UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Today's Ride:

26.4 miles

Bryce-Pima Loop

1 hour 31 minutes

69° F., clear, calm

Wednesday's Ride:

27.8 miles

San Jose out & back

1 hour 39 minutes

68° F., clear

I knew it would happen some day. Frankly, I'm surprised it has taken until this week.

I was riding eastward through the small village of Solomon located about 10 miles east of Thatcher. Solomon, sometimes called Solomonville, is a friendly village with several unfriendly dogs. But there are also a few dogs that enjoy chasing a cyclist just for the sport of it. They do not have evil intentions.

One such dog, a small white pooch of unknowable breed, spied me approaching on my red bike. I could see its eyes focused on me with anticipation as I rode into its territory on the road in front of its owner's house.

I could also see that the look in its eyes said, "I'm going to chase you and I'm going to bark at you but I am not going to bite your leg. I'm not that kind of dog."

It came after me with laser-like concentration knowing that this just might be the highlight of its day.

What the dog didn't see was the large white pickup truck coming in our direction in the other lane.

The truck ran over the dog.

I don't know what the final outcome was for the dog. It yelped loudly and struggled to stand up but then seemed to regain strength and took off running back to its house.

By the time I rode back to the accident site, I could no longer see or hear it.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this incident I suppose it might be that our actions often have unintended consequences. The temptation to chase was just too much for the dog to withstand. But it did not take into consideration all of the circumstances and outcomes of its decision. The dog was blindsided.

It's an experience to remember when we are excited (or tempted) to pursue a particular course of action.

Look before we chase.

Happy riding.

A Salute to the Draft

Today's Ride:

26.2 miles

Bryce-Pima loop

1 hour 31 minutes

65 perfect degrees

Flag Day 2010. Patriotism. Need to defend the country. Register for the draft. Yes, I'll write about drafting today.

Drafting is when rider B follows so closely behind rider A that rider B is able to exert far less energy because rider A is breaking wind... that is, breaking THE wind.

NASCAR drivers know all about drafting. So do serious cyclists. And geese.

If you have even casually followed the Tour de France you have likely heard the term "peloton." It means the main field or group of cyclists in a bike race. Through long road races, as opposed to shorter sprints or time trials, cyclists like to stay grouped together in the peloton. There is efficiency in the group because of the ability to draft off riders in the front. At some point in the race, two or three or a small handful of riders may attempt a "breakaway" and try to put some distance between themselves and the main peloton.

Often the peloton is able to overtake the breakaway before the end of the race because of the greater efficiency of riding in a large group. There is energy in numbers.

Geese use the same concept when flying a "V" formation. The lead goose does most of the work with the trailing geese drafting just off a wing of the goose in front.

Studies show the lead rider in a group expends up to 30 percent more energy than riders in a drafting position. That's significant.

That's why a basic rule of riding in a group -- even a group of two -- is to trade off the lead position. Geese do that. So do cyclists, most of the time.

I often ride with a friend, Russ, who is a stronger rider than me. I'm tempted to draft behind him for much of the ride, thereby equalizing our abilities (or neutralizing his strength, depending on how you want to look at it). But my conscience usually gets the best of me and I try to take my turns in the lead position.

Like so many other areas of our lives, working together in groups often produces better results than a solo effort.

Let's hear it for the draft.

Keep on riding.

Life's Little Landmarks

Today's Ride:
27.4 miles
Bryce – out and back
1 hour 40 minutes
Clear, 70° F.



Reay Lane runs roughly north and south through the Gila Valley and is part of a route I frequently ride, as I did this morning. When I say "runs roughly," I mean both ways: approximately and not smoothly.

Until this week.

County crews have just finished resurfacing about two miles of Reay Lane on the south side of Thatcher. It's now a strip of asphalt: smooth, clean, and quiet as electrical tape.

It's a pleasure to ride on.

But I miss something about the old, pockmarked, pothole-repaired and rough surface. I miss the landmarks or, in this case, the roadmarks.

You see, after a few dozen rides, a cyclist gets to know a stretch of road quite well. He notices and remembers unique designs etched on the road by the thermal cracking of its surface. There are pothole repairs, some done well producing nary a bump when ridden over and others that have either disintegrated with time or were not done well to begin with. There's the occasional survey paint, man-hole cover, broken center line reflectors, graffiti and the ever-present tar-filled fissures.

All of these surface features form a sort of road map that comprise the clues informing the cyclist exactly where she is on the road; how far to the top of the hill; how much more time before reaching the next intersection. They define a road, give it character.

And now, for this new stretch of Reay Lane, that character has been paved over with a uniformly smooth and featureless ribbon of asphalt. I've lost my bearings.

I was thinking today while riding that life is a bit like the rough version of Reay Lane. We all have our cracks and fissures, our covered over potholes, the imperfections of life that we try to smooth over with time, experience and repentance. Our personal roads are mostly very much rideable and usually pleasantly so.

But the marks in our life's road provide the context and dimension that give us the bearings and cues we need to continue to move forward toward our destination. We know just when and how much to swerve to miss a crack or crevice because we recognize the features of our life's highway.

We want smooth travels but we don't want to cover our past and take away our personal landmarks that keep us going in the right direction and at the right pace.

