Feels like a Norah Jones album

On Friday I rode down to my childhood homestead in Glastonbury, Connecticut.  It was time to go racing again, but this go-round, I had it easy, with a mere fifty-three mile pedal, to an overnight stay with my father, leaving a short eleven mile morning commute to Saturday's Belltown Throwdown, now relocated to Portland, next-door to the actual town-of-bells.  Much has been made of the home-field advantage in competition, and I can speak to the value of knowing the lay of the land.  Once I located the race venue at a YMCA camp, that was the last I needed a map all weekend, and I always prefer the meander over following a Google ordained set of directions.  That ride down, it was lovely, under a gorgeous cloudscape, something often hard to appreciate through the confines of a windshield.

TGIALF: Thank Goodness it's a Lovely Friday

But the local connection saved me more than just a one inch by two inch scrap paper of directional cues.  It also meant traveling light, with no need for camping gear.  And while I've ridden as much as sixty miles the day prior to a race, that was on a road bike unencumbered by a forty-five pound trailer, so after reaching dad's, I bumped up my day's total an extra four miles, riding out to a little brook I know in the state forest for a cold leg soak to aid recovery.  Then after a night camped out in the barn loft, I knew what Google doesn't: that the same state forest offers an excellent bicycle cut through to Portland on old roads, closed to traffic.  Local is good.

Now that's my kind of commute!

Old home also means old friends, so rolling down the last hill to dad's house, I saw Paul out working the yard, and was treated to a showing of his previous day's dump find, a beautiful, mint condition Huffy Nel Lusso.  Say what you will about Huffy, they absolutely nailed it on this bike.  Adele and I had spotted one on the Smith College campus this winter, and I'd been transfixed by this lovely piece of design work.  I don't care if it rides like, well, a Huffy, it's gorgeous to behold.  While Paul and I chatted over the bike, along rolled Peter, out for his afternoon ride, so I continued the roll down the hill with him to my father's house.  Having noted the Sharpied theGOTbike placards on the sides of my trailer, Peter offered to reproduce them with a little more flair.  Now Peter is artist Peter Waite, so such sprucing up would increase both the sentimental and fiscal value of my racing kit by multiple multiples.  Watch this space for the future unveiling.

When a man cedes a gem like this to his wife, you know he loves her.

Race day, oh yeah, that happened too.  After my next-to-last finish at Secret Squirrel, I'd tempered my expectations, but also continued to push my body at an intensity it hadn't experienced in sixteen years, and while I've been loving all my other rides supported by a Carver Bikes rigid fork, for racing I relented and swapped in some suspension, even if that means my hardtail now outweighs most of the competition's carbon full-suspension bikes by a couple pounds.  It all helped, and after being careful not to over exert at the start, I started moving up through the field of ten riders, catching Mike Wissell in sixth place with just under two laps to go.  Mike is a class act, as well as the second oldest rider in the field, at a couple years my junior.  I caught him on the exit of my favorite corner on the whole course, a rooty-entry kink with a fall-away left exit, and after my exclamation, "I love that corner!" we spent the next two laps agreeing loudly with each other that turning is an underappreciated form of technical riding.  We also rode well together, each helping the other push through the closing laps of the races, and while he stuck to his unsolicited promise to not contest the sprint after riding two laps in a my draft, I benefited from his presence at least as much as he did from mine.

Mike and I exit the woods at the end of the last lap

photo by Simon Desantis

We never caught fifth place, but in finishing sixth out of ten, I was as close to the median as possible without there being a fifth-and-a-half place, so that feels like a huge improvement over my first effort at returning to racing.  More importantly, after spending most of Secret Squirrel languishing in a lonely no-man's land, this time I was actually racing, head-to-head, with actual competitors, instead of just willing myself to push hard on my own.  One of my first passes of the race even came on the wooden table-top jump near the end of the first lap, much to the enjoyment of the spectators, and thankfully, without any sore feelings from my rival being passed.  So, for me, it felt like I was truly racing again, which brought back a lot of good feelings, the kind that originally kept me competing for seventeen years.  They're the feelings of asking a lot of my body, and having it deliver, all in the company of good people, like Mike, but also, the gent in the minivan who called out to me on my way out of the race venue.  He said, "Salem, it's good to have you back," and knowing that people are happy to see me race again, well, that feels like Feels Like Home!

But wait, there's more!  Yes, it means ruining that perfect post closing, and yet there's still more to tell.  Think of it as a denouement.  While I'm quite happy with my performance in the race, I'm still just not fast enough.  No, not so much for racing, although there's definitely still room for improvement, but rather to ride back to Hadley in time for Saturday's six-o'clock potluck at Astarte Farm with Adele.  After the swap back to roadable tires and quick rinse, I left the race at 2:30.  The farm in Hadley was sixty miles away, and the math of a seventeen mile-per-hour average speed just doesn't work while pulling a forty-five pound trailer with a mountain bike, at least not in my head, although now I see it just might have been possible to make a fashionably late arrival.  Then again, I've never been very fashionable, so after fifteen miles to ponder the issue, I rang Adele who was also on her way back from a naturalist class in Connecticut.  After a quick conference, we agreed to meet along her driving route at Warehouse Point, which allowed me to pedal another twelve miles north before piling into her car to speed my arrival at the potluck table before it was bare.

Like any decision for me around motorized transport, this was not an automatic one.  I wanted to do the ride, not just stick with my intention of racing under my own power, but also because I genuinely prefer to spend my miles on a bike.  On the other hand, I also adore Adele, and the time we spend together is of tremendous value.  Also, also, I'd just ridden a pro/open mountain bike race in addition to a recon lap and thirty-eight miles of transit, so the fuel value of a potluck was not to be underestimated.  In the end, I relented and took a ride, but it's worth noting that some of Adele's first recounted experiences of the day were the stresses of driving and the interactions with other aggressive motorists, who are also stressed out by driving.  After that, I told her about my surprise, but not shock, at the shear volume of traffic I'd encountered riding through my hometown, a sentiment echoed by Peter, who now refuses to drive into the center of town, lest he become part of the vehicular mayhem.  Hmm, maybe if more people followed Peter's example, we could all be enjoy a life with less stress, maybe even some other health benefits as well.  We just need the potlucks to start a little later.

Closing my day with a fifteen mile ride home from the farm under twilit skies

Grand total: a touch under 75 miles of pedal-powered joy