The long unwinding road

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

LUW 1.jpgA great ride does not have to be epic to be satisfying. Here in Illinois, there aren’t many big hills to climb or winding roads to follow. So we have to make our rides interesting rather than the other way around.

One of my favorite summer routes is best done in the evening after work. It involves a long, straight trip out to Dekalb County and back. The route is rolling in some parts, flat in others. It cuts through corn and soy bean fields for the most part. There are crumbling old barns that once held cattle and hay. I pass the old high school where my running career got started.

Departing from Geneva after leaving my car in the Metra parking lot for my wife to drive home on her commute back from Chicago, the straight ride catches onto Keslinger Road, which crosses the area’s big retail strip on Randall Road. After that, it’s all country riding.

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Keslinger goes up and down like the roads of Brittany in the north of France. I focused on full pedal strokes, but the wind was healthy from the northwest. Some of those climbs were difficult. That is the key area in which I struggle in cycling. Long, slow climbs uphill into the wind. I suck air and tire out every time. Only by focusing heavily on a full pedal stroke do I get anywhere. It’s a mystery why this is so hard for me. But my theory is that a long torso does not help in those circumstances.

There were moments of true flow along the way. I passed the Richardson’s Electronics plant, the company where my father got a job in 1970 that brought us all to Illinois in the first place. We saw all our stuff packed in a big Mayflower van and climbed into the back seat of our 1967 Buick Wildcat. There was a little brother in the front seat and the three older brothers in the back. Then we cried and cried as we drove onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike never to return home to 1725 Willow Street Pike again. We huddled together in the back seat singing Beatles songs, lamenting the rich life we were leaving behind.

LUW2.jpgSuch ancient history still pales next to the reason why the rolling hills on which I rode even exist. They are the deposits of glaciers long ago. On top of the gravel fells prairie loess, a rich palette for seeds that propagated one of the world’s great grasslands. Over millennia the soil grew deep and black. Sometimes the prairie burnt clean away, but that was only the surface. Below ground, roots ten feet deep held the secret of next year’s growth, and the next.

People that lived here for centuries burned the prairie on purpose. In fact it is estimated there was so much burning across the face of North America it actually kept the naturally cold climate in check. When those tribes that did the burning were wiped out by European aggressors, the climate actually cooled, leading to the period known as the Little Ice Age when Northern Europe froze in its tracks. Manmade climate change is real. It has happened before. Winters are not nearly as severe here in Illinois as they were just forty years ago when we first moved to the territory once known as the Prairie State. B

ut the prairie’s now gone. Not from burning, but from agriculture. Only 1/10th of one percent of the original prairie remains. The rest was wiped out by the plow.

Yet I rode past a preserve called Merritt Prairie out in Dekalb County. It sits on a steep rise in the landscape. Perhaps that is why some shred of the prairie remains. More has been restored in that site through propagation and restoration. At the base of the hill is a wet little seep where small patches of sedge remain. Once the prairie ecosystem was massive, complex and unimaginably wide. Now it is constrained to locations where either people or time forgot about it.

I well recall wandering the edges of railroad tracks with my late teacher Robert Horlock. He was an original in many respects, and loved the notion of restoring the prairie. But in order to salvage or save prime examples of prairie botany, Horlock and his associates Dick Young, Gerould Wilhelm and others had to learn where prairie remnants remained. They’d ferret out prairie remnants during the summer months, then gather seeds at opportune times, freeze them in sand over the winter months and prep them for planting come spring. These would be parsed out to prize students who would plant them in “prairie plots” which actually served the opposite purpose of a graveyard.

Had I learned some of this history when we first moved out to Illinois, it might have helped add some allure. As it was, my brothers and I embraced the avian life and became lifelong birders as a result. You enter the realm of interest through your own portals, always.

The long ride out to Route 23 in Dekalb County crossed through several townships. That meant different types of road. Some were smooth and wonderful. One cheap township did the classic ‘chip and seal’ and for four miles I rode on rough roads with strips of gravel on either side of me.

LUW map.pngSomewhere on that country road the asphalt came back and I was riding on the far edge of the road. Traffic is never heavy out there, but there are a few commuters who drive east to work and back again in the evening. They come barreling back into Dekalb on their way home.

It was quiet for a while. Then suddenly, a car roared past within a foot of my left shoulder. There was no reason for it. No approaching traffic. No hazards to separate. Either that driver did not see me, was driving distracted while texting, or wanted to intimidate me by buzzing me on the bike.

In any case, I raised my middle finger at him and shouted an expletive. It was a shitty thing to do, passing so close to me so far out in the open. The vehicle kept going, climbed past the prairie I just mentioned and disappeared over the top of the hill with a last glimmer of the windshield.

I’d noted the type of vehicle in case I saw it along the way. And sure enough, it sat parked in a farm driveway seven miles further up the road. I was sorely tempted to go let the air out of the tires. But having a long history with mean farm dogs and the bites they can impart, I thought the better of it. Plus you never know who will emerge with a gun pointed at you and anger in their heart.

One can die a thousand ways, it seems. That driver could have hit me and left me in the ditch bloody and dying under a prairie sun. The flies would reach me first if my phone was thrown out of my kit pocket. If buried in grass, the rest of the passing vehicles might never see me. Then the thirst would take hold as blood drained from my body. I’d grow faint and tired. The pain would settle into a dull throb, then shock would slowly take out the consciousness.

I might be discovered by another cyclist the next morning. The cool night air would have dried the blood over my bare skull. Open wounds would have sealed. Skin would be pale, perhaps a little blue. I would still be alive, but just barely. Calls would be made to 911. The ambulance would come tearing out from Dekalb, but it would be too late. The fellow cyclist that found me would sense some change in energy. A bird would call, mysteriously. Because that’s what birds do when someone dies.

That’s how it might have been if the driver had been one foot further to the right, or miscalculated his aggressive little feint at pushing me off the road. But as it was, I was not struck. Which is surprising, in some respects. Because a recent issue of Bicycling magazine states that 41% of people who ride at least four days a week have been struck by cars. That’s 4 in 10 cyclists. Struck by cars. All because people are too arrogant, selfish and concerned about their goddamned right to own the road because they (fucking) pay taxes and don’t want to slow down, move over or take thirty seconds to get around a person doing something good for themselves.

That’s the world we live in. 4 in 10 drivers are too stupid to know the difference. I’ll state it here plainly: even stupid cyclists aren’t really at fault most of the time. Not when the odds are 4000 lbs to 150. Cars should always defer to cyclists. Always. No exception. There is simply nothing so important, not even a stop sign or law so important, that a driver can’t err on the side of caution.

So I get why my wife sometimes worries when I ride out there alone. She’s a long rider too. We try to avoid high traffic areas. But as yesterday’s little experience proves, there are no guarantees.

When I turned back east with the wind at my back it was a relief in many ways. That wind had blocked my way for 24 miles straight out to Dekalb. Later while looking on Strava I learned that I’d averaged maybe 16 mph the whole way. Not too impressive.

But who cares? With the wind at my back I was tearing it up, going 30 on the downhills and thinking about the guy from the Bora team that had been in the breakaway in the Tour two days earlier. He rode a Specialized S-Works bike that looked exactly like my Venge right down to the white letters on a matte black frame.