Happy trails.

Back on the Blog

Recent Rides

19 rides since last blog

569.4 miles

29.96 miles per ride average

Some riding since last blog entry (March 6), but no writing. Not a good trend.

I am hopeful of increasing my riding and writing frequency.

The highlight of the last 19 rides came on April 10 when a friend and I rode in the Tour de Phoenix -- a 73 mile race on a loop course going through Mesa, Tempe and Scottsdale then back to Mesa. It was a weather perfect day with the desert clothed in her spring best. Beautiful.

And the riding was also good although there was one long ascent toward the end of the race (when it was warmest) that took a lot out of me. My friend, Russ Reynolds, and I finished together in about 4 hours and 15 minutes.

There are a lot of reasons -- or excuses -- for why I haven't been writing much but, in retrospect, none of them is really very valid. It just wasn't a priority, at least the writing half of the equation. I at least got the 19 rides (including this morning's ride) done.

My bike's odometer passed the 15,000 mile mark on today's ride. That may seem like a lot of miles on a bicycle and I guess it is. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I must add that those 15,000 miles have been ridden over the course of 10 years. That's only about 1,500 miles per year if averaged out -- not all that impressive, actually.

I think last year's total was the largest single year total at just over 2,800 miles. I've had years with fewer than 1,000 miles so my commitment to the saddle varies widely over time.

I am off to a good start this year with almost 1,000 miles accumulated so far with my most productive riding months still ahead of me.

Happy riding.

IN TALL COTTON

Today's Ride (Friday)

30.3 miles

Bryce O&B

1 hour 47 minutes

70° with little wind

It's actually not tall yet, in fact, it's not even planted, but the local cotton farmers are beginning to stir after their winter fallow season.

With one exception, no matter which direction I ride away from my home in Thatcher, I ride through cotton fields.

Our seasons here in the Gila Valley are marked off by the cycles of planting, cultivating and harvesting cotton. Our "brown" season, winter, is coming to a close as the farmers prepare their fields for planting. A couple of weeks after the spring planting, the cotton plants will emerge and transform our brown valley floor into a patchwork quilt of green cotton plants that stay with us until the fall harvest.

Living among the green cotton fields makes the desert summer heat much more bearable -- even enjoyable. The color is soft and cool on the eyes and when the fields are under irrigation the air temperature drops by five to 10 degrees. It's a pleasure to ride the farm roads flanked by fields of cotton.

Come fall, after the cotton blossoms have transformed themselves into bulging balls of white, the fields turn mostly white. It's the closest we usually come to snow-covered ground.

The Gila Valley is one of the most productive cotton-growing regions in the nation.

Ride on.

Sweater Weather

Today's Ride:

32.0 miles

Bryce-Pima Loop

1 hour 53 minutes

68° of beautiful air

My wife tells me I stink. She's right, I do. At least I do after my rides.

And sometimes before my rides.

I don't wash my bike clothes as often as I probably should so when I put them on before a ride and she is nearby she sometimes reminds me of my stinkiness. I love her anyway.

Fortunately, most of my rides are solo. And because one rides through the wind, one's odor, like the tail of a comet, stays behind one's nose and it isn't something one notices or even thinks about (except when one is looking for a topic for one's bike blog).

When I know I will be riding with others, I try to be more circumspect in my jersey and shorts selection.

My body produces a rather extraordinary amount of coolant which doesn't help with this issue. With warmer weather approaching, I will need to get back in the habit of daily washings.

Ride on (in clean clothes).

Marvelous Machines

Last Wednesday's Ride:

28.8 miles

Bryce - out & back

1 hour 52 minutes

Cold weather

Today's Ride:

21.1 miles

Solomonville - out & back

1 hour 15 minutes

63 degrees, no wind

Bicycles are extraordinary machines. What is considered the forerunner of the modern bicycle, the "laufmaschine," or "running machine" was invented by the German, Baron Karl von Drais, in 1817. Here's a picture:

It was called the "running machine" because the rider simply straddled the machine and used his feet to push the bike along either slowly (walking) if he had a load of wood or bread strapped on the back or faster (running) if he, or maybe even she, was out on a pleasure cruise. The Baron learned quickly what all cyclists know: uphill, hard; downhill, easy.

From the looks of things, the Baron's feet served as both the energy source to go forward and the way to bring it all to a stop.

The ol' Baron took his running machine to Paris in 1818 and it became a hit with the French. A few years later, a couple of Frenchmen added cranks to the front wheel and, voilá, pedaling was invented.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A couple of interesting bicycle facts:

A bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation ever invented in terms of energy expended to travel a given distance. Over a relatively flat terrain, one can travel on a bicycle at about 15 miles per hour while expending the same energy it takes to walk about two miles per hour.

And talk about going green... the carbon dioxide generated in the production and transportation of the food required by the bicyclist, per mile traveled, is less than 1/10th that generated by energy efficient cars.

The bicycle also played a significant role in the emancipation of women giving women unprecedented mobility at a time when their traveling options were severely limited. Susan B. Anthony described a woman on a bicycle as "...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."

It makes me proud to ride my bike.

Ride on.