I'm finding that I can make sense of myself more and more through a black and white lens of off or on, commitment or neglect, discipline or chaotic indifference. The middle ground of these opposing persuasions is slim and transient. I train in large volume and intensities or I do not train at all- the patient in-between of appeasing a finicky joint is not a place I sit easily. I'm inclined to clean the entire kitchen and 'dinning patio' or neglect cleaning duties altogether. For example, there was something curiously amusing about paying homage daily to our very own temple of neglect in the form of the bathroom sink; the mineral and bodily fluid deposits mapped hygienic histories of months long past. And yet down the hall, my room- a safe-haven of order and cleanliness; but how treacherous and confused the passage through that dark unqualified go-between! And now, my sporadic excessive posts stand in stark contrast to the long periods of silence. In other words, get ready for a long post.
The tour of last weekend coincided with a festival called 'La Ascension' in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. Galicia is a lot like rural Western Oregon: very lush with short hills and winding country roads, only the fields are grazed by dairy cows and the houses are almost all stone or gray stucco with red tile Spanish roofs. The coast is reminiscent of Maine lobster-towns. The bays are extremely shallow so that each tidal cycle causes massive fluctuations in their shape and depth. Fishing boats become beached temporarily, still tied up to their moorings like deserted captive whales. The tide comes in and they float to life again.
After ten hours of driving, our crew (consisting of 6 racers and Jose and I) arrived in Santiago in two team cars. Driving consisted of tailgating Jose at interchanging speeds of 160 and 110 kmh, the lower speed being observed politely whenever a radar sign was posted so as to avoid automatic camera ticketing. Our hotel was in the less attractive outskirts of the city, but it was a five star operation with nice luxury rooms and decent food, so we were more than happy. We stayed at the Puerta del Camino all three nights.
The first stage was one of the two high points of the whole adventure. I was a racer for about 30 minutes! Jose lost one of his riders to a cold just before leaving so I had to be the stand-in, riding under a false name so that Jose could collect full payment from the organizers to cover team costs. I raced on the replacement bike with size 43 shoes, toes curled inside to fit. It was just as much fun a I remember, except only better because I had DuBois at my side, trading off the chase of the myriad attacks erupting off of the front of the peleton. I like imagining the pack as a geological or planetary mass, constantly cannibalizing itself, regurgitating a vigorous lapilli from the protective warmth of an interior to the deadening coolness of its windswept exterior; Chris and I, like volcanic monitors, at attention at the mouth of the ghastly thing, latching onto the searing magma projectiles vomited up in single file spurts, drifting about in the sweet spot of the careening elastic mass.
And in a heartbeat it was over. I was feeling surprising spritely for not having trained in a week, but what got me in the end was a mechanical, of all things. Some dipwad had failed to sufficiently tighten the cassette of the rear wheel, so it came loose and then eventually I was pedaling with no resistance and 140 racers clipped past me. I asked Jose for a replacement wheel when he zoomed up in the car but he told me to get in. I figured I had better not push my luck. For all I knew, in my excitement adrenaline had masked a massive knee pain that awaited me in the lower altitudes of sub-100 bpm's. Luckily, it seemed to feel OK.
Of course, for the rest of the stage I was keen on listening-in or catching as much of a glimpse as I could of Chris to see how he was managing his job of the day, which was to follow wheels off the front and finish if he had to strain his rotator cuff holding on to motorcycles to do it. No such measures were necessary, of course. He had a good solid day and exceeded expectations, in usual DuBois style.
That night Jose and I went out together to check out the party scene in Santiago, had a few drinks together, and got back around 4.
Day 2 Jose allowed me the luxury of not coming along in the car, so that I could take the spare and drive into the city. I parked on the street and headed back into the old town center, a winding pedestrian-only maze of cobble streets, leading to the treasure of Santiago, which is the final destination of generations upon generations of religious pilgrams. The cathedral is refreshingly unique. It seemed to have a character of traditional Spanish cathedral, Buddhist temple, and Art Deco train station all rolled into one.The rest of the day I spent wandering around, eventually checking out the two museums in town which had a lot of mediocre contemporary art. The streets were full of people in hiking boots. Being in a place so full of trekkers and backpackers inspired me to want to put together a tour through Europe by bike very badly.