So I was inspired, and alive actually, grateful to be riding more easily.

LUW purple store.pngThere was just one problem. I was running low on fluids to drink. Yet I knew that 12 miles ahead lay the Purple Store in Kaneville. So I parsed my Gatorade yet still ran out with three miles to go before the store. I was thirsty and feeling the effects of hammering along at high speed.

The sweet young kid at the store had to remind me there was a $5 minimum to use my charge card. So I threw a couple peanut butter cream inside Clif bars on the counter and it came to $10.50. Score.

It was hot before I went in, but the breeze had shifted suddenly to the northeast off the lake. So I’d lost my pure tailwind but the roads were still straight and true. It was just 13 miles home from there.

On Seavey Road just two miles from home I noticed some beautiful horses in a fenced pasture. So I pulled the bike over and took a photo. Then I bent down and grabbed some rich green grass and held it up for them. A rich bay came trotting over, then a darker horse and its healthy, growing foal. I got nuzzled by horses with their soft noses and snuffling nostrils. It was delightful.

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Back home I showed Sue the video I’d made of feeding the horses. She knows horses well, having grown up a rider, grooming them and all. “That’s nice,” she said on looking at the crazy little exchange I’d captured on my iPhone.

That last bit had felt like some needed unwinding. The world is insane right now. Only horses and fields and long straight roads feel normal to me. It’s too bad that more people don’t get that, and that assholes in their cars have to destroy the frail illusion of joy that cyclists try to create. For themselves. And for the world. We don’t hate the world or view it as our property. We just want to enjoy the long unwinding road.

 

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As good as it gets

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

as_good_as_it_gets.jpgI’ve always loved the acting of Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear and Jack Nicholson in the movie “As Good As It Gets.” You may recall the plot line: Nicholson plays a writer wracked by obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hunt plays a waittress beset by the vagaries of life. And Kinnear plays a gay artist who gets physically brutalized by some rough boy models and loses everything he has.

The movie is a chronicle of rolling pathos. And at one point, the three struggling characters join together for a road trip that exposes the kindness, cruelty and desperate need for acceptance they all feel.

But the apocryphal scene involves the Nicholson character, who goes to the psychiatrist with an entirely wrong attitude, only to emerge and find a room full of people in the waiting room. He can barely stand the sight of such humanity in such a small space. It obviously makes his skin crawl. So he pauses, and looks around, only to mutter: “What if this is as good as it gets?”

Average and above average

My brother and I talk now and then about art and writing and life in general. One of the topics that comes up is actual ability. How do you really know where you stand in this world? Are you average? Above average? Transcendent in some way?

Even great artists and athletes struggle with this question. It seems that the great Paul McCartney of Beatles fame may still be one of the most insecure people in the world. Artists are driven to new performance by the nagging belief that their last effort, or all their efforts for that matter, might somehow be lacking.

Hall of Fame

The same holds true for athletes. Even in empiric sports like track and field, where the absolute specter of time measures us all, there are doubts that creep in. Could we have run faster on a given day? Were we actually lucky, not talented, when we won a particular race?

There are subjective measures that help athletes past these insecurities. Being elected to a Hall of Fame in the local high school, or college, or even a professional Hall of Fame does the ego some good. At least someone recognized how hard we tried.

I’ve always wondered what it was like to be a state high school track or cross country champion. How often does it come up in conversation in real life if you don’t bring it up? Probably not very often. The principle reason for this is that the average person cannot conceive what it takes to achieve at that level of competition. They have not done sets of 300 repeats that make you barf at one end of the track, only to jog around the track and do it all over again. “That’s crazy,” people might say. But it’s not a universal rule. Despite what Forrest Gump might claim, crazy is not always what crazy does.

Humble ways

I’ve heard tale of a D3 national collegiate champion in cross country and track who kept up his training through his early 20s. He even made the Olympic Trials and then led the race for a bit. Yet back home where he apparently labored as a janitor in a job to pay the rent, his co-workers did not even know that he was a runner. Whether the tale is apocryphal or not, it would not surprise to find out that some runners just keep it close to the vest.

I can’t say that my own approach has been that humble and constrained. Back in the early 80s when the running boom was pushing sub-elites like me to train and race far beyond what sanity demanded, I sometimes leapt at the occasional opportunity to talk about my running. We were a budding curiosity back then.

That flame wore down as other pursuits and obligations took over in life. Over time I realized that part of that flame to succeed beyond college running was fueled by an enormous need for approval. That stemmed from the pressures of having lived under the auspice of a contradictory yet demanding father. Yet he’s the one that shoved me into running as a freshman in high school, a decision I initially resisted. But once I was into it, the sport of running grabbed hold of me like nothing else in this world. I loved it. So I owe him that. I’d wanted to go out for football, where I likely would have been crushed. Perhaps the sport of running, for me, was as good as it gets.

Grasp on reality

And while I had some success in high school and college, I somehow always understood my place and ability in the running world. The evidence was right before my eyes. There were teammates from that little school in the cornfield I attended through sophomore year in high school that were quite physically superior.

One ran a Class A state record 1:49 for 880 yards. Here was the same guy with whom I’d played summer baseball and winter basketball. We were generally equal in that regard. But through some very hard work and a high degree of natural talent, he turned into one of the best athletes that had ever run the 880 for Class A schools. In fact, his time was on par with athletes from all the Class AA schools. Indeed, 40 years later, his 1:49 time would still very likely win the 800m in the state meet.

Of course, the time he ran in yards is not converted to the distance of 800 meters for purposes of state records, but the times he ran are essentially that same. Here’s the all time list for Illinois 800M runners.

800-Meter Run

[1.] 1:48.10*, Dave Ayoub, Peoria (H.S.), 1977

[2.] 1:49.22*, Steve Schellenberger, Arlington Hts. (Forest View), 1976

[3.] 1:49.35, Aaron Rogers, Chicago (C. Vocational), 1988

[4.] 1:49.45*, Dave Kaemerer, Dolton (Thornridge), 1968

[5.] 1:49.49*, Chris Heroux, Des Plaines (Maine North), 1977

[6.] 1:49.58*, Jim Spivey, Bensenville (Fenton), 1978

[7.] 1:49.7*, Larry Kelly, Park Ridge (Maine East), 1964

[8.] 1:49.7, Jason Van Swol, New Lenox (Lincoln-Way), 1998

[9.] 1:49.9*, Tom Sullivan, Evanston (St. George), 1961

[10.] 1:49.9, Marlon Jones, Bartonville (Limestone), 1990

[11.] 1:50.1*, Willie Thomas, Chicago (Englewood), 1969

[12.] 1:50.30, Charles White, Harvey (Thornton), 1973

[13.] 1:50.33, Rich Kolasa, Oak Forest, 1986

[14.] 1:50.49, Rob Carter, Clinton, 1988

[15.] 1:50.7, Craig Grant, Hillside (Proviso West), 1965

[16.] 1:50.73, Tramell Smith, Willowbrook, 2002

[17.] 1:50.8, Jim White, Elmhurst (York), 1985

[18.] 1:50.9, Maurice Street, Chicago (Farragut), 1978

[19.] 1:51.0, George Hunt, Alton (Sr.), 1963

[19.] 1:51.0, Bruce Keene, Flossmoor (Homewood-F.), 1977

So I didn’t have to look far to realize I did not have that kind of talent inside me. My friend went on to run a 4:01 mile at University of Kentucky while I barely cracked 4:20 in the mile at little Luther College. That raised a question in my head at the time, “What if this is as good as it gets?”

