turning it up a notch

“…And where do you plan on burying her?”
The question, posed quite pleasantly by Dave N., interrupted a listing of New Hampshire notches: Bear, Crawford, Jefferson, plus a debate about the Kancamangus pass and a throwaway comment concerning Hurricane Road. We were at Ride.Studio.Cafe sipping post-ride caffeinated drinks, when it was revealed that I would be expected to spin my way through all of the above and then some. I slouched a little further into my seat as my eyes bounced between Dave and Chris, trying to pretend my legs didn’t hurt already from our earlier 30 mile spin.
Because though not usually one for spontaneity, I was headed up to New Hampshire the next day on a whim. “I’m taking you up to New Hampshire with our bikes,” the wording went, and doped up on an affogato with a carbon fiber loaner bike courtesy of Ride.Studio.Cafe., I had – happily, yet perhaps a little rashly – agreed.

The planned route – I only later learned – stretched north from North Conway up towards Crawford Notch, then to Jefferson. It turned east from there, before cutting south into a sliver of Maine. Bearing west would bring us back across the Maine-New Hampshire border into North Conway. 100 miles of spinning, but a ride that could be cut down to 60 or 80 depending on how we felt. It sounded almost quaint; a countryside jaunt with a few hills along the way.
Except, you know, we were talking about the White Mountains.
Had I understood the exact elevation of these combined passes, perhaps I would have exhibited some hesitation. Or outright refusal. Familiarity with the terrain, curiosity regarding elevation gain, or simply not being a dumbass and the ability to use Google Maps would have provided me with the necessary insight to just say no. Such skills would have informed me that this seemingly pleasant ride would take us up and near mountains named after whole families decimated by landslides on their slopes. Wikipedia would also have shredded any remaining romantic notions that I would survive the ride, much less make it up even one of those notches without drooling all over myself.
But here was a loaner bike and a boy promising adventure, and all I could say was yes, yes, yes.

An hour after kicking off from the parking lot, I was predictably regretting my conscious naïveté. On a compact crank for the first time in over a year, I impatiently struggled to establish some sort of rhythm while drafting off Chris’ 6’2” frame. I scampered along to his easy soft pedaling, our mismatched cadences mirroring our contrasting gaits even off the bike. Me scurrying low to the ground, taking three steps for every one of his long, loping strides; an extra couple of pedal strokes for every one of his.
Not as if there was anyone around to see our motley duo. Pedaling down roads sandwiched between forests, past signs warning to slow down in the event of moose, riding through White Mountain National Park is the stuff of nature-loving, loner dreams. Smooth asphalt leads towards mountains so picturesque they inspire both awe and a desire to conquer their beauty. Pedaling towards one mountain brings another into view, then another. Their sides sometimes scarred by ski runs, the uneven peaks layer themselves against the backdrop of a clear, clean sky that sparkles with stars at night.

Signs of civilization only came in the form of the occasional passing car and – in our case – construction crews building back roads where whole sections seem to have disappeared [thanks to Hurricane Irene]. A mechanical shovel took a swing at Chris before graciously lurching out of my way. We were never sure if it was on purpose, but a giant tank of Foster’s, sitting innocently atop an orange traffic barrel, probably had something to do with it, too.
Our momentum slowed after that, broken up further by more missing sections of asphalt. By the time we arrived at the base of Crawford Notch, my thighs were feeling flimsy despite the fact that the real climbing hadn’t even begun. I remember the road curving up before us, my wheezy breathing that started right before the last push, and the 13% grade slope that continued far longer than was really necessary. Chris’ black and white Cambridge kit skipped along up ahead as I crawled to the top. I put my head on my stem and looked for a place to lie down and die.

My legs feeling as stable as Costello’s in “Pump It Up,” we turned back after that, our bikes flying down that 13% grade. The wind roared in my ears, the deafening noise of blasting air like nothing I’d ever heard or felt before. We swung back the way we came, at times a little faster than on the way in, towards showers and food and beers.

