Sun, Fun and Triangular Calimari

It's all said and done, I am back from Lake Tahoe, with another 100-mile bike ride under my belt. Together we raised $4,915.00, just shy of the $5,000 that I wanted to raise in honor of my Uncle Ed.

(For the Johnny-come-lately set, I am taking donations through the end of the month, both online and by check.)

This time around, the "century", as they call it (because that's how long it feels when you are going up some of those hills, I think), went down a bit easier. I knew where every turn and twist in the road would be, how steep a hill was, and where the road got rough. This information did not help me hit my goal of reaching 50 mph, however. There were too many slowpokes in the way.

And this year, I was not as caught up in the excitement of it all, and stopped to smell the roses, and take a picture here and there along the way. My ride time (that doesn't count times when we stopped) was about 6 hours and 30 minutes.

This year, I had even more trouble on the hills. That may have had something to do with the four-hour uphill trek I went on with my Northern NJ brethren to some waterfall nearby. The Bosmas called it "Horsetail" falls, but no signs called it that. I took so many pictures that day that the battery died when Jessie and I finally made it up to the falls. My ability to stray off course is not exclusive to road biking apparently. We crisscrossed around the trail, so it would seem that our path was something out of Family Circus.

So we were late for the Kick Off pasta dinner the night before the race. In fact, we basically missed the whole thing. We got there in time to hear the tail end of a speech from a woman fighting leukemia, who was forced to give up her pregnancy to battle the cancer. Her words galvanized this hodgepodge of people from around the country, reminding us why we were getting up at 5am the following day to spend a waking day on a bicycle.

But we still needed dinner. On our drive up and back the main drag in Tahoe I had spotted "Vep's Villa Roma, Italian Restaurant". With the promise of piles of pasta awash in a zesty red sauce, we pushed through the door. Disappointment was near immediate. The décor was as if aliens had been to every tourist trap across the planet and used that as a template to decorate the place, and then had not changed a thing in 40 years.

There were wicker wrapped wine bottles, trellis with fake vines and even faker grapes, and red checkered table cloth, for starters. We were told the wait would be 40 minutes, at least. Swallowing down frustration, we propped ourselves at the bar and got some diet Coke, which the bartender then proceeded to tip over and spill as he was handing them to me.

Dinner was a greater culinary farce. Having ordered fried calamari, one would expect at least one of two things: the tell-tale rings, and perhaps even the tentacles. But in our platter were these acute fried triangles, about half an inch thick. I asked what they were, and the waitress called them "steaks".

Now I have seen some large squid in my time, but steaks of squid? I could only assume that these were some weird variation on the chicken McNugget, and quickly lost my appetite. The salad bar was Spartan and the soup, well, let's just say that the name didn't really clue you in on what it actually was. At some point, my hamstring cramped up, as if my body were convulsing in protest.But I got my pasta, ate as much as a could.

Not being gluttons for punishment, we skipped dessert (being so far from the East Coast, I shuddered at what butchery would become of their NY-style cheese cake). And then we headed home so I could get to bed a bit early, as our team was gathering at 5:45am for its 6:20am start.

Wine and Whining

I had the pleasure of hosting a fundraising wine tasting with the wonderful people at Prospero Winery. They took care of everything: the tour, tasting reds, whites, blends, and later on, dessert wines, not to mention the food (which was excellent), and everything went off without a hitch. We had a headcount of 20 people, netting us $500.00

A crucial part of the wine tasting was the raffle, and to say we had a ton to give away is not an exaggeration. My uncle Jim mobilized the Pleasantville Flemings into an army of raffle prize gatherers. We had books, haircuts, oil changes, pizzas, skin care products, dry cleaning, I don’t think that there was a business that we didn’t have represented at the raffle, barring the tattoo parlor, not for lack of trying from the indefatigable Uncle Jim. Thanks to their efforts and every one that was so generous buying tickets, we netted more than $1,200.

And my brother’s skills at bringing the lovable Hoser to market wine also needs its due. Ryan did a great job and Hoser Estate is a big hit. The net from Hoser sales to date: more than $750.00. For those that are still interested in getting a Hoser for their wine fridge, they are still available ($20 for a bottle, $15 a bottle if you get a case). Just let me know.

Grand total: $2,603.29

Does that get me to my goal of $5,000. Drum roll, please…No. It doesn’t. I am about $1,500 shy.

So, I have a cocktail party in Jersey City with Dawn and Eve on the 20th of May, and a date to spin in front of the Hoboken ShopRite earlier that day. And more good news: Jessie has graciously agreed to pitch in for a bake sale-type event at my hometown parish of St. Francis.

So, that’s the wine. Let’s get to the whining.

Since I had the wine tasting on Saturday, I had to do that day’s training today, by myself. 63 miles. And I wasn’t looking forward to it. Jenn G forewarned me, saying she was wiped, and she’s in shape and 10 years younger than I am.