So I set out to satisfy that question for myself beyond college. After a brief pause to move out into the business world, I took up training full time for a year or two to find out how good I could get. That’s right: I wanted to truly find out if this was as good as it gets.

Chris at Plainfield.jpgThat may be kind of fucked up approach to life, I know. But I wasn’t alone in that pursuit. There were dozens of guys at my talent level that were busting their butts to run 31:00 for 10k or get close to 50:00 for ten miles. It was what we did. It was who we were.

We filled a niche in the running world that these days appears to have completely disappeared. Race results from local 5K and 10K races on occasion may have winning times of 31:00, but not very often. More often the winning time is in the range of 33:00 or higher, and after that, it’s just a faceless crowd of truly less-than-average runners covering ground. That’s all good and well for the populism of running, but one has to wonder: Is this as good as it gets? 

There are no regrets on my part from putting time training back then. All those hard miles and even the illness and injury from overtraining taught some important lessons and answered all kinds of questions. Taking those risks and trading time spent running against career and money and advancement was worth it to figure out what it was that I wanted out of sports, and by proxy, out of life. If you strive to answer a question fully, it doesn’t have to be answered all over again. Or asked.

Reality waits

Because the reality of doing your best in a sport is always different than the fantasy of wondering what you might have done. Now that I’ve met a share of pro athletes and had an opportunity to talk with them about what it’s like to have that level of talent, a truth comes home. The processes are the same for all of us. There are both joys and limits to what you can draw out of sports.

And here’s a harsh reminder: It’s not the people that try hard and fail that should disgust us. It’s the people with talent that refuse to work hard that are worthy of scorn. There are some who are actually and openly disdainful of this ideal, and by proxy, they are scornful of all human beings on this earth. For example, a certain presidential candidate was asked about the record of Senator John McCain, who bravely endured torture and imprisonment during the Vietnam War. But this is what the heartless bastard said about him: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

There is a gutlessness and insecurity to that statement that defies all respect. Yet some people admire statements like that on grounds that the person spewing them out has “the courage” to speak his mind. That’s not courage exemplified. It is fear and insecurity on full display, the weak character of a person that has apparently not tried anything all that hard or he would know better than to say something like that. This is not as good as it gets. This is as bad as it gets. And worse. 

Taking talent for granted

Even people who obviously have talent are prone to taking it for granted. I recall a pro soccer player for the Chicago Fire who seemed to have it all. He possessed great speed, excellent ball control skills and easy good looks to boot. Yet he played the game of soccer with a brand of distraction and detachment that exasperated his potential fans. It seemed as if he could not be bothered to use the talent he possessed. He lasted a couple years in the league. Granted, he probably got laid a lot, so there’s that. But he was never heard from again in soccer circles. One wonders if there were any regrets there…

Ah well. That’s his choice, isn’t it? When it comes to succeeding in sports or not, we can’t really decide for others what is right and what it wrong. We can never know what other factors might have engaged another person or caused such distracted play. What was his real story? Perhaps he was actually playing at the limits of his ability, and just made it look easy. There’s that.

Knowing yourself 

As for those years of training and racing at my peak, it turned out I had the opportunity to win a few races, and did. And I can tell you this much: there is nothing like the feeling of being in control at the five-mile mark of a 10k race, and looking back to see all the people you’ve beaten. I won’t lie: there was a touch of vindication and a release of anger in all that.

That’s a thrilling reward for all the hard and lonely work of doing quarter-mile repeats in the dark at a local high school track. There might be no one there to cheer you along. Only your own thoughts, dark desires and the sound of spikes on the track, along with your own hard breathing. You’re the only one there to push the button on a watch and call out “63!” on the eighth or tenth of twelfth repeat quarter.

No one there but you. And your watch. And a dream of doing your best and perhaps even winning a race upon which you have set your sights.

And that, my friends, is as good as it gets.

 

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What would you tell a beginning cyclist?

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

 

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My neighbor kid from three years ago. We’re going road cycling tonight.

 

This evening if the weather holds up, I’ll be taking a former neighbor kid out to try my road bike. I’ll let him ride the Specialized Venge. I’ll pedal the Waterford. We’ll ride perhaps an hour.

He’s been interested in getting on a fast bike since I first pulled up in his driveway to talk with him and his dad probably ten years ago. He was five years old at the time, and rode a BMX around his driveway.

But when he saw the shine and shape of the Felt 4C I was riding back then (the bike was almost new) he asked, “Can I ride with you some day?”

His dad raised his eyebrows. When your kid is little, it’s hard to imagine how things might be ten years down the road.

Now the boy has turned fifteen or sixteen and knows how to drive a car. In fact, he owns his own silver truck, a vehicle for which he paid with some of his own money. From the age of nine years old, he’s been mowing lawns for money. One summer I hired him to mow my father’s lawn and pre-paid the $20 per week to cover April through September. That gave him $600 up front, a downpayment on his new riding lawnmower.

I was glad to help. His old mower was a Montgomery Ward machine that smoked and coughed. But it was his first real piece of equipment, and he learned a bunch about machine maintenance by problem-solving in real time with that old tractor mower. Those mechanical skills come in handy now that he owns several mowers and has opened a side business from his lawn mowing operation. He actually fixes lawn mowers now too.

Great Scott

Last summer when I still lived back door from his family, I inherited a chunky old Scott riding lawnmower from my father’s caregiver Leo after my dad passed away and we sold his house. I didn’t know the mower was on its last gasp, because it still looked good from the outside. Sure, the blade deck leaned a bit to one side and gouged my lawn now and then. But it was tons of fun tooling around my property on that riding mower. I’d never owned one before.

It would never have run for me if the back door neighbor kid had not worked like mad for a couple days fixing the belts and tightening some bolts. Then one day I heard it revvvv up in my garage where he worked every day trying to get the mower going.

Which is why I have a strong inkling he’ll like cycling. People who like mechanical things tend to like cycling.

The mower her fixed for me worked for six or seven lawn mowing sessions. Enough to get me through the summer. Then something happened deep inside the mower that needed repair and my young friend the mower-fixer was out of town. So I drove the mower four blocks down the street to the repair shop where he liked to hang out learning things. The mechanics there took a look inside the mower after I dropped it off and called me to ask, “How did you get this mower here?”

“Drove it,” I laughed. “Why? Is it dead?”

“Yup,” they told me. “This isn’t going anywhere.” So I paid them $25 to take it off my hands.

Yet that mower was a blast while it works and made life easier while it lasted. My young friend had worked his brain to shreds getting it to run, but he learned a bunch in the process. I offered him money for the work he put in, but he didn’t want it.

It’s been like that with him for years. He used to wander over when I was working in the garden and offer to help. One day I dug up some thick clay from deep down in my yard. He was fascinated by its texture. “Can I make things out of it?” he wanted to know.

I gave him a bowl of water and suggested he work the clay smooth. Which he did, and the glop that ran down his arms in the summer sun made him happy. This is a kid who likes doing things that are real.

