On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 6/1/2003
Extreme Noodling
Last year I wrote a column in praise of out-&-backs...in celebration of wandering up and down dead-end roads, exploring whatever they might have to offer in the way of scenery and cycling thrills. This column proposes to take that same premise and pedal just a bit further off the beaten path with it.
A fairly regular item on my menu of bike rides is something I call my “slolo” rides. No, that is not a typo. It’s a made-up word of my own...a contraction of “slow” and “solo.” Both components are integral to the concept, both adding to the charm and satisfaction of the rides for me.
The bulk of my rides are group rides. Either they are official weekend rides listed in my club’s monthly ride calendar, or they are informal rides cobbled together with several of my closer friends. Then there are the really big group rides, like centuries, doubles, and organized tours. But on the average of one day a week, I ride alone, and most of the time on my solo rides, I ride slowly. This doesn’t mean I go out on the highway and poke along at a snail’s pace. That would be boring (to me).
No, this is another kind of riding altogether. I call it extreme noodling, or anti-hammering. Sometimes I call these rides recovery rides, and in fact, they do most frequently fall on a Monday or Tuesday, while I’m still recovering from whatever mega-ride(s) I might have inflicted upon myself over the weekend.
But the real key to these rides is that I am exploring. I am letting my curiosity lead me where it will, and around here, my curiosity leads me into some really odd places. I live in an area that is rich in backroads, covered in a dense web of dinky lanes that meander up over the ridgelines and down into the shady dales. I calculated once that there are over 3000 miles of quality cycling backroads within range of my house...“within range” meaning what I could do on an easy day ride, either riding from home or doing a short car shuttle to a ride start. That does not include the roads a bit further afield...ones that could be reached and ridden with a longer drive: say, one that got me home after dinner. Nor does it count all the tiny dead-end roads and obscure, rural-residential lanes that squirm through the woods and scattered settlements of some of our little towns. Nor does it count the literally hundreds of private or “not-county-maintained” roads that extend from the ends of dead-ends or branch off from other public roads.
I have been cycling in this region--Sonoma County and its near neighbor counties--for over 20 years, and I am constantly amazed to discover, as I do on an almost weekly basis, more new roads I have not yet ridden, or at least roads I have not ridden in several years, which is usually enough time to make them seem new again.
Most of these most obscure roads--some little more than glorified driveways--are too narrow and twisty and sometimes too poorly paved for hammering, even if I wanted to ride them that way. They need to be ridden with some care, and that suits my mood to a tee when out exploring them. I will noodle along these nowhere lanes at the slowest speed imaginable--often single-digit miles-per-hour--while I take in the slowly passing scene.
Much of what is entertaining on these rides is what you might expect to find enjoyable on country rides: the wonderful natural landscape in all its variety, from babbling brooks to ocean vistas; from tall, stately redwood groves to sub-alpine meadows; snowy peaks in one season, wildflowers in another, a hawk on the wing, and so on. I do love all that, almost more than I can capture in words (although goodness knows I try often enough).
But there are other points of interest for me on these noodling journeys of exploration. There is what I might call the human element...man’s place in the landscape. This region, with all of its dense tracery of little roads, supports a relatively dense community of homes and small towns. Fortunately, the less endearing aspects of urban and suburban development are minimal and avoidable, most of the time. The residential development I’m referring to is rural-residential, in zoning parlance and in reality: one to ten-acre parcels, with room to grow a garden and have a few trees or even a whole forest in the back yard. Very little of this area would qualify as real wilderness, but almost all of it is given over to woods or meadows, and most of those woods and meadows contain scattered country homes. Not as densely settled as a town, nor as uniform and sprawling as a suburb; not as empty as a wilderness or even an agrarian landscape of farms (although we do have a lot of that too). The region often puts me in mind of the Shire...the woodsy, rumpled land where Hobbits live. I suppose that sounds a little corny, but I can’t help that. It may be corny, but it’s accurate.
I’m a great student of residential building...both new achitecture and rennovation. When other little boys and girls were drawing hot rods and horses, I was drawing floor plans and elevations for homes. I pored over the home design pictorials in Sunset magazine the way other kids devoured comics. (Not surprisingly perhaps, I grew up to illustrate dozens of Sunset home design books. Funny how that works out.) I love to discover interesting examples of residential design. I’m endlessly fascinated about the ways folks devise to lay out and embellish their habitats, and this area, all along these miles of backroads, offers up a vast and various potpourri of residential styles, from classic Victorian farm house to hippie dome; from 20’s Craftsman bungalow to 70’s California ranch; from ego-driven trophy home to eco-driven rammed-earth; from cutting-edge contempo to dilapidated double-wide. I think the eclectic, hodge-podge of archetectural styles is one of the things I like best about the area. It’s never the same from one mile to the next, and you never know what you might turn up around the next corner.
