya, I raced my bike, I might want to talk about that bit eventually. We lined up, the Elite field was on the small side, but had some strong guys in it. Matt O’keefe from CCB was there, one of the two fastest guys on the New England circuit, rumor was that he’s prepping for some big road race and that he’d been out for six hours the day before, the way he took off from the gun it seemed like a six hour ride was a light spin with openers for the guy. I took second wheel, sitting not too uncomfortably, wheezing anaerobically, trying to stay with Matt for as long as possible. Behind us were Colin Eggleton, Paul Simoes, and Michael Patrick (I apologize to the others, I just haven’t met you yet). Colin was a Pro at age 18, was top ten at Junior worlds, the kid could basically not ride a bike for three years, subsist on nothing but trans fat smoothies and Doritos, and still come out on any day and kick all sorts of ass. One of the most physically gifted mountain bikers I’ve ever known. Paul is a monster, this was his kind of course, he rides the unrideable, he swears at his bike like a prospector at his mule, he is preternaturally strong, able to wrestle a huge gear on his single speed. And Michael, he’s still getting up to speed after a long winter of Chemo-therapy and recovery, but even at partial-speed he is as dangerous as a Capybara at bay (if it had brass knuckles and a bolo knife).

Things were going alright then Matt used his superior ‘Cross skills and that thing under his helmet, in his head, that I guess I have but don’t often use which told him not to try to ride the first rock garden because it was virtually unrideable and getting knocked off and then running is way slower than preemptively dismounting and galloping through. I also managed to burp my tire pretty bad (tapping out a little pressure on the line after it was fine on the pre-ride, unwise). This burp lead to more burps, which lead to flatness and bottoming out the rim on rocks. So I stopped to hit the tire with some CO2, here Colin and Paul passed me, it took me a while to gap back up to Colin, I rode with him for a while, recovering from the catching back up, then he had a drivetrain issue which was too bad. Paul had really taken off and by the time I got a bead on him he had passed Matt, things were not looking so alright all of a sudden. Oddly enough, I caught Matt and passed him, the chickens of the previous day’s efforts coming home to roost. Then I saw, or rather heard Paul screaming bloody murder at his bike. He’d bent his chainring on a stone wall and was in the process of bashing it back in line with a rock. Now I was in the lead and I got that “I just threw a rock at a hornet’s nest feeling” and took off. Shortly thereafter I tripped a pedal on a rock just before a really complex rock garden (using the word “rock” four times in three sentences…totally unavoidable), the trip sent me into a front flip, and my hands weren’t fast enough to prevent my face from planting itself into the ground. The new pink helmet works I guess and it looks great doing it. After the flip I couldn’t get into my right pedal, I’d whack my foot on the side of it, trying to dislodge any foreign objects which might be gumming up the works. I’d eventually get in, only to dismount and find that I then couldn’t get in and my foot would keep flying out on the upstroke as I was climbing, wicked awesome. I didn’t realize until after the race that I had smashed one of the tension plates on my new XTR pedal, another wicked awesome for that.

Going into the last lap I heard the gap was solid, I came through the Start/Finish, reaching for a bottle I had left baking in the sun on a sideways tractor tire, knocking it into the middle portion. This caused me to dismount and fumble to retrieve it, good thing I had that gap. I imagine that I looked so disheveled and delirious that folks were going “is that guy really the leader? He’s a God damn mess”.

Brown-nosed from face-planting.

Last lap was a combination of riding semi-conservatively in the tech-sections for the sake of equipment-preservation (more ‘Cross than Trials skills coming into play) and absolutely hammering anything I could hammer. One thing I didn’t ride conservatively was the big log hop, I’d ridden it every lap but not as fast or smooth as this lap. I threaded the needle between the rocks approaching it brakeless at speed and glided over, wheel to wheel, landing in the rock garden on the opposite side, pedaling through the muddy corner beyond and grinning ear to ear. Man, this was a fun course. I managed to clean one tricky root section which had thwarted me the rest of the race, wheely-ing into a pool of muddy water and lunging up the rooty embankment on the other side, sliding sideways on the off camber slipperiness, and finding traction at the very last second to ride out of it.

Toward the end my internal soundtrack went off…track, Motorhead’s “Overkill” lapsing into Devo’s “Sloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin’)”, apropos as I was getting pretty sloppy, although I wasn't missing the holes, making more and more mistakes as I went on. I brought Overkill back before it was too late though, and started turning the cranks over at a good clip. There was no real victory salute, just a subtle flash of either a “Hang loose, shaka-brah” or a sign of the horns type hand gesture (can’t remember which ) and a sigh of relief. Paul Simoes rolled across in second place to make this the second weekend in a row that Single Speeds occupied the two top spots on the podium, watch out now! Gotta love the EFTA awards ceremony too, no podium, no medals, no trophies, just a handshake, a “good job”, and a folded bill of a large denomination.

Next stop Coyote Hill.

Weird Wound.