Day 3 was a pivotal day for the team, since 'El Ozo' had managed to get into a break the day before, catapulting himself into the over-all lead. I think Chris's stomach really must have taken a little drop when he came into the finish to hear the news. Here he was, in his second tour, just happy to be hanging on and taking some pulls or covering attacks where he could, and suddenly the responsibility of holding onto yellow comes to rest partly on his shoulders. The tactics of the day involved making sure that no dangerous rider could get a lead on Ozo. There were 3 of these dangerous riders, all three of the being from SuperFroiz. Thereason it was so team specific, as it often is, becomes evident if we explore a few hypothetical situations. If a break goes and puts time into the field, and that break does NOT contain one of the three danger riders from SuperFroiz (who were within 40 to 80 seconds of the lead), then the peleton can almost be positive that SuperFroiz will put all seven men on the front to jack up the pace and catch the break. They are really the only team strong enough to do such a thing. Thus any such break is safe in Ozo's eyes because it will be nullified by the team who has vested interested in maintaining their top twenty placings, if not giving their top three riders a chance at winning: SuperFroiz. On the other hand, if a break goes with one of their men in it, and Ozo is not, then that is a poor situation because SuperFroiz will not chase down one of their own who has a chance at taking the lead, and the liklihood that another team will be strong enough to accomplish such a feat is low.
Enter the valiant, though unexperienced, Chris DuBois. The little guy looks like a pre-pubescent child next to some of these 28 and 30 year-old men, though I must say, the video does not capture the rather stunning tone of his swollen calves we all saw pumping throughout the day. Chris and Felix and Ishmael are the pawns Jose had to play with for the day, though that doesn't mean that their tasks were not daunting. They had to cover any wheel that went off of the front if it belonged to one of the three SuperFroiz riders. That is a heavy ultimatum- these are some of the strongest guys in the bunch.
Throughout the first part of the stage, attacks came and went. Listening to the race radio, I recorded the numbers in each break, cross-referencing them with the overall classification list in order for Jose to form a strategy with the proper intelligence. Chris was near the front the bulk of the time, alert and in anticipation of a SuperFroiz threat. The first climb was roughly 5 km. Climbs are threatening because there the strength in numbers of a pack becomes greatly diminished. It becomes more of an every-man-for-himself battle, until the downhill when groups can stick together and benefit from trading pulls in the wind. At this point, at the start of the climb, I was doubtful whether Chris was going to even make it over with the front group, after all of the 'match burning' as he says that he had done in the first 25km. Chris DuBois often WAS the front on this climb. I could hardly believe it. Having the leader on our team meant that we got to be first team car, behind the referee and race director and neutral support car. So every time the group ascended a switchback I could catch a short glimpse of the lead pack. More often than not, I saw a little Green and White man on a red bike spinning up in front of or behind a big green and white man, both at the front of the group with the peleton stringing elastically out behind them. The big kid was Ishmael, a giant rider with calves as big as my thighs. Occassionally, I saw one of the danger riders at Chris's side or directly in front of Chris, going absolutley nowhere because of DuBois' keeping watch. You could tell when one of those guys would go because the group would thin out, stretching back with the strain of acceleration. DuBois never left his post. At the top of the climb, everything had stayed together.
It gave me a strange sensation of mixed emotions, watching Chris work up there all day. On the one hand, I wanted to be racing so badly, I wanted to be doing the kind of battling that the team was doing. More than anything, I wanted to be doing what I came back here for, which was to be able to hammer alongside my cycling soulmate. In the end, these races are so hard and so painful and trying, that the real reward comes from having shared it with someone who knows how much it has hurt, how extraordinary an accomplishment carrying out your first successful day of work in the peleton can be. Even thinking back on the race yourself, your memory does injustice to the savage experience of it first hand. There is something encouraging and deeply affirming in having a friend there to be in awe of one another, to give recognition. I wanted to be there chasing down wheels. But on the other hand, if I had to live vicariously through anyone, I'm glad it was DuBois. It was so fun to watch the race, knowing that even in his focused mindset, he was excited. He was excited because he was pealing back a cover of himself, realizing the kind of natural talent he has. Shit, he was doing this race on three weeks of real training, after having recovered from that previous knee injury.
