On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 5/1/2002
In praise of out-&-backs
“Dreamers never win!”
I first heard that flinty bit of wisdom uttered--with great conviction--by a kid I met in the dorm on my first day of college. He saw himself as a future Big Man on Campus; a mover and a shaker, riding into town on a football scholarship, with the world by the tail. He definitely had himself cast as a doer and not a dreamer, and he correctly sized me up on first acquaintance as one of the world’s dreamers.
In his cosmos, doers were football quarterbacks, captains of industry, influential statesmen.... roaring full speed ahead down the freeway of progress. Dreamers sat by the side of the road, admiring the flowers and thinking big thoughts, but accomplishing little of substance.
As a lifetime, charter member of the dreamers’ club, I see things a little differently than my old college dorm mate saw them. I see doers as being essentially goal-oriented and dreamers as process-oriented. And it makes little sense to say that one group or the other never wins, because the two different groups measure winning with different yardsticks. Doers work hard for 50 weeks a year so they can take two weeks of vacation and spend buckets of money at a fancy resort. Dreamers figure out how to be on vacation more-or-less all year long, by working less and playing more, or by working at something they love (probably for less money but also probably for more creative satisfaction).
What, you might be wondering, does a lead-in about dreamers and doers have to do with the title, “In praise of out-&-backs”? I’m glad you asked!
It has to do with riding dead-end roads. The signs will say, “Not a through road” or, “No outlet,” but in cycling parlance, we call them “out-&-backs.” On a ride recently--a ride made up of four long out-&-backs--I was talking with my friend Linda, who had planned the route. We were discussing our perception that some cyclists love out-&-backs, while others show a great deal of resistance to the notion of riding to the end of a dead-end, then turning around and riding back. She recalled a tour she had once done made up almost entirely of out-&-backs up the east face of the Sierra. (As this is mostly in the Inyo National Forest, can I call this the Inyo Face Tour? Thank you...I’ve always wanted to use that line.) Anyway, Linda said hardly anyone signed up for the tour, in spite of this annual trek (over different routes each year) being very popular in most other years. Seems some folks just wouldn’t buy into the idea of doing dead-ends day after day, even though these are some of the most spectacular roads in California.
To my way of thinking, this is the essential difference between doers and dreamers. The doer (as cyclist), focuses on the goal of getting from A to B. The cycling dreamer, on the other hand, focuses on everything that happens between A and B: the scenery, the climbs, the descents, the weather, wayside attractions, socializing with other riders, and so on. The doer has a harder time understanding why anyone would want to ride to somewhere (nowhere), then turn around and ride back to where he started. What’s the point? The point of course is to enjoy being where you are right now rather than living in anticipation of where you will get to at some later time.
But beyond the be-here-now, enjoy-the-moment philosophy, out-&-backs deserve our attention simply on their own merits. First and foremost, they usually have less traffic than through roads, for the obvious reason that they don’t go anywhere, unless there’s a vista point or some other tourist attraction at the end of the road. Most dead-ends exist simply to serve a few scattered, residential properties. They may have been built originally to get to a mine or quarry or some other remote hive of industry, but once those activities peter out, the roads are left to slumber along in a peaceful state of neglect.
Another thing to like about out-&-backs is that, nine times out of ten, they tilt up on the way out and down on the way back, meaning you do the climb first and then get the payback descent at the end. As an area is settled, populations and development tend to grow along the flatter valley floors, close to water and arable farm land. The mountains flanking the valleys have, as a rule, remained relatively uncrowded and unspoiled... traditionally the habitat of prospectors and shepherds and other misanthropes wishing to get away from it all. If “it” refers to heavy traffic and commercial sprawl, then cycle-tourists must be in the front rank of those getting as far away from it as possible. If that means heading for the hills, then that’s where you’ll find us, and out-&-backs are some of the most common roads up from the valleys and into the mountains.
If I were to draw a circle with a 50-mile radius around my home in Sebastopol, California, within that circle I could count about 75 out-&-backs of over a mile in length, one way, with many over five miles and some over a dozen. (And bear in mind that Sebastopol is only about 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean, so about a third of my theoretical circle is under water.) Even after riding in this region for 15 years, I’m still finding new dead-ends to explore. I found one new one last Saturday and two more the week before. You might not find as many little roads to nowhere in your own backyard--this area is dense with backroads--but it would be surprising if you couldn’t root out a few dozen. For many cyclists who don’t normally think outside the box, this inventory of quiet byways represents a vast, untapped resource of new and interesting road miles to enjoy.
Some folks might complain about the redundancy of riding the same road twice, back and forth. But is this really a problem? I always think of an out-&-back as a deflated loop ride, with the outward bound and return legs of the loops very close together. Everything always feels different going the other direction...every climb becomes a descent, and vice versa, and you get to look at the other side of every view. In the case of climbing a big hill on the outward bound leg, there is an added benefit to the deal: as you slowly grind uphill, you can study the road for possible hazards or other tricky bits before you come back this way on your blitzing downhill dash. If you pay halfway decent attention, you should be able to remember where the loose gravel, potholes, and diminishing apex, off-camber corners are.
On a tour I led last summer in Santa Barbara County, I included a stage that was entirely an out-&-back: 37 miles out from Buellton to remote Jalama Beach (and of course 37 miles back). I had thrown it into the tour line-up as sort of a make-miles day, because the tour was a bit short by our standards. In my pre-ride briefing, I had made a sort of apology to the riders for asking them to do this ride, knowing the prejudice some people have about out-&-backs. A few people did choose to stay in camp and lounge around the swimming pool, but most did the stage, and afterward, numerous riders told me it was one of the best days of the week-long tour. We had a great time! All the roads were excellent; the scenery was wonderful; Jalama Beach was really neat (with killer hamburgers at the little snack bar and dolphins cavorting in the breakers). Everyone wondered later why I had made all those disclaimers about it being a less-than-great ride.
What can I say? I should have been more positive about the out-&-back! I should have remembered that most cyclists are dreamers at heart, and that the very act of cycling will make you alive to the here-and-now. I should have remembered the old saying that getting there is half the fun...and getting back is the other half.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net