“Next time,” Chris said, “next time, we’ll do the whole thing.”
I think I laughed in response. I may still get buried along the way, but I’ll take any excuse to ride up those New Hampshire mountains again.
And because we all love to eat… [places to refuel in North Conway]:
Moat Mountain Smokehouse and Brewing Company A hike if you’re walking from downtown North Conway but easily accessible by car, we grabbed dinner here post-ride. Portions are huge and the beer is yummy [we shared a sampler of about 7 different beers for about $7, but agreed that the Moat Brown was the best of the bunch].
Stairway Café Located one floor above street level [hence the name] in downtown North Conway, it’s an adorable space with a vintage-y feel. I inhaled most of my eggs, bacon, and pancakes, but the best part was that they offer locally made game meat sausages [the venison was pretty amazing]. If you’re in the area and hungry for brunch, this is your place.
[Fourth and last picture taken by Chris Gagne.]

of purity and mountain goats

My junior year of high school, I lucked out and scored a trip that entailed doing mostly nothing for three days. The trip was one of a dozen or so annual cultural outings required by the international school I attended, and what appealed to most of us was that the itinerary was appropriately stark. Our cultural exposure would be mostly limited to praying under a waterfall, a Japanese method of ascetic purification. The other two days, we would be sitting on a bus or occasionally looking at things. Considering the potential for rooftop smoking and hanging out, though, the waterfall thing didn’t sound so bad at all.
I only remember two things from that trip: the first was that the guys kept calling our room until we unhooked the phone around 3 a.m., and the other was that the water was so frigid that I couldn’t feel my feet as I waited for my turn to scream a prayer under a man-made waterfall in a white kimono-like shift that, when wet, made wet t-shirt contests seem like clothed events. I didn’t particularly feel any more pure after the fact, but perhaps I was more tarnished to begin with. Or, I suppose there is always the possibility that purity for the Japanese ascetic can only come in the form of mini-waterboarding.
Yet the experience remains one of my more culturally engrossing moments, despite my teenage oblivion to most life events back then. A particularly Japanese moment, I like to tell myself. Perhaps because it is one of the few instances in which some other culture didn’t mix and mingle with the Japanese one, an event which is difficult to describe to my American friends without insisting that no, I’m really not making this up.

The purity of that experience makes it more difficult to explain, but paradoxically easier to comprehend. Because it is when cultures are melded together when understanding them requires an adjusted sense of what is normal. The differences are minute, but also that much more glaring. And it was this necessary recomposition of the habitual on the bike that kept me from putting together my IF for over a week after I landed in Tokyo. That and the knowledge of anticipated conflict: the bike would inevitably feel so right underneath me, but with nowhere to go, it would only deepen my sense of loss.
But sometimes even I can get [extremely] lucky, and a recent reader will offer to take me up a mountain, even if he stripped out the threads on his road cleats the night before. Which is why last Sunday, I got up at 5 a.m., earlier than I used to get up for my usual RSC rides, and headed out to meet Deej for a casual ride out to the Otarumi pass at Mt. Takao.

A flat ride until we hit the base of the mountain, our early start helped, but in two hours, the sun started to pound down, the heat inching towards 100F with the humidity. Riding along the Tama River, we slipped and weaved around runners and early morning cyclists, and dove into a Seven Eleven – like many others – to refill our bottles. Different from the coffee shops of Boston or the delis of NYC, but air conditioned bliss nonetheless.
A few hours later, we were at Mt. Takao, climbing. steadily Deej kept it slow [he usually TTs up the climb with a bunch of other insanely strong people], spinning in front of me while I tried not to die. My skin was acting like a towel getting actively wrung out and the only thing I can remember thinking about was the heat. And just as I was wondering whether the liquid running down my chin was drool or sweat, Deej stood up and swam up the rest of the climb.

