Twelve Hours to Tahoe

There’s one thing I am sure of, one of those life lesson type deals that I learned about myself on this sojourn to Reno – I am pretty sure that I hate traveling. Don’t get me wrong, I like seeing new places, and learning new things and all that, but the act of getting there, well, I’d rather step on the wrong side of a rake.

Now Team in Training is a fantastic organization and is exceptionally good at motivating a broad swath of people to do extraordinary things like raise a ton of money and bike/run/swim (or some combination therein) a distance that goes far beyond anything enjoyable or fun.

But I won’t be nominating them up for “Travel Agent of the Year”, either.

I think the only way getting to Reno could have taken any longer was if I scooted there on my rear end carrying every one’s luggage on my shoulders. We left for the airport from Jersey City at 5am (the plane boarded at 7:15am) and we didn’t arrive in Reno until what felt like the following week.

Addendum: I got about 15 to 30 minutes of sleep the night before we left for Tahoe. We got home Thursday night at 11pm and had to finish packing and the pedals that I had put back on my mountain bike had to come off so I could get them back on “Orange Lightning” that had left for Reno on the 24th by truck (and probably got there faster). And I got one pedal off and spent the rest of the night and morning using every tool I had in my house and wizened brain cell in my head to pry off the other.

Eventually I found this old combo tool from my mountain biking bag that was nice and thin and got into that little gap that you need to get in there to get pedals on and off bikes. And I figured out the “Righty-Tighty, Lefty Loosy” rule was backwards for bike pedals (otherwise they’d spin right off when you pedaled).

Never have I felt such a sense of accomplishment for completing such a minor and simple task than unscrewing a pedal. Beginning a long trip exhausted and sleep-deprived is about as fun as going to the Dentist’s after downing an entire box of Oreos with a bag of Gummi Bears as a chaser.

There’s a caveat here: there really aren’t direct flights to Reno as it’s the ugly step sister to Los Vegas, so you are left with few options on how to get there: Fly to Chicago and then go to Reno or what we did – Fly over Reno to San Francisco, wait there for three hours for a connecting flight then fly backwards to Reno.

We landed in Reno at 2pm.

The moment you step into the Reno airport you instantly understand that you are most definitely in the ugly sister city to Los Vegas. There are slot machines every 15 yards, a bit dated and sad, much like the diminutive airport itself. The finest feature of Reno International was that the toilets had that cool self-flushing light beam thing. There was a permanent poster on the wall that specifically welcomed bowlers to Reno. When you are a town that targets marketing directly at the professional bowling community on a permanent basis, well, do I really need to insert a joke in here? We’ve all seen the movie Kingpin, haven’t we?

And we had to wait about an hour for the shuttle bus to leave for our hotel. Several folks thought better of this, and rented cars. Well, they missed a hootenanny of a time, let me tell you. I took my camera phone and documented every she-mullet within picture-snapping distance. Just drop me a line and I’ll message you photo essay on the ladies of Reno supporting the “business in the front, party in the back” lifestyle.

We spent an hour on that bus driven by a local that had clearly lost his mind several years ago, but somehow managed to hang onto his commercial driver’s license. It was the kind of bus that when you sat down, you had that feeling that you’d get if you were in one of those horror-slasher movies and you just realized that you were totally screwed.

On this ride, we wound around the big lake, but we couldn’t really see the stunning vistas of the blue upon blue lake or the mountains that cradled the horizon, or the huge pines and rock formations. The bus windows were coated with those ads that seem to wrap around every bus like a candy bar wrapper, making everything seem sort of fuzzy. While the bus driver did his impression of Dale Earnhardt using a touring bus, some one told us that the hill we were careening down was Spooner, the same hill-laden road we would spend more than an hour biking up a few days later.

Adjusting for the time difference, that makes the door to door travel time more than 12 hours. You can nearly fly to India in that time. I know because I have. Twelve hours and you’re still in the same country. I think if you take 12 hours to get somewhere, there better be some folks on the other end waiting for you in grass skirts who are eager to hand you Mai-Tais and adorn you with flower necklaces.

Twelve hours, 12 straight hours. I don’t think I would like to do anything fun for 12 hours straight, let alone something as tedious and mind-numbingly dull as sitting in a aluminum cigar and getting handed Diet Pepsis by artificially chipper attendants every regimented 20 minutes.

In 12 hours , assuming I kept the same pace, I could have done the 100-mile ride twice and have started my third lap.

One more thing that is also dragging on is my fundraising. I have just a bit more than $500 left to raise, so please take the time to head over to that "Donate to Eric's Fundraiser" link on the upper right.

The 100 Miles of Tahoe

For me to encapsulate the entire weekend in one go would be just too darned long, so this one is going to be all about the ride itself.

Our team was set to roll at 6:30AM, which meant getting up at 4am to make extra sure the bike, all the gear, the food, everything was ready. I got up at 2am, as I never really got adjusted to Nevada time.

We were warned the night before that the elevators would be jammed with people coming down for the ride, so I was in the lobby by 4:15am, and noshing on a very weak excuse for a bagel and coffee some 1o minutes later. You have to eat that much ahead, so it's properly digested by the start time.