Sunday’s weather was accommodating. The sun poked out from the clouds towards the tail end of the ride, allowing me to peel off my sweaty arm and leg warmers. But the wind was a real buzz kill. Any good hill I would get hit head on by an unrelenting gust of wind, or worse, I would cause the chain to fall off my bike. I did that three times. And when you clean your bike with the infrequency that I do, getting the chain back on is a black, smudgy, gritty mess of an endeavor. Man, I hate when I do that.

I know I’ve been dancing around the subject, and you’re all chomping at the bit, wondering “But did Eric miss a turn and get horribly lost??!” Sorry to disappoint. Apparently, my brand of idiocy can only really reach its maximum efficacy in the company of other big idiots. But I did miss a couple of turns, so you got me there. But in my defense, one was marked a “left” when it was clearly a right, one sign was really hidden and there was one turn onto “Lebanon St.” when the road’s actual name was “Stanton Mountain Rd.” But the two are so similar, an honest mistake, clearly. Or maybe a typo. Each error took me off course just a few yards, that’s my story and I am sticking to it. Nobody was there, so I can make up whatever I want. So there.

Now, when I had about 20 miles to go, I decided the coffee, two apple-cranberry-walnut health cookies and three-quarters of a bag of peanut M&Ms just wasn’t going to carry me across the finish line. That meant that the wait was over to find out just how delicious the Clifbar people had made the Iced Pumpkin Pie bar. Oh, and it was darned good.

But as I was eager to get off the bike and finish the ride, I decided to multi-task and try to open the wrapper while moving. Yeah, those Clifbar people are getting a letter from me on what a headache it is to get at their products through their plastic prisons of deliciousness. So, anyway, there I was, biking along, with both hands in a death struggle with that energy bar’s wrapper, just minding my own business. And then it happened. I turned off my computer, erasing the mileage that I was using to figure out where I was on the cue sheet, and the time and average speed, all that cool and completely useless data that I love to look at later.

But it was worse. For some reason, that computer went back to its old habit of beeping when I drop below 80 rpm. And the beeping had to be stopped. So, naturally, I started pressing all the buttons, and then tried combinations, then tried resetting the thing. And I must have, in all my button pushing, made the thing crazy, and instead of resetting, it would go to “sleep”. And so, to avoid the incessant beeping, I just shut the thing off. The beeping made me yell at it and call it nasty names, and I think I was starting to scare the joggers and people with kids walking along.

Despite the computer going beserk, I made it back to my car, 63 miles (at least I assume it was that distance, stupid computer) under my belt.

New from California: Hoser Estate

Now Available from Prospero Winery: “Hoser Estate”

(Ok, it’s actually Prospero’s Pleasantville Red, a palatable red table wine with a different label on it, but cut me some slack, making wine is pretty hard, I hear)

As part of my fund raising efforts for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society we are selling Hoser Estate. I am selling Hoser Estate in honor of my uncle Ed Fleming, retired NYPD Detective, US Navy veteran, and father of six, who passed away last year from an aggressive form of leukemia.

WHO IS HOSER? Hoser is quite possibly the craziest dog I’ve ever met. He had a penchant for escape that convicts in Alcatraz would admire. And on one particular day, Hoser, my uncle’s family dog, made one of many escape attempts – he was found by a neighbor running down the street with a cinder block in tow, which was meant to keep him in the yard.

To place an order for Hoser Estate, email me at: zdericATyahoo.com or call (914)769-6870 (Prospero Winery). In most cases, Prospero can deliver directly to your home.

Hoser Estate is $20 per bottle or $15 if you order by the case.

Beyond Tired

There’s a moment, I’ve been told, when running a marathon, that your body says “STOP” and only your will can overcome it and keep going onto the finish line. They call it The Wall.

I am not sure that bicycling has something similar, but if it does, it feels like I am hitting it and it is made of something unforgiving and very hard.

The rides are just about to cross the 50-mile mark, which takes about four hours to finish, depending on how many hills they throw at us. With such a distance, there’s no room for cutting corners, so I am forcing myself up earlier in the morning to get to the gym. No training during the week is no longer an option. Even with the training, the tiredness clings to you like wet paper, difficult to shake off.

Riding that many miles wears down a lot more than your legs. You use your shoulders, arms and back to help pull you up a hill. And your hands become clumsy and useless appendages, making it difficult to hold a pen the next day.

Besides all these aches, I have the headache of fundraising. I only have two events set up, with another three or four in the works and all that takes a lot of work and time to put together. And time is against me.

Seven weeks and counting - that’s all I’ve got. Seven weeks to get ready to ride 100 miles, and seven weeks to raise about $5,000.

So, now’s the time for me to get to the gym in the morning, and to get those fundraisers together. Now is the time.

I apologize that this isn’t funny like my other updates, but I don’t have a lot of steam in my engine right now, and there are some big hills ahead.

Walking Alone

This past Saturday, I had a scheduling problem of being double booked: A 45-mile ride and a surprise birthday party. The solution: Do the ride early and then go to the party.