For that and a thousand other moments in life, I want to give something back to my former neighbor kid. I know he can be a good bike rider because he’s been running cross country the last three or four years. He can cover a mile in under 5:00 if he pushes himself, so there’s some aerobic talent in his gangly body. Which is why I have a strong inkling he’ll like cycling.

Perhaps he’ll want to wear baggy shorts over the lycra I’ll lend him. Most teens don’t hang out in lycra, but are willing to wear it as compression gear, like Under Armor.

Whatever. I just can’t wait until he feels the power of that bike once we get out onto the country roads. I live right on the edge of civilization and the fields west of my house extend for 120 miles to the Illinois border. A perfect place to ride.

So we’ll give it a go. I’ve known this kid since the day he was born. Babysat him when his tonsils were taken out. That night he tricked me into letting him eat an extra cookie or two. But his mom wasn’t mad. He needed the nutrition after a long surgery and time in the hospital. He sat munching his cookies while ee watched kid movies together. Then he pulled out some cars that looked too nice to be toys. I said, “You sure we’re supposed to play with these?”

He said “Yeahhhhssss!” and then crashed his car straight into mine. I pulled my car back and took another look. Such fine detail. It was a model of a Porsche, as I recall. “Are you sure these aren’t your dad’s cars? Let’s play with something else.”

He still needed to work off some of the stress and energy from his tonsil surgery earlier that day. Which also tells me he’ll probably like cycling. From a young age, I’ve known this young man to be a thoughtful, often sensitive person. Cycling is a great way to go out and ride off your worries.

Giving that gift to someone else is both a thrill and an honor. Plus he’ll probably get so good at fixing bikes he can be my mechanic in a pinch. I have an inkling about that too.

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Frogs on the highway

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth
Frog 1.jpg

One of hundreds of frogs that met a gruesome fate in a migratory irruption. 

Last night a low-slung rainstorm raced across northern Illinois. It dropped the temperature slightly. But it raised the humidity tremendously. As I stepped out for a morning run, a small green frog bounded through the grass and hid under the car. It was an omen.

 

Starting up the drive from the cul de sac where we lived, I noticed frog after frog smashed on the road. Reaching the main street, the number of dead frogs increased. By the time I turned onto Orchard Road, a four-lane tributary that feeds into the Interstate a mile away, there was frog grease everywhere.

The weather conditions were perfect, it seems, for an irruptive migration of frogs. The wetland right behind our house provides prime breeding habitat for several varieties of frogs. These were leopard frogs, most of them three to four inches in length with their legs extended.

Dead on the highway

Frog 3.jpg

Nature is not so much stupid as it is determined. And determining. 

And that’s how I found most of them. Splay-legged on the road. They can seem like stupid creatures if you look at the irruption from a human perspective. How stupid do you have to be in order to jump in front of speeding cars? But the instincts that drive frogs out of a safe pond to find new environs is what has made them successful for millions of years.

 

Nature plays harsh with number games. Frogs gather in spring to sing and breed. Then they lay egg clusters that cling to plants until tadpoles emerge. Those wiggle around in the pond or wetland until their tales absorb into their bodies and their legs emerge and strengthen enough to swim. Frogs are very good swimmers you see. Far better than human beings. They use what we might call a combination of breast stroke and butterfly to kick their way through the water.

But they have lots of predators. Other frogs will eat them, with bullfrogs sitting at the top of the food chain in North America. But all frogs are merciless predators. Back in college, we had to collect six or seven species of frogs for our field biology class. Catching them was hard work in the cold springs and streams around Decorah, Iowa. My legs were stiff as boards for track practice that afternoon because I’d wandered around in fifty-five degree water most of the morning. But I finally had them all, and proudly placed them in an aquarium in our dorm room for safekeeping overnight until bringing them into class the next day.

When I woke the next morning to check on the frogs, I looked with horror upon the scene inside the aquarium. The leopard frog had chomped onto the body of the tiny chorus frog, whose legs were sticking out the craw of the bigger frog. I reached into the aquarium and squeezed the sides of the leopard frog, whose mouth popped open. Then I took the chorus frog and put him into a cup away from the other frogs. “You bastard,” I hissed at the leopard frog.

But he was only doing what leopard frogs do. Catching an easy meal was great fun for him in the aquarium.  Why had I assumed that one frog would not eat another? Again, my selfish human perspective was imposed on reality.

Wasteful or not?

Frog 4.jpg

Nature is every bit as wasteful and merciless as it seems. Humans are supposed to know better.

As I ran down the road this morning the paste of frogs on the road seemed so wasteful. Yet I fully recognize that nature does this all the time. Frogs breed and migrate in the thousands because nature requires such massive distribution in order to take advantage of niche opportunities. If 5,000 frogs get squashed but 200 find new habitats and 10 of them thrive to breed in new locations, that is considered a success in evolutionary terms. For some people, that kind of math is hard to buy. But it is the truth.

 

Human beings have done precisely the same thing throughout history. The people who occupied North America long before Europeans came across the Atlantic had long emigrated from Asia, likely traveling over what was either a land or ice bridge in northern climes. They built entirely successful societies with advanced knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. Some spread over the central plains and followed bison herds for food. Others made it all the way to the East Coast, and these were the people encountered by European explorers, who sooner or later migrated to other shores and irrupted like Spanish, English and French frogs across the country we call America. They all fought frog wars against each other too. So the cycle of frogs on the highway of history never ends.

Consequences

It looks like the leopard frogs are winning in America. But appearances can be deceiving. Migrations have their consequences, and so do attempts at ruling niches in ways that aren’t sustainable. Ponds dry up and streams stop flowing when heat waves strike. That can kill off entire colonies of frog. We learned that the hard way with the Dust Bowl. Rain does not follow the plow. We are learning it all over again with climate change.

Nor does money flow from rock. Two years ago I had a creative assignment to write content for a financial advisor who was nearing the end of his life. His mind was still sharp but his body was crumpling into itself from the legs on up, with limbs shriveling like frogs legs back into a tadpole tale.

Frog 5.jpg

Investors love to believe the Market has their best interests in mind. It doesn’t. 

Yet he still felt a sense of mission. And one of his key objectives was to tell the truth on what he knew about how the financial investment system operated in America. So we met several times as I worked on versions of content for his company brochure and website. Each time we met he grew a little more exasperated because I was not harsh enough in tone for him. “I can’t say this outright I know, because the industry has regulations about what you can and cannot say,” he told me. And this I knew. Because I’d written many types of financial content before.

 

“But it’s like this,” he intoned. “The typical investor is a loser before they even put any money into a product. I know this because for decades I worked the buyer’s side of the market. I’m the guy who purchased the stocks and investment products that go into investment trusts and other products. And I know for a fact that there are very, very few investment products that are honest with the consumer. The typical investor is forced to buy a bunch of dogs along with the better products. They mix it up to make it look good, but the money’s made by layers of takers before the investor ever earns a single cent. And the real good stuff is reserved for the buyers. It’s a scam. Plain and simple.”

What my clients was saying is that average investors have odds that are not much better than frogs on the highway. Every once in a while, this fact gets exposed when the market turns on everyone. That happens when the Big Frogs get cocky from preying on all the little frogs. They get greedy and leave the pond gobbling up everything in sight.

That was the Great Depression in a nutshell. Also the Great Recession of 2008. The Big Frogs got caught out in the open. The breeding stock, as it were, almost got scorched in the sun. Run over by the Market. Crushed by forces even they could not comprehend.