I suppose I expected it, but my jaw dropped [this time in amazement, not exhaustion]. I dragged myself up a few long minutes later, drenched. A bit farther up, and we were at a ramen shop [complete with bike racks] where we bought a couple bottlefuls of natural spring water. Apparently the same water that was used to make the best cup of brewed coffee in Japan. And as we looked out towards the mountains beyond, Deej told me about his usual rides: up and over three mountain passes and back. A colossal 9800 feet of climbing in less than 40 miles. All on mountains low enough that you can ride them all year around.

“We’re going to turn you into a mountain goat,” Deej said, before we made the slow trek home. A few hours later, an email offered a ride next Monday – up an additional pass or two – and there was no hestitation in the answer that I replied with. Because while the elevation will mostly likely kill me [or at least compromise my self-made promise to never put a foot down on a climb], there’s one thing I do know to be true. That no matter the outcome, there is a unique audacity in diving into the unknown. A charismatic pull in plunging head first into the darkness that opens up. To conquer or stumble. To proceed or regress. To do anything but stagnate.

My version, perhaps, of [ascetic] purity.
[Thanks again, Deej!]

tokyo cruising

Did laps around the Imperial Palace today.

Sucked a few wheels, pulled a few others, and got stupidly lost on the way home. I think I'm starting to like this city...

deer flies, childbirth, and the century that wasn't

A few days ago, I walked into my aunt’s house to pick up a French press pot. Someone was vacuuming in the kitchen, but oddly, my aunt’s voice came from upstairs. She hurried down and squeezed past the mostly closed kitchen door behind which the vacuumer lurked. “Kaiko’s here, but don’t come out like that,” she said, before returning into view with both a Bodum French press pot and a Chemex.
“It’s, you know, that person,” she said to me and my mother. She was referring to, of course, her husband, my uncle. In response, my mother prepared her sympathetic face as my aunt sighed and shook her head. The game had begun.

Perhaps a uniquely Asian sport, and a particularly popular one among women over 50, my mother and my aunts play this game of spousal complaint often. The consistent nature of the complaints doesn’t seem to detract from the fun, only to add to the vigor of the match itself. No one person wins, unless, of course, someone’s spouse has done something particularly bad. This makes the sport not so much a sparring contest between the female members of my family, but more akin to competitive jabbing of an allegedly ineffective and often [though not always] absent target. And the jabbing is done with unforgiving enthusiasm; perhaps under the irrational hope that these complaints, voiced enough, might spark karma into abolishing incompetent spouses. Or, at the very least, enable them to vacuum more efficiently.
“At least you have someone willing to vacuum the house,” my mother said, throwing down the gauntlet. An invitation to include ungrateful children into the verbal exchange, my aunt gamely replied in kind: “but if Kaiko did it for you, at least she’d do it right.” Too familiar with this game, and unwilling to get sucked into choosing sides or presenting a modicum of reason into the debate, I clutched the Chemex and stared at my feet, making noncommittal guttural sounds when appropriate, waiting it out.
And though half a world away, those same actions reminded me of staring at something else – a sparklingly clean cassette that time – as I made the same somewhat noncommittal guttural sounds and waited that out, too. All 116 miles of it.

A ride that was presented in characteristically vague terms as “a century,” or “a century plus a little more,” it was my last chance to check off a triple digit ride before I left for Japan. Dave N., fully knowing this, laid a fail-proof trap, accompanying the description of the ride with phrases like “it’ll be fun!” and “if you can do 70 miles [my longest ride until two Wednesdays ago], you can do 100…and the rest is, you know, just a little bit more.” It’s true that I knew what I was getting into [to some extent], but there was a lot of voluntary blindness involved, too. When Geoff sent us the ride route, I briefly glanced at it before buying a few extra Bonk Breakers. Dave had said I would get through it. That I would “be fine.” I found faith in the fact that he had faith in me, and so we agreed to meet at Ride Studio Café on a Wednesday morning to ride to Mount Wachusett and back.
The equivalent of a charity ride, but one in which contributions came in the form of pain inflicted on the charity at hand, Dave N., Geoff, Jeremy, and I headed out on the ride on which, Dave N. clarified, I would “do fine,” but perhaps not “be fine.” The loop headed out towards Harvard before picking up the Charles River Wheelmen Climb to the Clouds century route, and included a few “gratuitous climbs” on the way back, courtesy of Geoff. Instructed to stay on Geoff’s wheel, I took an Aleve, stuffed my pockets full of food, and tried to hang on.

