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Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  1/1/2013

The Cure for Velo Weltzchmerz

One year ago, in my January, 2013 column, I cranked out a happy-talk piece about accentuating the positive in our bike lives; about paying attention to and remembering the friendly, upbeat moments, rather than the negative, hostile frictions. It was a nice little column, and I don't disagree with it at all. But it's not always easy to follow that advice, week in and week out, day after day, ride after ride.

In my case, I felt as if I suffered from a dose of the biking blahs this past year, in spite of that resolve to accentuate the positive. Not all the time, to be sure. I had some great times on the bike. I organized and participated in a wonderful tour in Oregon in August. I had loads of other great rides too, alone or with my friends. But there were many other days when I couldn't find my motivation to roll the bike down the driveway and head for the hills. Or, if I did go out, I settled for short-and-easy instead of pushing my limits.

My log book tells part of the story: the lowest mileage total I've logged in 22 years. To be fair, I have to recall that I was hit by a car in May and lost three weeks to recovery. That cost me a few hundred miles. But the last time I was injured this badly, back in 2005, I lost seven weeks and still had 1000 more miles than I have this year.

Aside from the wreck with the car, I have no excuses for slacking off the way I did this year. Nothing got between me and my biking. I have a flexible schedule and can ride almost whenever I want. Our local weather is usually mild enough for year-round riding. And I live in the heart of a cycling paradise with thousands of miles of bike-friendly back roads close by. No…no excuses. It was simply a case of velo weltzchmerz: world weariness as applied to pedaling.

Too many times, I found it too easy to skip a ride on a day that I could've, should've gone out. I would keep my butt parked in this chair and would leave the bike parked in the corner. And then, when I did manage to jump-start myself into a ride, I would often stand on the front porch, with my bike kit on, trying to think of a route to do that I hadn't done at least a hundred times before…something that would seem fresh instead of the same old same old. In the midst of what amounts to a cycling theme park, here in the North Bay, I was bored with all the possibilities. Been there, done that…yawn…

You get the picture. Maybe it happens to you now and then too. I started to notice it--as a trend in my life--late in the year, when I could see my numbers for the year were going to be lackluster. The logbook documented the fact that I was in a funk. So finally, late in December, I decided enough was enough. Or perhaps it should be: not enough is not enough! I'm tired of being bored. I'm bored with being tired.

In between a parade of wet and wild weather fronts marching across our region, I got a chance on Christmas Eve to do a nice ride. During the previous week, we had been given another sunny day amidst the almost constant onslaught of storms, but for no good reason at all, I had taken a pass on riding that day. I had procrastinated and dithered my way out of my ride. Late that day, as I realized I had blown off another opportunity to ride, I was so pissed at myself for being such a lazy slacker that I determined not to let that happen again. So when this one precious jewel of a crisp, sunny day was presented to me on Christmas Eve, I grabbed it.

I decided to ride from my house up to Pine Flat, one of the really great roads in the North Bay. That's a round trip of about 74 miles, assuming I only climbed Pine Flat to the "flat," a scenic overlook a little way below the summit. (Many riders, including this one, often stop two miles short of the summit on this 12-mile, uphill out-&-back. That's because the last two miles may be the hardest, steepest climb north of San Francisco, averaging about 15%, with the steepest bits up around 23%.) That was my plan on this day: to give the last two miles a miss.

The day was lovely and I was having a lovely ride. The winter rains had wrought their usual transformation on the landscape, with all the hills green again after our golden summer. The world looked perfect, freshly scrubbed by those storms, with just a few decorative cotton-ball clouds drifting across a blue porcelain bowl of a sky. I stopped at a beautiful waterfall alongside Pine Flat that I had never noticed before. While taking a break there, a fellow I knew rode past, with his girlfriend. We started climbing together and chatting. He said they were going all the way to the top; that it would be a first for the g-friend: never been up this magnificent road before.

That got me thinking: if this newbie is going all the way to the top, why am I planning on turning back just where the going gets tough? See, it was more of the same damn slacker attitude: taking the easy way out…settling for 90% instead of 100%. In the spirit of my new resolve to not be bored, to not be lazy, to not settle for less than the full monty, I decided I really had no choice but to carry on all the way up through those ridiculous steep chutes and hairpins. They shamed me into it, not by badgering me, but simply by their example.

And make no mistake: those pitches are ridiculous. Soooo steep! I had stopped at the flat vista spot to eat some food while the other riders kept going. A bit later, I rounded a bend on one of the over-20% walls just in time to see the girlfriend simply topple over and sprawl out flat on her back on the pavement. The guy was with her, and when I got up to them, they were laughing at the absurdity of it. I rode past at about 4 mph. They got going again and we all hit the top together.

We parted company at the summit. I needed to get going. I had further to go to get home and was running out of daylight. I had as much fun on the way home as I had on the way up to the big climb. I had gone north to Pine Flat via Chalk Hill and Hwy 128 through Alexander Valley. I took a different route home, through Healdsburg and closer to the Russian River. I had to dodge around some streams that were over their banks with all the recent rain. On one road, I ran out of ways to dodge the flood and had to ride across a 150-yard stretch where Mark West Creek was flowing over the road about a foot deep. I couldn't see the road, under the flood water, but I knew where it went and just stayed near where the centerline should be, with my feet going under on each downstroke. I felt a little crazy doing it, but I also felt very alive and in-the-moment. With cold, wet feet but a warm heart, I chugged on home, feeling as if my velo weltzchmerz had been washed away.

It was all part of what it means to be a cyclist: to get out there and have those adventures; to not shy away from the highest peaks or the flooded creeks; to not think up reasons for staying home and doing nothing. On this ride, I was reminded of little kids and their bath times. At first, you can't get them near the bathtub. They have too many other things to do. But once you finally get their clothes off and get them in the water, you can't get them out again. They're having too much fun with their bath toys and just generally splashing around…playing. They are living in the present moment.

Lately, my bike rides have been like bath time. Sometimes I have trouble getting started: getting all kitted up and thinking up a route. But once I overcome that inertia and am actually out there, on the bike, I almost always have a ball, and I wonder why I was ever reluctant to start.

I want that to be my model for this year: the bath time playfulness of tots. I am resolving this year to stop being bored and blasé about my biking. I want to remember how fortunate I am that cycling is a part of my life; that this activity allows me the freedom to still play like a child. See you out there on the road!

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



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