But the Big Pond was merciful this time around. The government bailed out the Big Frogs by dragging a stimulus hose out to the Big Frogs who lay gasping in the ditches. It was the civilized thing to do for frogs that were too big to fail.

Feeling Froggy

Frog Big.jpg

This Big Frog also bit it. 

The lesson of all that speculative arrogance and froggy greed was not long retained. The frog population got all up in arms about being ignored out there in the fields. “You forgot about us!” the little frogs all complained. “What about all those frogs that got run over on the highway? How are you going to prevent that from happening? We need Rain On Demand! You need to make it rain so that we can find new ponds and not get crushed on the highway!”

 

So the little frogs all got together and elected a Big Fat Frog to the President of the Frognited States. The Big Fat Frog made some amazing promises, like the ability to make it rain on demand so that all the little frogs can hop around with no fear of drying up in the wind or the sun. And now the little frogs are now jumping all over the place excited that they’ll never get dry again or be smangulated by the Market and run over by the Heartless Cars of Oligarchy.

It’s an ugly scene, for sure. And poor Big Froggy keeps croaking on Croaker or Twitter or whatever you want to call it.

But when Big Fat Frog gets run over, which is inevitable considering how big and fat and obvious he is on the road, there will be shock among all the little frogs who believe in him. “It’s the Mainstream Media!” they’ll yell. But in fact it will be the Heartless Cars of Oligarchy who do the evil deed. And they’ll stop, wipe down their tires and keep on driving. Because it does not look good to have the spattered parts of frogs big or little on the shiny hubcaps of permanent privilege. So unseemly, you know.

Frogs on the highway.

 

Posted in blood on the highway, Christopher Cudworth, cycling, game of chicken, running | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

All you kneed is strength

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_9983It happened again this weekend. After months of running without my knee acting weird, the “knob” came back. It happens when I hit a section of downhill ground at the wrong angle. The knee buckles a little and a knob of bone or ligament… or something yet unidentified… pops out just below the inside left kneecap.

I know why it happens. There is no anterior cruciate ligament in that leg. But when I keep up with strength work, the knee does not pop like that, or wobble around.

Yet there are times when I forget how important it is to strengthen that wambly knee. Then the knob pops back out. It hurts a bit until it works its way back into place. Then I can keep running with absolute proper running form. It pays to pay attention to that at all times, but ranks as super-important when your knees need protection.

Strength work

It could have been so different for me. Way back in the early 2000s, I sensed that my aging body needed strength work. I’d torn something under my pelvis playing basketball and went to an orthopedic institute to get it checked out. The doctor gave me a cursory, disinterested inspection and told me to rest it until I felt better. Apparently it wasn’t an area on which they could operate, so they sent me home without so much as a piece of medical advice.

But the next time I saw my family doctor, I told him, “I think I need some physical therapy. I keep pulling things.”

He pooh-poohed the idea. “That’s all a bunch of fluff,” he advised.

A few months later, I tore my ACL while playing soccer. That meant surgery and rehab, which taught me tons about the value of physical therapy. I’ve used the same exercises ever since.

Torn ACL

And for the most part, that has worked. But when I missed a couple weeks of strength work back in 2005, my leg got weak and I re-tore my ACL. So there’s nothing holding my leg bones in place. I’m a floater, you might say.

The ortho that did my original surgery took a look at my knee after the second tearing of the ACL and told me that I could function decently in life without another surgery. “About 30% of the athletes that get a torn ACL tear it again,” he said.

“Do I get a refund then?” I jested.

“No, it doesn’t work that way,” he laughed.

No ballistics

So it’s up to me to keep the leg strong. I can run and ride and swim fine. Just can’t do ballistic sports like basketball, soccer or tennis. Trying to cut hard might result in a complete discombobulation of the left knee joint.

That’s why I go to the gym to do leg lifts. It helps both my knee and my hips. When I do that work, everything’s fine.

Until it’s not. So it’s back to basics right now to keep the knee from chronically displacing. There is no grinding sensation or other bad signs like the slicing feel of a torn or fragmented meniscus. There’s just this aching oppositional imbalance that I can feel while doing yoga and running. Doing strength work is the only cure.

All you kneed is strength. It’s the first law of athletics, and the last word in knee health.

Trust me on that one.

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The signs of a good No Drop Ride

Posted on July 7, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth 
Algunas pautas para el éxito en un paseo en grupo No Drop

Pepper Rider

Joining up with a new No Drop ride is an exercise in Self-Confidence that can quickly into a bout of No Confidence. There is no sport quite like cycling in that respect. When you don’t know a thing about the riders in a new group, there are tons of question marks waiting you out on the road. Such as:

Is this a smooth-riding group, or herky jerky? 

The reason this matters: Riders accustomed to keeping a nice rhythm on the ride, holding their line and picking up on the draft of riders ahead of them can be thrown for a loop when a group ride is full of Yo-Yo riders who either can’t keep pace, don’t know how or don’t care. The bother of constantly having to ride back onto the group, or pulling past riders that have slowed suddenly is irksome to say the least. If the trend goes week after week, it’s best to find a completely different group. There is no cure for Herky-Jerky if people don’t learn from their mistakes.

Are people there to race? 

Some No Drop rides are, in essence, a race minus the entry fees and referees. There are two local group rides in our area to which only the best riders are welcome. These rides go fast every week. People race each other in a hundred different ways. The competition to hold a wheel can be fierce, and sometimes the group spreads out over the entire road. But if you want to get good, and go fast, that’s the ride you want to join. You’re there to ride and race if necessary.

Are there Ride Marshalls?

With every group ride, there are generally some unofficially designated ride marshalls that have the authority to put things back into order when Ride Chaos breaks out. Typically these are riders with so much experience and built-up strength they can stick with any pace in any condition on any day. They may not be the outright fastest riders but they are the best conditioned, experienced, and if you chalked their wheels, could draw a straight line for well over a mile. The reason Ride Marshalls are important? There are days when competitive riders literally lose their shit out there. The group slides across both lanes of the road, or refuses to pause at stop lights. Things get crazy and unsafe when group rides don’t have a Ride Marshall or two to pull things back into shape.

Are their regulars? 

No-Drop rides depend on regulars who know the course and even know the wind and road conditions. They also provide a form of consistency to the ride. Most importantly, they are an indicator that the ride is well-respected in the cycling community, not just a twice-weekly gathering where only the crazies show up. Regulars can usually be identified by club kits. If there are a couple groups of two or three riders from different clubs, that’s a sign that the ride is designed to provide real opportunities for building speed and fitness. The presence of more than one teams is a general indicator the ride is about getting better at cycling, not just stroking egos.

What to do when you get dropped

When you join up with a new No Drop ride, you may indeed get dropped at first. Take no offense. The nature of a No Drop ride is to provide the challenge you’re seeking in improving your cycling. Hang on for as long as you can each week. No one will be pissed at you for showing up so long as you don’t drop from the middle of the pack and cause everyone behind you to lose the wheel and wind up getting dropped as well. Breaks in the peloton are never welcome, so don’t cause them. Ride at the far back if you must, along with the other hangers-on.

