One From the Vault: A Quarter Past Cooked

How a hundred mile bicycle ride can take the fight out of a guy

Author’s note: This is another story from the vault. I published this on Medium on June 18th, 2020. It received zero comments and zero claps, so I expect it will be new to everyone!

This isn’t the type of story that would receive a Boost. It’s more in the style of what I used to submit to small magazines.

Enjoy!

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Pulling in to the start of the 2016 “Beat the Dark” century ride, my friend Mike hit me with his favorite quote: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,” he said, recalling Roosevelt with excitement and accuracy in the soft light of a crisp autumn morning. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”

Mike paused to reflect. “I like to remember that line when I sign up for some crazy event and realize I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.”

I knew what he meant, and on that particular morning I felt I might be in over my head myself.

It was November 7th, the day after daylight savings time had ended, and we were about to attempt a century ride on the Gandy Dancer trail. In the early days of November, the darkness already starts to creep up on you, but the end of daylight savings enables the evening to pounce like a predator. As a result, this Gandy century is appropriately called “Beat the Dark.”

The Gandy is a non-motorized limestone trail stretching from St. Croix Falls to Danbury WI. As long as the ground is dry, your tires roll with relative ease, and the prospect of riding the whole thing on the first short day of the year normally wouldn’t seem too daunting. But my family had been in the throes of a nasty cold which set upon us the day after receiving our flu shots. Everyone assures me the onset of illness is not related to the shot, but it seems to happen every year.

Fall is roller skiing season, but the bicycle never completely goes away. I am one of those fortunate people who rides daily to pick up his kids from school, and I often milk the twenty minute loop into an hour. Experience has taught me that century rides are a lot more fun if you have a solid fifty mile training day under your belt within a week of the attempt, but my flu shot induced cold kept me under the sheets and out of the saddle. The best laid plans of mice and men…

I took solace in the fact that the ride was an out and back, and was hoping to bail early for a 60 to 70 mile day, but I’d been suckered into riding full centuries before.

“If I’m going to get up that early,” my friend Dan said, “I’m going to want to get to Danbury.”

Dan had been doubtful about the ride at first, saying that a hundred miles on the Gandy sounded like a special kind of torture.

“Naw,” I replied, “you’ll be riding it with me, that will make it awesome.”

Dan remained skeptical, but then he concluded that we could stop for beer along the way and he warmed up to the idea.

A crowd of forty or so people pulled into the parking lot of the Polk County Information center, and we soon mounted our rides and headed off on our way. Every group ride has a mechanical issue at mile 2.73, and after that was dealt with the group stretched out forward and back.

I was at the back.

There’s something about the early morning light on a fall day which can’t be replicated by dreams or imagination. Most of the leaves were on the ground, but they still had color, and as the wheels pushed them aside, patches of brilliant emerald green moss were revealed upon the trail. The light alternated between warm intensity and cold shadow, and from the very first pedal strokes, it was clear a century ride was the perfect way to embrace this abnormally warm autumn day.

A century ride is best attempted without a schedule. If you have an event, or an obligation in the evening, it’s difficult to perceive anything more than the ever ticking clock that lurks at the edge of your consciousness. It’s much preferable to commit yourself fully to the ride and forget about all time before and after. That’s the objective anyway, but the demands of other things are an intrusion upon any activity.

Though we didn’t know it, we had a tail wind early on which lured us into a false confidence. The miles ticked off pleasantly, and there wasn’t much talk of turning back at mile thirty or thirty-five. A fifty degree morning turned into a seventy degree afternoon, and most of our stops consisted of stripping off unnecessary layers of clothing.

The day was glorious, but a sliver of trepidation began to creep into my thoughts. I found myself recalling Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air,” the novel about the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. The objective of our day was to “Beat the Dark,” so, to us, the darkness was a menace. Furthermore, the darkness would be cold and that cold would be accompanied by exhaustion. We all wished to avoid needless suffering, though, in many cases, suffering is a necessary component of what we strive to achieve.

In “Into Thin Air” Krakauer makes the summit of Everest at a reasonable time, and then realizes trouble might be brewing as he descends and meets people along the way who are well-behind schedule and stubbornly continuing on. Even when the weather seems nice, there is cause for concern when there is a long way to go.

After a quick meal at Danbury, we swung our machines back towards St. Croix and found ourselves confronted by a wall of wind. All at once, every one of the fifty miles we’d already traversed began to hang heavy on our legs. We formed a silent pace line and pushed on.

The other riders began to drop off, either pulling away, or meeting friends who had come to get them. By the time we had reached Siren, it was down to Dan and I.

“Time for that beer,” Dan said.

I glanced at my watch. The darkness was starting to smirk in the distance, but I knew I wouldn’t make it five more miles without that beer.

“Pour House?”

“Absolutely.”

We pulled in, split a burger, had a beer, and watched the Vikings and Lions battle for a few series.

Back on the bikes it is a long, gradual climb from Siren to Frederic. The wind would come and go, and by now we were fielding calls from the wives.

“Yes, we’re OK…sorry, we have to go, we’re trying to ‘beat the dark.’”

At Frederic, hunger compelled us to stop again. The cruel irony of riding is that you need to stuff yourself, but it’s difficult to stuff yourself and then pedal. We scoured the Holiday for the items that contained the greatest amount of calories and caffeine in the smallest amount of volume. I settled on chocolate milk and those artificial, sugar-coated, petroleum based gummy orange slices.

Dan looked at them with disgust.

“When the apocalypse has come,” he said, “and your body has rotted to a skeleton, and the fabric of your clothing has turned to ash, and your bones have turned to dust, the remnants of those god-awful orange slices will still persist!”

“Sure you don’t want one?” I replied.

With every stop in a century ride, it becomes more difficult to remount and continue. Miles 70 to 90 are the hardest because you’ve come far and you still have a long way to go.

The shadows were lengthening as we passed through Luck, and Milltown. The sun had set by the time we reached Centuria, and the light was fading fast, but we’d started to recuperate at the prospect of imminent beer. With around four miles to go, Dan turned on his light, only to reveal a raccoon staring at us wildly from the middle of the trail.

The last time we’d ridden the final stretch into St. Croix, one of our friends had flipped his machine and broken his collarbone. Instead of trading reflections in a warm bar with a cold brew, we’d ended up nursing ice water in a hospital waiting room.

“Let’s go slow on these downhills,” Dan said. “We can’t be robbed again.”

There were still a few cars in the parking lot when we arrived. I tilted my odometer into the glare of a porch light so I could read the distance of the day.

“Hey Dan,” I said, “my odometer says 99.6.”

Dan didn’t miss a beat.

“Round up!”

A quick change into some dry clothes and we marched into the bar to watch the Packers and eat some chicken wings. Before going in, I glanced up at the evening sky and noticed a thin sliver of light down by the tree line. I pointed it out to Dan.

“Does that mean we ‘Beat the Dark?’”

“Faces marred by dust and sweat?” he replied.

“Check.”

“Day spent in a worthy cause?” he continued.

“Check.”

“I’d say Roosevelt wouldn’t deny us our credit,” he concluded, “let’s go get that beer.”