My naïve belief that Nagog Hill and Oak Hill were going to be the worst of it [excluding Mount Wachusett] was, simply put, stupid. “Didn’t you look at the ride route?,” Dave said, “you do know it said 8,000 feet of climbing, right?” “I don’t even know what that means,” I gasped, spinning with aching legs. Geoff mashed up the climbs in his big ring while Dave stayed behind my lagging wheel, both barely breaking a sweat. Slogging up to the visitor’s center of Mount Wachusett [we didn’t go all the way to the top, although Geoff tried] at the stunning speed of 6mph, I stared at dizzy disbelief at my sweaty forearms. I considered clipping out and stopping to say “I’m just going to lie down here and die,” but each time deferred that decision for just a little bit longer. Geoff asked if I was still alive. I made my noncommittal guttural sound.

As long as the ride was, it can only accurately be described [as Dave put it] as comparable to childbirth: a painful process but one in which all is forgotten at the end. Well, almost all. Because while I generally did fine, some higher power determined that our ride required a little more epic. So when we hit the gravel-y path through Assabet River Park, a horde of deer files was released, congregating oh-so-conveniently on our asses.

If you are a cyclist with a paint job you might sacrifice your entire epidermis and a few bones for, and also lack most bike-handling skills, the combination of gravel and flies sinking their teeth into the flesh of your backside is close to the 9th circle of Hell. Geoff accelerated, trying to lose the cloud of flies drafting off of him, and I tried to follow without eating sand, aware that should I do so, death by deer flies was certain. They stayed on us the entire way through the park, though, tattoo-ing me with unsightly red slotches all over my butt. A couple marks for the road back to Tokyo.
But I also came back with 116 miles with 7000 feet of climbing in 7.5 hours of riding under my belt, too. A few hours post-century-plus, at a celebratory get-together organized by Dave, I got something else; something as awesome as knowing I could throw down 116 miles: a necklace designed by Rob and crafted out of Seven titanium. A reminder of good friends, good rides, and accomplishments.

Hopefully with more to come…

super duper inspiration for the weekend

From the "Super Duper J.D. Ride" [3 attorneys + Dave N.] from a few days ago.

Yes, my "kid size" Coffee Oreo Frozen Yogurt from Kimball Farm was as delicious as it looks. Have a great holiday weekend, guys!

of romance novels and road rides

Recently, like most women my age who are somewhat unemployed but can cobble together a coherent sentence, I’ve entertained the idea of trying my hand at writing a romance novel [or ten]. This may be part of my continued counterintelligence operations against the parental institution, like how I am currently refusing to even linger on the idea of having children, getting married, or otherwise leading a stable life with steady income of my own. But it may also have something to do with the fact that I have a pen name picked out, a plot that can too easily turn into a series, and a willingness to watch enough porn/read enough romance novels to be able to write a sex scene in my sleep. Not that kind of sleep.
In my mental databank, I have a slew of plotlines involving sexy, alpha-male neo-pros, a few beta-male mechanics, the Spring Classics, sweaty bib shorts and chamois cream [because, of course, my novels would involve cyclists]. There are dramas involving embrocation and bad boy messengers, spectacular crashes and consequent rescues, and possiby a three-way with bi-curious podium girls. But at the end of the day, everyone would get either a diamond ring, a future spouse, endless phenomenal sex, or a similar form of guaranteed happiness.