Be smart in finding a wheel

Or be smart and tuck onto the wheel of a Ride Marshall and then concentrate. You might have trouble actually getting one of their wheels, because everyone in the group will know who they are and when desperate, will fight for that wheel as well.  If you are fortunate enough to find the wheel of a Ride Marshall, they will know you are there, trust me. They know where everyone is on a group ride. So be cool. Don’t do something stupid like crossing or touching wheels, or something desperately stupid such as riding into their finely tuned machine when you roll up to a stoplight.

Be respectful

You will only be welcome at a fast No Drop ride if you first show respect. Only then can you earn it. Cyclists don’t always judge you on your raw ability. There are many factors that contribute to your position in the group. As you progress in form and hang on longer each week, people will notice. But it’s just as important that you get there on solid ethical ground. Hold your line mostly, and if you can’t hold a wheel, swing off and grab what you can. Don’t cost others the opportunity to stick with the group by committing to a pace you cannot logically hold. But if you do pop, swing clear and try to get in the total wake rather than falling back slowly.

Be focused

Focus your attention completely on the rhythm of the ride and make absolute use of the draft at all times. Just because you feel good in the draft, you should never get cocky. Someone up ahead is doing the REAL WORK. You are just the beneficiary. Because if someone up ahead is pulling hard, there is always someone ready and able to pull even harder. That can leave you heaving where once you were just breathing. Be grateful for the pulls of others and pay attention to how long they stay on the front in case it becomes your turn to pull. Then do half what the others are doing if you’re new.

Hope you appreciate these No Drop guidelines. Many of them apply as much to experienced riders as someone new to a group. Road cyclists depend on each other to make each ride a great experience. Where triathletes pump away solo, roadies live in a community that rolls down the road. Respect it. Grow into it. Become part of it.

And ride on.

 

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Welcome to the Tour de Commercial

Posted on July 6, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

Froome.jpegThe Tour de France broadcast has become a creature entirely devoted to advertising and commercials. Consider the various definitions of the word ‘commercial’ and see if you agree:

Commercial:
1. of, relating to, or characteristic of commerce.
2. engaged in commerce.
3. prepared, done, or acting with sole or chief emphasis on salability, profit, or success:
4. able to yield or make a profit:
5. suitable or fit for a wide, popular market:
6.suitable for or catering to business rather than private use.

 

None of those things is bad by nature. Money drives all professional sports. Cycling at the international level is professional in every sense of the word. In fact it behaves rather whorishly as a whole.

The Tour de France is itself  is almost a prostitution enterprise, with riders pimped to the world by sponsors that plaster logos all over their kits. This is what pays the salaries of the athletes, who ride to earn precious positions on a squad that competes in an annual race calendar.

Time for our first commercial break.

Some riders are paid quite well while the domestiques earn their living carting food and beverages back and forth to the lead riders by stuffing them down their shirts. In this condition, a rider resembles a beast with nine tits. But it’s how they earn their pay in the Tour de Commercial that is the Tou de France.

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The peak of commercial activity in cycling is the Tour de France, which became even further commodified during the Lance Armstrong era. Oh sure, Lance might be accused of being a cheat for using performance-enhancing drugs, but now comes word that the drugs used by cyclists in those days weren’t even effective. In an expose published in the medical journal the Lancet (no pun intended) medical professionals stated,

“The scientists behind the trial, which is published in the Lancet, say athletes are “naive” about the benefits of illicit substances such as EPO, but that myths about their effectiveness go unchallenged in the murky world of doping.

“It’s just tragic to lose your career for something that doesn’t work, to lose seven yellow jerseys for a drug that has no effect,” said Jules Heuberger, who led the research at the Centre for Human Drug Research in The Netherlands.

The ‘drugs’ that Armstrong actually injected into the system of cycling consisted of money, money and more money. The Tour grew immensely in popularity thanks to Armstrong’s compelling story of comeback from cancer. His life was saved by drugs that were so poison they could kill a person if applied incorrectly. Yet his career was apparently ended by revelations that he’d used drugs that were supposedly ‘performance-enhancing.’  But they may have had no effect at all.  Except, perhaps, as a placebo. How interesting is that?

But first, let’s break for a commercial.

It’s hard to write off the effects of drugs in sports such as cycling and running when it is clear there have been times when PEDs were used to set world records. The world of track and field is considering writing off all records set before 2005. That happens to be the last year that Lance Armstrong won a Tour de France. So there is a weird convergence in all this drug talk. A Washington Post feature shares insight about this potential decision to erase records:

“What we are proposing is revolutionary, not just because most world and European records will have to be replaced but because we want to change the concept of a record and raise the standards for recognition (to) a point where everyone can be confident that everything is fair and above board,” European Athletics Council President Svein Arne Hansen said in a recent meeting.”

We’ll be back after this commercial.

There are some people that claim drugs are really not the problem in sports. People clearly enjoy seeing transcendent performances and don’t really care what drugs or substances athletes use to get there. Certainly the home run derby between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pumped a lot of interest into Major League baseball. Both were hopped up on steroids, but no one was counting pills while baseballs were flying out of the park. The sound of money clinking into the coffers of MLB was audible no matter where you stood.

The Tour de France relies on similar dramas to attract viewers. If some guy takes off on a climbing stage with a superhuman surge, the announcers leap on the moment because otherwise cycling can be as boring watching paint dry on a remote French country road.

Oooph. Wait. One more commercial.

One wonders how much remorse the Tour directors are experiencing now that the commercially interesting Peter Sagan has been given a Red Card for throwing an elbow at Mark Cavendish. The penalty was harsh given the fact that all sprinters behave like angry children in the last 500 meters of a Tour stage. There is so much riding on victory, even one stage win can keep sponsors hanging on for another year, the drive toward the finish is every bit as raw and manic as it looks.

But that’s not where the ugly efforts to be commercially successful end. Now the Tour de France broadcast is spliced so heavily with commercials it is like watching an NFL game. The formula is likely the same. A certain percentage of commercials drives profitability. So the Tour shows some bike riders, a bunch of view of French Chateaus and insane fans, then cuts to the 97th commercial about an unconventional belt with ratchets that let users tighten their bellies up to a size 48″ waist.

Now that was a commercial.

A few years back there was an amazing commercial for Bacardi Mojitos that was so sweet with its tit-showing and ass-shaking I literally waited for the commercial breaks to see it once again. Sexist as hell, I know. It’s not that I wish all commercials were that misogynistic, but when they’re really good, it’s almost an art form. But alas, most commercials are mundane, predictable and highly repetitive.

Perhaps fans of the Tour should be allowed to cast their votes for their favorite commercials. Then the bad ones could be ‘voted off the show’ just like a Survivor or other Reality Show. There should in fact be some measure or judgement on what we’re forced to watch (or tolerate) while getting our annual dose of French cathedrals and bloody road rash. The French countryside and alpine mountains deserve better than to be spliced together with those awful commercials featuring Shaquille O’Neal for that insurance company The General.

Seriously, the Tour de Commercial deserves much better. Home viewers live through 2100 miles of travel and time to get a glimpse of the Champs Elysees between manic attempts to give viewers one more shot with the ratchet belt and the 48″ waist that goes with it.

 

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Blowing things up with a smile

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

Pretty Gals.jpgWe had a bang-up 4th of July party with 20+ guests in our backyard and kitchen. We all know that’s where most of the socializing tends to occur. It’s a law of nature.

