Good Thing I Don’t Trust Omens

So, Saturday was supposed to be half a day riding 50 miles in the South Bay early before it got too hot. John mapped a route covering some of Sunday’s LIVESTRONG ride that would climb Metcalf Road: 2.2 miles at 7% climbing something like 1,000 vertical feet. John and I wanted the miles and a chance to climb the heinous hill of Metcalf Rd. Many years ago I climbed this hill during a 25 mile portion of a triathlon. I was much younger and much more fit. It was horrible. Lots of very fit triathletes stopping, walking, throwing-up. I’m not looking forward to this today or next week.

I was on the first train to Fremont where John would pick me up to drive to San Jose. Gilligan and The Captain were on the BART train with me humming the theme song from Gilligan’s Island. I should have known then that this would be no “three hour tour.”

The ride started very well, meandering through back road rolling hills. On a quick descent of Willow Springs Rd. with successions of tight turns, John took a turn too fast. I had a front-row view of his braking hard and swinging out wide into the other lane where fortunately there was no oncoming car. I thought that he was going to recover when his rear tire could not take the sideways force from skidding and it rolled off the rim popping the tube. The next quick succession went something like: nice grippy tire on pavement, to slippy aluminum rim on pavement, to ouchy hip on pavement. By the time I got stopped, turned around, and back up to John, he was sitting in the gutter in a cloud of dust. He said to me: “Not a very auspicious start to the day!”

We walked down the road a bit to a turn-out to clean-up and assess. He had a pretty good patch of road-rash on his forearm and a big patch all along his thigh. Although neither was deep, they covered some good area. I’ve taken to carrying first-aid the last few years and was glad to have it, as was John. We cleaned him up taping a big bandage on his arm and letting his shorts hold several big bandages to his thigh. While tending to John, another rider stopped to help and straightened out John’s bike. My spoke wrench did not fit John’s spokes so I could not true his wheels, but they were rideable. The rider who stopped told us about a bike shop in near-by Morgan Hill and we headed there after thanking him again and going our separate ways.

Sunshine Bicycles did us right and trued up John’s wheels beautifully while they let John use the bathroom to wash some more and change the dressings. As we got back on route I suggested that we cut the ride short and just ease back to John’s dad’s house where we started. A big, tough boy, John was tougher than I knew and he scoffed at me! “This? This ain’t nuthin. We’re climbing Metcalf and getting our 50!”
Yeah, this is the guy on whose team you want to be. OK, we’re on. Then I flat.

Great. We pull over and I start to change out my rear tube. John says: “I told you back on Willow Springs flats usually come in threes!” As we start off again, I notice some pebbles sticking to my front tire and I reach down to brush them off while I ride and cut my thumb. They were more of the glass that popped my rear tire but did not flat the front.

So much for getting to Metcalf Rd. before the day got hot. The climb was brutal. I was melting and pouring water over myself as I climbed. Grinding up the grade, I watched a fuzzy white dandelion seed fluff drifting along side me at the exact same rate. The tailwind was matching my “speed” and I received no cooling air whatsoever. Periodically standing to get up the grade, I saw my front tire spread out on the griddle that was the road. The glass I had picked up earlier causing a slow leak so now I was climbing with more like 20 pounds of air pressure in my front tire rather than the 120 PSI with which I started the day. If I stopped mid-way up the hill, I’d just lie down on the road to become more road-kill jerky that I’d seen all day. No way.

At the summit I dribbled into the off-road dirt-bike park for water, recovery, and to change my front tube. John pointed out a group of cyclists who had a support van waiting with an ice chest full of cool drinks and lunch.

Note to self: need that next time.

The rest of the miles passed uneventfully and I returned home 12 hours after my alarm clock went off in the morning.

Some might take this ride as an ominous omen: a foreshadowing of the ride to come Sunday. We’ll be on many of the same roads including the worst up Metcalf. Good thing I don’t trust omens. LIVESTRONG Challenge San Jose 2010 here we come!