Before we left, Dwight advised us to invest in arm and leg warmers as it would be quite cool in the morning. Once again, he was dead on - it was 38 degrees and those warmers came in handy as my teeth were chattering away. (that's me in the picture to the right, just starting out.)

With the altitude difference (Tahoe is 6,000 feet above sea level and New York, well, isn't), you had to pace yourself to avoid "lung burn". Any impromptu sprinting, a favorite pasttime of mine as Becky incessantly chides me for, led to feverish panting (my inhaler kept it from becoming any more than that). So, a 22 mph pace back home was more like a 18 mph in the mountains of Nevada.

The course itself was simple enough: A 70-mile loop around the lake, with a 30-mile spur out to a place called Truckie, to make it an even 100 miles. After getting out of the strip of hotels and fast food joints, we started to hit the hills, followed by the switchbacks that led to Emerld Bay.

It was abundantly clear very early on that we had been very well trained and that many others were not given the same training and advice. At the very first incline, folks were already walking their bikes. And there were bikes of all shapes and sizes. I saw a tandem mountain bike with knobby tires at one point - that's the equivalent of using a Jeep Wrangler with mud tires in a NASCAR race. And a few true masochists did the thing on unicyles.

One "tradition" of the Tahoe ride is that teams festoon their helmets with decorations akin to their hometown. The Idahoans had little baked potatoes ensconced in tin foil atop their heads. We came across the South Jersey people who curiously had a tomato and a small purple toilet next to one another. My initial presumption was that they were promoting proper colon health by a diet of vegetables.

But one of the Southerners explained that they were tired of people crapping all over Jersey for how bad it was when it actually is full of farms (hence the tomato) and other amenities like beaches. But my thought was, if you didn't want folks to crap on your home state, why then would you provide a recepticle to do so, and put it on top of your head, no less?

Our team affixed NJ license plates to the backs of our helmets and bike seats. Some were funny, and read "NO BRAKES", others had nicknames like "EVEINATOR" and others had small essays on why they were riding or just a name of who they were dedicating the ride to support. In hindsight, perhaps a deceased Mafia guy riddled with bullets strapped to our helmets might have nailed home our Northern New Jerseyness, or perhaps an enourmous oil refining tank.

Part of the "fun" of a 100-mile ride is a religious attention to pain. An ache at mile 5 can become a bear at mile 60. And as my bike is no fancy-dancy form-fitted $5,000 super fiber 15-lb. paragon of aerodynamics, it gives me a few aches. My back, from the 13-hour journey out to Nevada then a very poor night's sleep, was quite angry with me the day before the race.

To be on the safe side on race day Sunday, I tossed two Advil down with my 4am coffee. Around 11am, followed it up with another two pills (I tore them from their wrapper, popped them in my mouth all while passing two riders - how's that for riding skils?). And at the Truckie rest stop, Nancy offered me a ziplock bag smeared with a colorless, odorless goo. I hiked an eyebrow and asked what I was supposed to do with it. She told me it was a numbing gel, so I rubbed a bit on my lower back, just in case. She then announced that it had other uses outside of cycling to allow some one to "last longer". Enough said.

Besides spending a gratuitous amount of every weekend for the past five months on a bicycle seat, Dwight & Co. beat into our stubborn heads: Safety, safety, safety. It was clear that many were not so lucky to have such excellent tutors. With 3,600 people going more 20 to 30 miles per hour packed on the same road, bad things can, and did happen.

One unfortunate woman had to be airlifted by helicopter due to the extensive head trauma she suffered on a relatively flat stretch of shade covered pavement. You see, it's very easy to let your concentration lapse, and just the touch of another's back wheel to your front wheel will send you down to the asphalt, and hard. By the end of the race, I must have passed three other similar accidents.

Some time after that, our little group of seven speedsters (Peter, GPS Eric, Paul, Nancy & Becky, Paul, one of the Dons and myself) attracted an unwelcome guest to our paceline. This bearded gentleman decided that he would form his own little line right off the hub of my back tire - very dangerous.

He was freaking me out, and I told him so, in no uncertain terms to either get in the pace line or get away from me. He gave me a look like I just insulted his mother and then proceeded to dangle off of Becky's wheel. A moment later, she sprinted to the front of our line just to get away from him.

And even with our training, Team Northern NJ did not go unscathed. On the way back from Truckie, Don, now known as "Bleeding Don", rubbed the back tire of the bike of GPS Eric and went down while barking out an F-bomb.

One second we were all in a cozy pace line cruising at 22 mph, the next we're prodding Don's helmet to see where he had landed. Don had a few healthy scrapes, including a particularly gruesome injury on his hip that resembled a smooshed PB&J. And when he showed off that particular war wound, we all got to see a bit of "Little Don" as well.

But Don's noggin was intact (or as intact as it was before we started), and we were all glad for that.