One couple brought their small children, Sophi and Samantha. We learned that Sophi knows what cats look like, but the rest of the animal world from dogs to camels is considered the same creature. You have to love such a simple worldview.

Samantha discovered the company my stepdaughters late in the day. They carefully played with sparklers out on the lawn. Then the trio of them held hands and danced without music. Such is the imaginary life of women young and old. They can dance without music and be happy.

Grandpa Balls

I watched Sue playing Ladder Ball with some of our triathlon friends. It’s a game involving two sets of plastic ladders that are set up about ten yards apart. There are sets of plastic balls fixed together with rope. You try to throw them toward the ladder in a fashion that makes them catch and twirl around one of the rungs. It’s simple backyard fun. Sue calls them Grandpa Balls because of their resemblance to the late stages of the male anatomy and a sagging nutsack.

Sitting in the Adirondack chairs with a trio of women, I could not help making a few untoward jokes about the ribald name of the game. Making nutjokes after having put a few beers in you is what males do when temporarily unleashed from reality by the calm of a July afternoon under a fading sun.

Plans made

Back in the kitchen there were plans being made for upcoming events in the triathlon world. Then I noticed a post on Facebook from the daughter of an Ironman triathlete in our group named Lida Kuehn. Her daughter  took up the sport just a year ago and this weekend rode 100 miles in 5:09. Just under 20 mph. I sat there in awe for a moment staring at the post on Facebook. Then I stood up to compliment her mother. “That’s a really good ride,” I told her by way of compliment.

“Well, I rode 5:02,” she chirped. This is a woman who in her early 50s took up the sport and went from never having run or ride to finishing Ironman Wisconsin on one of the toughest courses in the Midwest. That’s what comes of having a fine internal engine from years of endurance swimming.

LIda and clanIn fact the entire Kuehn family is composed of athletes. Her son Scottie played Division 1 football for Illinois State University. Her husband John played for a national championship Division III basketball program at North Park University, which was North Park College back then.

Other ventures

But John was equally interested in talking about the accomplishments of their daughter Stephanie when she wasn’t an athlete in high school. Possessed with a great voice, their daughter competed with a Show Choir team that performed well all the way up the national level. “When you hear 40 voices, thirty of which are really, really good, it’s quite an experience. ” Add in the choreography and dancing, and it’s almost like an athletic competition.

They are really great parents, which provided such an interesting bookend to the presence of the little girls who were finding their way around from group to group at the party. You try to share with young parents that it all goes too fast and there’s obviously a realization there. The young parents know it. But the demands of immediate parenting are so great one is forced to live in the moment no matter what.

As if to illustrate that point, little two-year-old Sophi wandered out of the garage when I was talking with her mom about choosing a bike. Sophi had spotted the inviting spray of the watering system next door. She traipsed across the lawn in little steps and parked herself in the horizontal spray of the water, soaking her dress in the process.

Her mother Emily wandered over and scooped up the now sopping wet child. She wrung out the dress and set the girl back down. “She loves water.” Enough said.

The same could be said of my wife, who slips in an out of water like the two-legged mermaid that she is. She also wrings herself dry in moments and moves on to the next thing in life. We grow up, but some of us never grow old.

Fireflies and fireworks

Which became evident as the fireflies came out and with them, the fireworks. First came the sparklers as always. Then one of our triathlon friends hauled out the Big Stuff. Our yard is perfectly suited for setting off fireworks even though they are perfectly illegal in Illinois. Our yard backs up to a section of unincorporated Batavia Township and our extended back yard is technically Park District property. Just a big grassy field where we tossed lighted aero disks and hit wiffleballs as the sun went down.

As true dusk fell, our friend set up shop with a large box of fireworks garnered from trips to Wisconsin and Indiana. He lit up the sky in syncopated fashion along with other pyromaniacs in the neighborhood. A group next door did not seem to get the concept of how fireworks operate. The aimed their Roman displays right into the trees, and debris came flopping down.

 

As Sue and I gathered papery debris from our back lawn in the morning, it seemed odd that such magnified explosions could come from such frail articles. There were little paper parachutes attached by string to cardboard gunpowder holders. Somewhere east of this Eden we call America those little bombs were assembled and shipped back for us to celebrate our supposed freedoms. There could perhaps be no better symbol for the challenges that face America than that.

 

 

View at Medium.com

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I mean, what the hell?

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

On the way to Louisville last Friday evening, a storm conspired to rain on us the entire length of the state of Indiana. It happened because the storm was formed an a 45-degree angle from Northeast to Southwest. As we proceeded south toward Kentucky, the long front edge of the storm kept tracking east at the very same rate we were traveling down I-65.

We saw the warning of what was to come as we rolled through Merrillville to get on the Interstate. A deep gray angular cloud sank into the horizon up north. Lightning flashed in the depths of that dark wall and I commented to Sue, “That’s where Satan lives.” Because it looked that ominous.

Deep Gray Sky.jpgSo we turned onto the Interstate as she cheered me on to drive faster. “Go! Go!” she laughed. For fifteen minutes we seemed to have outrun the front edge of the storm. Then all hell broke loose as the bending storm caught us out in the fields of northern Indiana. “Oh boy,” she intoned. It was pouring.

It rained like mad for the next four hours on the road. Massive amounts of concentration were required to keep a driving interval and not do anything sudden or dumb that could put us in jeopardy. It went like that for hour after hour.

Fortunately, the other drivers in Indiana kept their distance. No one did anything stupid. Many put their rear blinker lights on so that people following behind could see them. That truly helped. We all moved through the murk and the mayhem to the best of our ability. Sometimes a few cars would pull over when they’d had enough. They perched like beached shipwrecks on the road shoulder.

Finally the rain became so strong that Sue and I both thought it was time to take a break. Even with the windshield wipers on high speed, the whap-whapping could not keep the rain off the glass. Fortunately an exit popped up and we got off to get fuel for the car and find something for us both to eat. In the parking lot we sat looking through the washed out windshield as the Subway sign twisted in the pouring roil of the falling rain, which didn’t let up, so we hopped out in our raincoats and piled into the restaurant.

Subway sign.pngBy the time we came out the storm had relented. It was still raining but not in such a downpour. The hours that had just passed seemed like minutes because when you’re concentrating that hard on anything, there is no time to get bored or distracted.

As we headed south again the rain let up. On the Weather Channel app it looked like the lower edge of the storm would swing behind us. It was nice to travel on clear roads once again. But of course we found a construction zone and traffic slowed again. As we crept along with the semi trucks, the storm rose again in the west.

Storm Track.pngWe finally reached Louisville and it looked like we were going to beat the storm completely. But that was hoping for too much. The southern edge of the 200-mile long storm front had picked up its pace and was coming fast from the west. As we made our exit into Louisville the clouds poured over top of our vehicle. Lightning flashed and the winds swirled. Everything was dark and furious. The rain started in again, coming down in sheets, driven by a low breeze. Illuminated by our headlights, the rain appeared to be engaged in some sort of mad, weather-driven Shakespearean play about the tempest versus the vespers.