And it’s in a state of constant flux. The demographics of our area are on the move, mostly in an upward direction, fiscally. More money is moving in, and more of the older homes are receiving the money massage. You ride down a country road, and what last month or last year was an old, falling-down farmhouse has been transformed into someone’s new dreamhouse. (It is not axiomatic that more money equals better taste. In fact, when I look at some of these new, bloated trophy homes--which really look like nothing more than tract houses on steroids--I almost think the opposite is true. But fortunately, there are those happy instances where money does conspire with good taste and a love of the land to produce an exciting remodel or a beautifully designed, sensitively sited new home.)
Another of the human elements I find intriguing in the rural landscape is the cars parked around the homes. Sure, most of them are normal, everyday vehicles of no particular interest. But country properties--both those of rich folks and po’ trash--often accumulate older, semi-retired vehicles, perhaps no longer running, but too precious to throw away or sell. I love old cars almost as much as I love residential design, so my eye can be instantly caught and beguiled by the sight of a rusty relic in the tall grass beside the barn, especially if it happens to be some diamond-in-the-rough...a classic, collectable car.
If you haven’t paid attention to this, and if you don’t noodle around on these idle explorations, you might be surprised at how many collectable cars there are languishing along the sides of these little lanes. Why, just the other day on one short ride, I saw two classic, 50’s Buicks--an early decade fastback (missing a fender) and a mid-decade Roadmaster--then a Hudson Hornet, and best of all, a nearly mint, ’53 Studebaker Commander Starlight...the legendary Bob Bourke/Raymond Loewy streamliner. (Only the fact that it was the B-pillar Starlight and not the more valuable pillarless Starliner kept me from knocking on the farmhouse door and making an offer. And don’t write to me asking where it is. I’m not telling. I may make an offer yet.) Mind you: these are not lovingly restored and pampered pets of the house. You see those too. I’m referring to tall-weed cars here...the ones sitting neglected out in a field that give rise to fantasies of making the owner an absurdly lowball offer and walking away with the steal of a lifetime.
You say American cars aren’t your thing? You want to know about classic European junkers? How about two very tatty Jensen-Healeys up on blocks in a side yard? Or three--count ’em, three!--Maseratis, all snuggled down into the weeds on flat tires, spied out behind a hedge at the end of a private road. (Multiples of the same car are not uncommon: there used to be a country yard near here filled with--of all things--Renault LeCars, and there is another guy on another of these little roads who has around a dozen, 60’s-era Mustangs parked behind his garage.)
So cruising around, looking at houses is fun for me. And stopping to gape at rusted out hulks of antique cars is another pleasing divertimento. When I stumble upon a cool place that catches my eye, or a nifty old car, I can roll past at 5-mph or I can put a foot down and study it for awhile. With a hammer ride, this just would not work. It wouldn’t happen. Nor would it happen on even a more laid-back, sociable group ride. Now...let the record show: I love group rides, and even more, rides with my best buddies. I like all the dynamic things that happen on group rides...banter and jokes, the bonding, the pace lines, half-wheel hell, city limit signs...it’s all good stuff.
But one thing group rides are not good for is sudden, whimsical improvisation. I’m talking about the kind of moment where you pass a little side road, think to yourself, “I wonder where that goes?”...and on the spur of the moment, hit the brakes, pull a 180, and go back to check it out. Do that in a paceline, and you’ll have bodies all over the road. Do it in a social ride with friends, and you would have to submit the idea to committee, get some consensus from everyone, and then turn around (at which point, you’d already be half a mile past the junction in question). It could happen, and it does happen, but it takes a lot of discussion and wrangling. The patience of my buddies for this kind of spontaneous redirection stretches to maybe two such manoeuvers in a given ride. But when I’m out alone, I may do this ten or a dozen times in 30 miles. No discussion. No consensus. Just turn and go.
Furthermore, most groups don’t want to stop as often as I do on these rides, nor linger as long. Regroups are standard on our club rides and social rides, but hang around for too long, and inevitably, someone will start carping about stiffening up or chilling down, so let’s get going, yada yada. We get this even when we’re stopped at some vista point where the scenery is off-the-chart magnificent. Some people just can’t stand to stand over their bikes and dilly dally. They ride like they have a plane to catch. Try to get these folks to stop and study an interesting new home design or an old car, and you might as well suggest we pull their teeth out on the spot. They’ll be about that enthusiastic about the idea.