About five minutes after that, Paul blew out his back tube on a pointy rock, and our Group of 7 was torn into pieces. At the next rest stop, with an amazing view of the lake, Bleeding Don and I hung back and leisurely enjoyed our lunches as the others hit the road. What lay ahead was Spooner.

Spooner was a name that had been branded into us, instilling fear and utter dread - the Darth Vader of hills. Eight miles of climbing, up and up and up. My 22-mph pace, ground down to 7 and the sun seared down on us. At 7 mph, that meant spending just over an hour going up hill.

Bissell and Allen and all the hills in New Jersey were all smaller siblings of Spooner. The road twisted and bent, dipped and climbed. Any momentum built up on a zippy downhill patch was bled away on subsequent steep climb, and I cratered the road with f-bombs.

At the tippiest top of Spooner was the last rest stop at about mile 82. Somewhere along the way, I lost Bleeding Don in a bottleneck and he later passed me in that long climb up Spooner. Being by myself, I stayed at the rest stop long enough to fill up my waterbottles with something called "Revenge Sport". They also had mini popsickles, but it was no fun flying solo and my legs were tightening up, so I skipped the pops and hopped back on what GPS Eric calls "Orange Lightning".

What should have been my last chance to hit 50 mph proved to be a wrestling match for my handle bars with a gust of wind that had old Orange shuddering. In my top gear and peddling my heart out, I could only muster about 35 mph. (The best I did all day was 43, after the first switchback.)

Now, I had read in one of the myriad emails from our coaches incorrectly that while the course was labelled a 100-mile course, it was actually 108. So in the 90s, I was holding back thinking that I had another 10 to go. Yes, I was wrong again and that rectangular "Finish" sign caught me by surprise at mile 100.

As I made the final left turn into the Finish area, crowds on either side cheered, whooped and maniacally shook cowbells to greet me, just as they had for all of us throughout the long ride. That night we were told that together, we'd raised about $8 million. I am really proud of what we accomplished, not so much in the ride, but in the potential good that may come from reaching out to all our friends, family and many strangers.

Now, with 40-odd people on our team, some joining up just before Tahoe like Josh and the "Three Guys from Wayne", it was tough to get to know every one. Folks that rode at a certain speed tended to ride together and thus little cliques formed, and there were little teams within the team.

But those superficialities dissolved as Lori, who was never seen without a smile though she finished last at every ride, came through the avenue of cheers. Dwight came in with her and you could see every mile she pumped through for nearly 12 hours in her eyes. We enveloped her with applause and Dwight and Lori hugged and that's when I truly understood the "Team" in Team In Training.

God bless each of you for helping me get close to my goal. And while I made it through the hills of Tahoe, I have just a bit further to go in my fundraising. So, if you haven't yet, there's a link on the upper right that will take you to my fundraising page that can handle online donations.

Thanks.

T-Minus...What Time is it?

Gentlemen and ladies – after these many months of consistent and uninterrupted idiocy that I hope has entertained you, we have nearly reached the end of your protagonist’s training (I still need to raise another $638, so the fundraising will go on).

Tomorrow, Jessie and I will be off to scenic Lake Tahoe, NV. And a day or so later (I really have to read that iternerary some time soon) I will get on that orange Cannondale and stay on it through hill and valley, from morning until afternoon to ride the 108 miles that I have trained and pledged to do for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Here at the end of training, I can say that I have the distinct pleasure in getting to know a spectacular group of people who have brought so much energy and enthusiasm to this effort to make the days when my feet were numb with cold and soaked to the bone almost bearable. Some are survivors of the maladies themselves, others are relatives and friends and other still just want to help a good cause, and this certainly qualifies.

Besides the 40 or so folks (and I wish I knew them all a bit better), the group was guided by the wise and unwavering hand of our coaches and mentors. I confess that I knew nothing about road biking before I started. In fact, I had not been on a road bike since Junior High. My first ride, I had to stop other participants to ask them how the shifters worked. But Hilarie, Dwight, Hans and all the rest always put me back on the path.

The mentors like Diana were also welcome beacons of encouragement and support since I got involved back in December (it seems so much longer). Their help has been immeasurable in this long climb to get ready for Tahoe.

To keep up the cardio, I have spent the last few mornings on my mountain bike, which has been gathering dust in my shed. Having spent so much time on the road bike, this knobby tired behemoth felt like climbing aboard a rhino after so many months atop a thoroughbred. (For the curious, the fastest I’ve been able to go is 44 mph, and I intend to top that in Tahoe.)

So, soon the reason for all the training will be realized. Though I imagine somewhere at mile 50 of so at 6,000 feet above sea level, I will wish I had trained harder. But it’s too late for that talk.

What’s not too late – Making a donation. Yes, if you’ve been reading along and have been meaning to pitch in, now is an excellent time to make good on that pledge. (there's a link off to the right)

I’ve given up nearly every weekend since the winter and put up with cold and heat and sunburn, rashes and chafing and the kind of soreness that I'd just as soon not discuss. I’ve logged likely 2,000 miles to get ready for this. I am ready. All I need is for a few more of you to make a few clicks of the mouse so I can meet my goal.

Thanks and wish me luck!