We got off the big roads and were headed onto the two-laners with the help of the Waze Lady giving instructions to turn right and turn left. We pulled into the condo lot and dragged our bikes into the house from the car. Sue’s wheels were filled with water and my handlebars were wet as a salamander’s back. But we’d made it after eight long hours of driving. I gave her a hug and a kiss on her wet face. Her blue eyes flashed and I was grateful we had arrived safely.

Specialized

The reason I share all this is to shed light on what it was like to ride the next morning. Eight hours in a car with your legs under the steering wheel is not ideal preparation for cycling. I’d had to massage my quads several times during the long drive to keep them from cramping.

Which meant there was still considerable tension and fatigue left in my legs the next morning as we got up to ride. And wouldn’t you know it, the first five miles of the ride were damned hilly. My quads burned even as I tried to focus on keeping the pedal stroke even between quad and hamstrings. Still, I got dropped by the other three riders. Nothing I could do at that point. That’s no way to warm up legs that fast after you’ve just driven eight tense hours the night before.

I kept up fine riding on the flats and rollers that we took at well over 20 mph. But a few climbs later I’d made up my mind to cut the cord and let them tarry on without me. The goal for those three was to learn the Ironman course and get in two long rides that weekend. My goal was to get in some climbs and hard riding in advance of next week’s Olympic distance tri in Lake Zurich.

So I gave them the cyclists humble goodbye and wished them Godspeed. Then turned around to ride back to the condo on my own. The ride was 42 miles at 2:24. About 17.5 miles an hour. The next day I rode the same route, but ten minutes faster. So the weekend was more than salvaged. Kentucky looks just like southwest Wisconsin with a few more mockingbirds and dozens of cardinals thrown in.

And I’m sure the look on my face was much the same as it would be on the equally steep hills outside Madison as it was on the hills outside Louisville. My thighs are still tired today after the 5.5 hour drive home and a repeat 42-miler in the heat and hills of Louisville yesterday. But Sue’s are even more tired after 75 miles yesterday and 65 miles the day before, often at a 18-20mph average. All in prep for the Ironman Louisville race in October.

But it’s still summer, and we were grateful for no rain in the forecast on the way home. Because if there had been storms tracking across Indiana again, it would have been like, “What the hell?” How many unexpected obstacles do you have to overcome in order to overcome the obstacles you choose for yourself. I mean, what the hell?

We made it back without weather intruding. The Waze lady insisted we should take 294 over 355 coming back north, but we ignored her and got home in time for me to head into work.

Phantom stock.jpg

We had escaped the dark clutches of Satan to spend a nice weekend among the pleasant people of Kentucky. Tomorrow we’re hosting a 4th of July party after a visit to Phantom Fireworks in Indianapolis. If Satan and the rainy gates of hell come anywhere close again, we’ll fight fire with fireworks, all the while yelling, “What the hell!”

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With respect to civility in Kentucky

Posted on July 2, 2017 by Christopher Cudworth

We’ve been riding the roads east of Louisville, Kentucky for a couple days now. This has been a treat in terms of terrain. The hills are both beautiful and challenging.

But the stunning aspect of cycling the roads here is the manner in which we’re treated by motorists. Without fail, every driver here has treated us with incredible deference and respect. They wait behind our small group when we’re climbing. Even when I broke off on my own, the cars held back until the road ahead was entirely visible and clear.

This has been a strange experience. Back in Illinois, the drivers are much more impatient. We hear gunning engines when they pass, often too close. Some are noticeably aggressive.

There is none of that here. Even when the hill requires a couple minutes to climb, the cars wait patiently behind.

What’s the cause of all this kind deference? Is Kentucky just the most hospitable place on earth?

The kindness was evident among people from the moment we arrived. It was pouring rain when we pulled in. Yet a neighbor living in the condo next to our AirB&B rental came out to tell us how to use the keypad and let ourselves in. Then he kept up the conversation after the rain stopped, inviting us over for beers if the weather cleared.

So it has been a pleasure traveling around meeting people. Even downtown Louisville seemed positive. There was a literal pole vault competition taking place on 4th Street. There was an elevated runway and a full vault pit set up on the city street. We watched vaulters scale heights over 16 feet as we dined at Guy Fieri’s restaurant.

The one exception to the cool groove of Louisville was a moment that took place on the concourse between restaurants. As we sat there dining, a man started running away from the crowd. Suddenly a strong-looking dude burst from the crowd and tackled the runaway, who fell to the ground as one other person grasped his hands and extricated something from his grip. The tackler shoved the man’s shoulder’s into the ground for a moment, gave him a stern shake, and then got up and left. He was noticeably limping for having conducted such a rough recovery of whatever was stolen.

The strange thing about that moment is that no one else seemed to pay much attention. “Did anyone else see that?” I asked. But everyone was busy eating.

So it felt like a dream. That can happen with things both good and bad in this world. Because this morning while heading back on my own on the bike, I was climbing a long, steep hill when my brain shifted into that weird zone where it feels like it is on the outside looking in. As I glanced at the top bar of my bike, a large drop of sweat fell from my forehead. When it struck the black matte surface of the bike, it made the sharp little shape of a skull. Talk about an obtuse encounter with mortality.

I’d already made multiple decisions over the last two days to keep things under mortal control. Having once been tumbled into a grassy ditch by the horrid phenomenon called Bike Wobble, I trust no road over 40 mph. The fastest I’ve ever ridden is 55 mph in a similarly hilly section of southwest Pennsylvania. In fact, the two regions are so similar in appearance and smell and roads they are nearly inseparable. But in Pennsylvania, the cars and trucks were so aggressive and rude, it put the fright of God into you just riding around normally.

It is experiences like these that make me so appreciate the nature of a place like Kentucky, where people “get it” for whatever reason.

That extended even to the parking lot of a Methodist church where we left our cars while out riding. The parking lot is known to triathletes because the church members welcome people into their stone building to use the bathroom. And this morning the woman walking into the church with an instrument under her arm invited us to come back after the ride to attend a picnic later on.

That is true Christian hospitality. But like all good faiths, there was another element of commitment on display during our ride on Saturday. As we passed through a small Kentucky town, there was a line of people outside another small church. They all held up signs criticizing the acts and demeanor of Donald Trump. They were calling out rhymes in protest.

I shouted as we rode past. “Thank you! I agree!” And then we disappeared own the next hill. And climbed another and another. And vehicles waited for us on every turn and up every hill. It was all proof that civility is still alive, either by tradition or by sensibility, and it’s not confined to one margin of the country or another.

Perhaps at a local eatery where angry locals gather to complain about liberals in America, there is a side to Kentucky that we did not see. But even at the gas station where I stopped to buy a small Coke in the wrong sized cup, the wizened little gray-haired lady with her locks in tight braids chirped when she saw me. “My cousins do the Ironman,” she said enthusiastically. “But aren’t you supposed to be drinking water, not coke?”

She got me on the guilt trip there. And perhaps they’re so used to seeing triathletes on the Ironman loop this was all a perversion of reality, an out-of-mind-and-body experience under the Kentucky sun.

Then I rolled past the two giant correctional facilities built on top of a Kentucky hill. One was for adults, and one for juveniles. And I thought about the fact that privatized prisons are a profit-maker designed to twist the law into money for the discompassionate.

Then I thought of that guy tackling the thief in the 4th street mall, and how they both walked away after a cruel little encounter. Evil seemed so close and yet so far at the same time. But civility bridges the gap.

 

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