So this sort of ride is best done solo, and there is yet another reason for doing them this way: you hit critical mass very quickly on some of these tiny roads, especially if they happen to be private. One rider alone is plausible on a private road, and not too intrusive for the locals. Two or three or six is cause for alarm and challenge.
I have a rather elastic and circumstantial approach to private roads. I do respect people’s privacy...do not want to intrude...but I also feel one quiet cyclist need not upset their peaceful little backcountry apple cart too thoroughly. So I quietly and respectfully noodle down their private drives to see what I can see. I have a few self-imposed rules about this. First off, I count mailboxes, which, for these private lanes, will all be ganged together at the junction with the main road. That gives me a notion of how long the road might be. In an area of rural residential zoning at, say, ten acres per parcel, you know a row of a dozen or 20 mailboxes indicates the length of the little road might be a mile or more...worth exploring. I don’t bother with any road that has less than four mailboxes...usually less than six, unless it looks really inviting. For one thing, it’s not likely to be very long, and for another, it represents too close-knit a community of homes, where everyone on the road is likely to know everyone else. With enough houses up the road, I won’t look out of place and raise an alarm. After all, I could be from one of the other homes...perhaps a new resident or a guest. Who’s going to know?
Then I look for the warning signs. If it only says, “Private Road” or “Permission to pass revocable at any time,” I interpret that to mean the residents are covering their behinds legally, but are not absolutely forbidding access. If the signs say, “No Trespassing!” or “Absolutely no admittance!,” I go away. I don’t need to bother somebody who’s that uptight. In all my years of snooping around on private roads, I’ve never had a nasty encounter with an irate homeowner. I have been asked politely to state my business once or twice, and to please turn around and leave. But the more typical encounter with a local results in at least a smile and a wave, and in some cases a friendly roadside chat. That too is something that wouldn’t happen on a hammer ride or a group ride.
But more than neat houses and classic cars; more than neighborly chats, I think the thing I like best about these slow, solo noodles along unkown roads is how they fill in the blanks on the map for me. This landscape is incredibly hilly and convoluted...hundreds of ridges wrapping around countless valleys and pocket canyons. With woods covering so much of it, and so much of it hilly, it’s often next to impossible to literally see the forest for the trees, or figuratively, to see the larger lay of the land from any one spot.
Cycle around your own region enough, and if you pay attention and match your observations with the study of local maps, you will eventually know your way around. But just knowing how to navigate the main roads is not enough for me. I want to fully understand and appreciate all the spatial relationships of the country. I will wander down some new road, crest a rise, and find myself looking at an entirely new valley, or an old valley from a new perspective. For the first time, I see houses over on the next ridgeline, and I wonder: now how the heck do you get to those houses? I mull it over, take a few mental snapshots, then go home and pull out my maps, and suddenly, another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Do this enough times on enough new roads, and finally the whole region will become coherent and tangible to you...like all the patches of a patchwork quilt. You can stitch them together along the seams represented by the little roads.
But again, this demands that you put a foot down, stand by the bike...to observe and to think. It takes time. Doing rides of this sort is almost impossible if you have rigid time constraints. I usually do them in the afternoon. At whatever point I knock off work, I just figure I’m blowing off the rest of the work day. The only limiter is daylight, or lack of it.
So okay...this is fun, to me anyway. But what about exercise? What about fitness? Surely noodling along at 10-mph isn’t much training for those big weekend rides. Well, no, it probably is not, although these rides do get me pumped up from time to time. Remember that the region is endlessly hilly: scads of these dinky, slinky roads to nowhere are seriously steep, sometimes with gradients in the high teens or even over 20%. I don’t care how slowly you “noodle” up them, you’re still going to be jacking your heart rate through the roof. And although the tiniest trails may be too technical for gonzo downhill fliers, I usually manage to find a few roads here and there where I can let it rip.
But serious training? No, that they are not. However, I have tons of rides where I can hammer, where I can paceline at my limit and sprint for the county line, and play all those hard-boy games. I carry enough fitness from those rides into my occasional mega-rides...enough so that I can usually muddle through with dignity intact.
But for one ride a week, I want to experience something different...and believe it or not, the same bike that can hammer down the highway can also noodle down the byway. And the same legs and lungs and heart that can work like demons on a fast ride can be just as happy ticking over at half that speed on a leisurely stroll along a neighborhood lane. To my way of thinking, a cycling life well lived allows time for both kinds of riding...hammers and noodles.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net