Another really inspiring moment was when he was almost almost almost off the back of the group over a one or two km climb. I yelled at him from he car, because we were just that close, and he surged just barely enough over the crest of the climb to catch the tail end of the charging peleton. This was around kilometer 80. Not ten minutes later, he was back up front, at the order of Jose, helping out Communitat guys chase down a break. I could hardly believe it when I looked out the window and saw the field strung out with Chris right up there rotating through the chase engine. His race was only supposed to last until kilometer 90, and that is exactly how he timed it. He totally used up everything he had until the second to last major climb, and then shot out the back empty. That is when you see him climbing alone in the video, looking ragged.
Now, enough praises for 'dish towel' (douch + tool =douch tool =dish towel). A new direction. I am pleased to announce that as of now, I am planing on catching a flight from Paris to St. Martin, a tiny Caribbean island east of Puerto Rico. There I will meet up with a British skipper who is sailing across the Atlantic to England. I am hoping to learn as much as possible and get started on my way towards one day having my own boat to live on, at least for a time. The first step is always the hardest, and I think I've already taken it. To remain positive, I keep in the forefront a certain conviction of mine: To work your way into a world (like the world of cycling) and to do so with limited financial resources, persistence and willingness to 'give your all' eventually pays off. Ultimately the partnerships you form with people when you demonstrate a mutually aligned determination will always be more important and fulfilling than paying your way into something. It is always a sour and scary paso primero but it seems to me, or at least I like to think that if you strip yourself of the complications of a strictly monetary, officially sanctioned and structured approach to things, all that is left is the burning core of you, the part that drops what is necessary to follow a dream or hope or idea. That nakedness is more recognizable and valuable than anything else, once the right person comes along to see it.
Having received the invitation through email rather diminishes the weight of what I mean to say above, but I wanted to convey the ideas that I have been mulling over in preparation from this blind adventure. What a twist of fate it was! I recieved the email from the Skipper less than 8 hours before I was supposed to catch an arranged ride down to the coast to start a period of nomadic bumming around the docks; an email I have been waiting for for two months now.
Chris just left to ride down to Alicante where he is meeting Emma for their day at the beach. I realized sadly as he left that the moment captured the end of an era. You know when the definable end of a period of your life just sneaks up on you without you knowing it, and afterwards you can't imagine how you never fully came to grips with it before it hit you? I suppose all the important moments have this quality about them. It's been a hard but in some ways fulfilling past four months here. I am going to miss the Chris Chris and Sam Family triumvirate, and the feel about the place with each of us depending on each other for our sanity. I will miss the black humor and quote board. In fact, in honor of the quote board, why don't I take a trip down nostalgia lane with you and share some of the new additons from past weeks:
AR, upon examination of his knot-themed sheets: "Wait. Do my sheets have instructions on how to tie a noose?"
"Dude. You look pretty emaciated. You look like fucking Jesus."
CD:"Woah, Sam you should come look at this."
AR, from the other room:"Not if you ever want to be hungry again."
"So I offered a Clif Bar to one of my teammates and thought I was going to relive the scene from Return of the Jedi when Leia meets the E-woks and offers them chewing gum."
Duffy: "No no, but the thing about racing is that is really fucks up my training."
"I've already decided how I am going to kill you."
"Do I get to hear?"
"No...But it involves biking...and a cliff...and C-4."
As Chris walked awkwardly down the stairs of our apartment in clicking bike shoes and bike in hand he said with a smirk, "Well, Sampson, this is the part where I ride off into the sunset."
Tres Dias de Ascencion
