Last week I was off from work and decided that I was finally going to get a century ride (100 miles) in on my bike. I also wanted to pick out a route from my house in Littleton out to Sturbridge (start of the PMC), and as it turned out, a basic "out-and-back" route came out to about 110 miles (give or take). Great! All set!
So, I set out on my ride on Friday morning, July 9. At one mile from my house, my left shifter stripped out, disabling my ability to shift on my front chain rings, rendering my 27-speed bike a 9-speed. Knowing that I had an *awful* lot of hills ahead between Littleton and Sturbridge, and since it was still early in the day, I decided to see if I could get my shifter fixed in time to try again on Saturday. So, I threw the bike on the back of the Prius and headed to the good people at Belmont Wheelworks. There at Belmont Wheelworks Scott Chamberlain, (friend, renaissance man and expert on all things bike) replaced my shifter without incident and I was able to regroup and try again Saturday. No biggie.
I got up early Saturday morning, planning to be out on my way by 6AM as some nasty storms were supposed to be coming in the afternoon and I wanted to be back home before they hit. The weather that morning was nice, since the heat wave we'd been under all week was finally breaking. The ride was quite relaxing and uneventful all the way down past Clinton and West Boylston around the Wachusett Reservoir. Even though I'd researched the route elevations online when I planned the route, it seemed that I really mis-read just how hilly it gets out toward Holden and Spencer. I mean I REALLY must've mis-read the elevations.
After about 34 miles I stopped in Holden to pick up some Gatorade and stretch my legs, then took off again. Less than a mile later my brand new left shifter stripped out. Again. At this point I had to make a choice: I could call Sandy at home and ask her to come pick me up in Holden, OR I could just fix my chain on single front chain ring (no more shifting) and try to gut it out the remaining 20 or so miles to Sturbridge. Once at Sturbridge, I could decide whether to call Sandy. I opted to just "man up" and soldier on to Sturbridge without my full range of gearing. Thusly commenced the cascading fiasco array...
Like I said, I under-estimated the hills on the section of the ride around Holden and Spencer. They weren't especially long hills; there was just a lot of them and they were pretty steep grades. In order to have access to my lowest gear ratios (for hill climbing) I should have fixed my chain on my smallest front chain ring. However, that makes for an awkward ride the rest of the time (spinning way too fast on the flats and downhills), so I opted to leave my chain on the middle ring, figuring I could just bear down on it and "gut it out" on the hills for the next 20 or so miles. Yeah, right. [Note: you have to remember that my bike is a recumbent bike. (I sit in a fairly reclined position with my pedals out in front of me.) So, I can't "come out of the saddle and stand on it" like a an upright bike rider can on tough hills. On a hill with a recumbent, there is nothing you can do but push from your hips -- i.e. you can't recruit gravity and your body weight to move the pedals; it's just all pushing.]
Anyway, my strategy worked for a couple of miles on the way to Spencer, until my legs started to cramp up from the extra pushing. I had to stop a couple of times to work out some painful (and awkward) leg cramps. At this point of our fiasco, Mother Nature decided it was time to chime in, sending legions of kamikaze biting flies to greet me. Now, a person exerting himself strenuously must exhale an awful lot of carbon dioxide -- much like I did huffing and puffing and cramping my way up those hills. So I must've been absolutley irresistible to those crazed biting buggers, all that CO2 giving off a signal to them like an ice cream wagon at the beach...
Now, the good thing about being on a bike (as opposed to running or digging a ditch) is that you can hit speeds over 10mph, which apparently was the posted speed limit for those particular biting flies. The faster you go, the less likely flies are going to be able to find/follow/bite you. So as long as I was able to get my speed above 10mph or so, no problem. However, the Spencer hills, combined with my crippled gearing and fatiguing legs conspired against me. The minute I started up an incline those flies were on me like, well... flies. Those flies and their relatives were my constant companions until I got to Charlton and route 20 -- about 7 miles from my stop in Sturbridge. [Note to self: sunscreen and DEET on next ride.]
By the time I was about 8 miles from Sturbridge I concluded that there was no way I was going to be able to ride all the way back home on my wounded bike. So, I called Sandy and she agreed to pick me up at the McDonalds next to the Sturbdridge Host Hotel. I made it to the McDonalds without incident, effectively ending my aborted century ride at the 56 mile mark. After about an hour, Sandy picked me up and we were on our way home. Just as we were on the road, Mother Nature (apparently moving on to phase 2 from the biting flies) decided to finally loose the storms on us and it began to rain. Hard. I was so glad not to be out on the bike in that mess. A few minutes later there was a *whoomp* and I felt the bike bounce on the back of the Prius. The bike rack was broken -- in the middle of a pounding, blowing rainstorm.
We put on the emergency flashers, pulled over and I got out to see how bad things were. Mercifully, the bike hadn't fallen completely off, but the rack was useless. Not so mercifully, while I was assessing the situation the rain was coming down so hard that it *hurt*... Surprisingly, with Sandy's help we were able to fit the bike into the back of the Prius with the seats down. (Fortunately there were no other passengers or cargo on that trip!) And *now* we were finally off.
My hopes of a century ride that week were history. However, I did manage to get in a 56-mile ride through some beautiful country. And while things didn't turn out like I had hoped, I did learn a few things about planning a route, bike chains, and average airspeed of biting flies.("Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.")
Talking with Scott at Wheelworks the next day (when he patiently replaced my shifter for the second time), we decided that it was probably the "worst" rides that yield the best stories. I mean, I've been on some wonderful rides but I have to say the stories about them are nowhere near as memorable or interesting as the ones from the fiasco rides that "didn't quite go as planned..." And you know, although I was fit to be tied that Saturday morning, by that night I was able to look back on the day and laugh about it. There's probably a lesson for me in that somewhere... :-)
Joey is Robbie Freeman's older brother and was diagnosed with colon cancer a few months ago after his first colonoscopy. He has 2 sons and a daughter and works for Texas Eastman in Longview, TX.