Like J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series, these future best-selling ideas came to me randomly, between soft-pedaling to the grocery store and sipping my usual Americano at Cafe Fixe as I blankly stared out the window. The latter may have been the subtle impetus, as every Tuesday night [back then], from 5.30 in the evening, clusters of Lycra-ed cyclists would spin their way up Beacon to the Cassidy Field parking lot for the Landry’s Tavern Ride. As a modern-day damsel - but one that was not yet capable of distress on a bicycle - I sighed wistfully as I watched them, realization of speed and power still a vague concept confined in my fantasies.
Over two years later, I had a road bike, but remained the vigilent stalker of the Landry’s Tuesday night rides [which had by then turned into the Greenline Velo Wednesday night rides]. I watched the procession up Beacon Street on those Wednesday evenings, my IF safely tucked away in my apartment. Like a deeply self-conscious cross-dresser, I chose to pull out the tools of my fetishized hobby only in towns that were a safe distance from the one in which I lived. I happily rode to Lexington to get my legs ripped off early Sunday mornings but when Wednesday evenings came around, I could be found in yoga pants and a t-shirt, concealing revealing tan lines. And, you know, casually watching the group ride gather in a totally non-creepy way.

But every stalker has his/her breaking point. Though this usually manifests itself in some violent act against the stalkee, I chose to tamely come out of hiding. I slapped on some chamois cream, bibbed and zippered up and headed out toward Cassidy Field a few Wednesdays ago. If worst came to worst, I told myself, I had a cell phone, enough friends that could probaby pick up/tell me how to get home, and if need be, an excuse to sputter out between retching up my afternoon snack. In this worst case scenario, where a ride leader might be stuck caring for me, I’d explain between heaves that I was a “writer,” and hope that the implication of being mostly deskbound would relieve me of any obligation to be “athletic,” or otherwise capable of hanging onto a medium pace ride. If Bill Strickland came up, I figured splattering a little vomit on the mentioner’s shoes should be enough of a distraction.
Yes, me of so little faith and so many excuses. All over a sub-two hour ride that, to be honest, wasn’t nearly as terrifying as I’d imagined.
The ride is a 24-ish mile loop with a few fun climbs and a crap ton of descending. Everyone separated into smaller groups by speed with 3-4 Greenline Velo team members leading each group [it’s a no-drop ride in the sense that you’ll get picked up by the group behind you if you get completely dropped]. With a morning ride already under my belt that day, I stuck to the 16-19mph medium pace group and expected to just barely hang on. To, in fairy tale speak, play the role of the helplessly persecuted princess who needed saving [mostly from herself].
I didn’t realize the irony of my mostly-white IF stallion, or that I was riding it, as opposed to being captured somewhere and crying. I believed - and still do - that my legs are generally ineffectual. But when we hit our first climb, I felt a surge of uncharacteristic faith; some sort of hope that maybe not all my friends were lying to me when they said I wasn’t such a terrible climber.

Besides, when you’re on a bike and the road suddenly turns upwards, there’s not much to do but clip in and dig in. I got to the top, didn’t fall over and immediately die, require resuscitation, or otherwise embarrass myself. My lungs were in a bit of distress but not to the point of princely rescues and/or swooning. And just knowing that I could haul my weight around with a group of strangers who were probably less forgiving than my friends was pretty awesome.
No longer the classic damsel in distress, I tried not to wheel suck too much and closed gaps without someone else leading the way. Because while being helpless can be fun in that it absolves you of responsibility, it will never teach you how to exist outside fantasies of royal co-dependence. Or how to hang on to a group ride.
This realization saturated hopes of a career as a romance novelist as it slowly dawned on me: I’m not sure I will ever understand the desire to mold relationships into the ideal where happiness comes in the form of a diamond ring and offspring. Which, in romance novel terms, means my future books may not be bestselling successes.
...but hey, who said that I couldn’t do research every Wednesday night?