On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 3/1/2011
Super Bike Sunday
Looking back over my columns from the past year or so, there is one thing they all seem to have in common: they're all long. That could be because I've been choosing to write about Big Topics, where it takes a few cubic yards of words to do the subjects justice. Or it could be that I talk too much…that I have failed to embrace the old bromide: "brevity is the soul of wit." (Shakespeare may have penned those wise words, but you don't see him abiding by them all that much, and thank goodness for that. Had he taken his witty aphorism to heart, we might have been deprived of many of his other great one-liners.)
Try as I might, I may not be able to control the urge to talk too much, but at least I have the advantage this month of choosing a small topic…one which I ought to be able to dispense with in short order, leaving all of us more time for getting away from the computer, out the door, and onto our bikes, enjoying the lovely spring weather.
So, with brevity in mind, I will get right to the point: Super Bowl Sunday is one of the best days of the year to go for a bike ride.
There you go. That's it! End of story. Now, get out of here and go for a ride…
No, no…you knew Mr. Talks-Too-Much wasn't going to walk away from it that easily. There is a little more to be said on the subject.
First of all, those of you who live in places other than California, Florida, and Arizona may be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. This particular Super Bowl Sunday, in mid-February, 2011, saw most of the country buried under vast shoals of snow. Even Dallas, the site of this year's game, was semi-paralyzed by the non-stop storms, with much fussing about getting the ice off the roof of the stadium. So no, maybe for all of you who live in places that have to grapple with snow and ice and wind and frigid temps…maybe for you this would not be a good day to get out there on two wheels.
But for the happy few million who live in what is sometimes called the Sun Belt, it makes great sense. That is, it makes great sense if you're not totally locked and loaded for nothing but football, football, and more football on this new American holiday. But then, the fact that the vast majority of people are locked in on football on this day is precisely why it's so nice for a bike ride.
Several years ago in this space, I wrote another column about how I had lost interest in football over the years; how doing other things--in particular, riding my bike--had become more appealing to me than spending a perfectly good, sunny day inside on the couch, watching legalized violence on the gridiron. I haven't completely turned my back on the game. I still like to watch a quarter or two now and then. And I still can spare a few brain cells to keep track of the results and the standings and what’s going on, in a general way…enough to hold up my end of conversation about the sport. But by the standards of any die-hard fan, my engagement with the game is fairly marginal at this point.
You might say I'm the opposite of a fair-weather fan. When the weather is fair, I'm outta here…out the door and on the bike, pointed toward the territory ahead. If, on the other hand, the weather is foul, I may be induced to slouch on the couch for an extended lunch break, watching oversized meatballs thumping on each other, dipping my chips and ingesting my favorite malted beverages. But, as I say, if it's nice outside, that's where I'll be…outside.
Which brings me back to our most recent Super Bowl Sunday, last month. In our little corner of the world, the weather was not just fair, it was fantastic. It was unreal. There was nothing but sunshine and blue skies for the whole day, and the mercury pushed well up into the mid-80's by mid-afternoon. (Although our weather is generally quite pleasant, this was a bit extraordinary. In fact, the heat wave broke records over 100 years old. And just to prove how unusual that was, I can report that we have since reverted to weather more appropriate for the season: rain, hail, high winds, and even snow. Two days ago, I rode up and over The Geysers, the highest road in the county, and I was riding through snow fields for quite a bit of the time on that lofty road…very pretty.)
I didn't have any particular rooting interest in either team in the Super Bowl this year, so I planned to do a century that day, without much caring whether I finished up in time to be home for any or all of the game. As it turned out, I was home in plenty of time to see the second half, which was more than enough football for me. The game was close enough that the outcome was hanging in the balance right up to the end, so I got to enjoy that little flutter of suspense. And then I got to see the highlights from all the earlier stuff I'd missed, without all the commercials and all the endless bloviating of the announcers.
We had a Super Bowl Century listed on our club calendar for this day, and about 20 people showed up to do it. (Twice that number showed up to do a shorter ride as well.) The century route didn't really appeal to me, so I went out solo. Because I hadn't been there in awhile, I decided to ride over in Napa Valley, heading south down the valley from Calistoga, all the way to Napa, up to the top of Atlas Peak--a wonderful road--then back north up the other side of the valley, with enough divertimenti thrown in to add up to a century.
So here's the special charm of riding on Super Bowl Sunday: everyone else is inside, watching the game, plus for most people, the endless hours of hype and hoopla that precede the game. That means no one is out driving around in their big metal auto-modules. Napa Valley is one of the most intensely touristy places in California, right up there with Disneyland, Yosemite, and the Monterey Peninsula for pulling in the teeming hordes. On most weekends, its roads resemble a motorized rugby scrum. And yet, on this absolutely, delightfully sunny, balmy day, the entire valley was like a ghost town. It was as if some lethal death ray had vaporized all the tourists and all their cars.
Okay, sure, there must be loads of people out in their cars around midday, heading over to their friends' houses for Super Bowl parties or making one last beer run. But the vast masses of generic tourists are missing…all the folks making the wine-tasting, sight-seeing rounds. It looked as if 90% of the stretch limos were missing as well. If you haven't ridden a bike around Napa Valley on any typical wine-tasting weekend, you probably would never imagine there could be that many stretch limos in the entire state, let alone in one small valley. Yet, on this lovely day, the big lunkers were all hibernating.
I have been taking advantage of the car-free roads of Super Bowl Sundays for many years. It's always the same: cyclists have the roads almost entirely to themselves. That's the best part of the deal. But the collateral benefit is that it takes you away from any temptation to get sucked into all that pre-game garbage that stretches on and on, hour after stultifying hour. The trick is to time your ride to get you home anytime from the toss of the coin onward, but not before that. If you get home in time to see the fighter jets strafing the stadium (at taxpayers' expense), you have arrived too soon. Your ride doesn't have to be as long as a century. Or if you're faster than I am, you can do a century and still be home for the whole game. (I could have been too, but I had a relaxed morning and got a late start on my ride. That was halfway by design: not wanting to get back too soon. Had the 49ers been in the game, I would have timed it more carefully and arrived home earlier.)
If I were really smart, I would have saved up this topic--Super Bike Sunday--and run it next February, just ahead of the next Super Bowl and just in time to encourage you to take advantage of this car-free day we are given each year. But I can't think that far ahead, and anyway, with the owners and players locked up in a mud-wrasslin' match--the billionaires squaring off against the millionaires--who knows if there will even be a Super Bowl next February? I've committed this little bright idea to print now, while it's fresh in my mind…while my wonderful ride up and down the empty roads of Napa County is still easy to recall. It will be up to you to remember this next year. We will hope that the players and owners find some mutually agreeable way to divvy up their enormous sack of loot, so that the game will go on. We will further hope that, wherever you are, next year's football holiday will be sunny and dry in your neighborhood, so you can escape the thrall of the boob tube, at least until the opening kick-off.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net