It was a simple solution, sound and well-thought out, except for leaving a key factor, the Sun. Its twofold function of light and warmth doesn’t really kick in until later in the morning. This minor detail slipped my mind when I fumbled for my slippers at 6am yesterday. The error of my way began unfolding first when I glanced out the window and it was still quite dark out. (You see, most of my cold weather gear is black, head to toe and I have no reflectors on my bike, which makes me nearly invisible in poor light. Playing “invisible biker” with drowsy drivers isn’t my idea of fun. Strike One.

So, as I mentioned, 6am, groggy, dark. And I can not get my stuff together. I wanted to get out of the house fast, and on the road. But it didn’t happen. I got dressed, checked the weather (“chance of flurries, feeling like 27 degrees with the wind chill…”) and got dressed again. I couldn’t find my water bottles, I forgot my socks and then I walked out of the house without keys. Not one of my finer moments. Strike Two.

I didn’t even look at my watch to see what time it was before I got over to the Oak Street School parking lot, where we gather before each ride. As I was going early, there was no one to greet me or ride with when I started. I slipped on the rest of my gear, clipped on my cue sheet that tells me where to turn, put on my glasses, hat, helmet, wrist gaiters, and then turned on my computer. I was ready to go, and it was past 8am, and I needed to be gone by 7am. Strike Three.

I kicked off the ride and the cold quickly seeped through my clothes and into my chest and arms, and I wondered if I shouldn’t have just bagged the whole thing and just stayed in bed. Beds are warm. Beds are quiet. Mmmmm, beds. Beds, beds are good. They don’t judge you when you want to be lazy, comforting understanding beds.

But I figured if I picked up the pace a bit I would warm up in time and be OK. Sadly, in this I was correct, and I kept going. The first 10 miles are always the worst. My eyes panned down the cue sheet. The first rest stop was around mile 18, a pizza place. It’s important to have things to look forward to, especially when you are by yourself.

Something was gnawing at me, though. What pizza place was open in the morning? And when I got to Sorrento’s, it didn’t open for another two hours. I hadn’t planned on taking that long a rest, so I bit off a piece of my delicious Spiced Pumpkin Pie Clif Bar (sort of like a walnut brownie and carrot cake), sat for a few minutes and hit the road again. You tend not to linger when there’s no one to talk to but your bike. And Cannondales are terrible conversationalists.

The next rest stop was Kevin’s workplace, the town’s police station at mile 28. I did have to use the restroom, but felt weird about wandering through a police station dressed like a cross between a storm trooper from Star Wars and a ninja in a wetsuit, so I rolled on by.

A few miles down the road, with my back teeth floating, I found a spot, which can be hard to do in suburban New Jersey, with a house every three feet.

In between the rest stops, the ride itself reminded me of the Ramapo Rally (see last year’s “Rally of Pain”), lots of short hills and descents ending at stop signs where you have to come to a complete stop to make a turn, then build up momentum again as you head up a hill. Starting from a dead stop over and over again, coupled with incessant hills wears you out.

When I managed to get in a good clip, it gave me time to think.

I was out here by myself, just as my uncle Ed was as he rested night after night in his hospital bed. I wondered what he thought about when he sat there, whether he peered out the window, or wished for some one to stroll in and strike up a conversation. Mind you, my family kept a pretty sound vigil, but there must have been times when he was alone, in that room, at that hospital, away from home, away from his own bed.

When my uncle Ed was diagnosed (that's him on the left in India in 2003 above), things accelerated rapidly and for the worst. Leukemia weakens your immune system to near nothing, which could make a slight cold a lethal proposition, so visiting was never recommended. I never saw Ed while he was sick, while he was still with us. I saw him when he was gone, when the disease had taken so much from him, leaving a hollow shell and a room full of brothers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, grandchildren and friends quietly mourning his passing.

Then a stop sign would spring up, and break me out of this thought, and I’d focus on getting my speed up to keep on going. I wanted to finish in three hours, with a 15 mph pace, but I couldn’t do it. Too many hills and very little training during the week had me get back to the parking lot in just over three and a half hours, with taking very few and very brief breaks.

I have until the end of May to get my body comfortable with spending six hours on a bike, with an hour of it spent going up a long and steady ascent. And if you like reading my misadventures in getting into this sort of shape, a great way to show your appreciation and contribute to a great cause, would be to crack open that checkbook or make an online donation. Like my training, I am pretty far off in reaching my goal. But unlike my training, I can’t do it alone.

Oh, we were two and a half hours late to that party. Ooops.

Back to Old Habits

This past Saturday was a mix of breaking new ground and slipping back into old habits.

On the ‘something new’ front, I broke from my habit of trying to go as fast and hard as I can for as long as I can to just taking my time and taking it easy, not too slow and not too fast.

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And after several rides of being on the ball with sticking to the cue sheets and not missing a turn, I blew it royally on Saturday. And this ignominious defeat was a two-fer. Not only did I miss a turn by two miles, I was with a poor newbie, and this was her second ride. The gaffe took us off course by four miles, which is a lot if you aren’t used to riding, or missing turns, more to the point. Four miles to me is almost a rounding error.

But let’s get back to my misguided attempt at offering a helping hand. At the rest stop about midway through the 40-mile ride, I sipped my hot cocoa and bit off a chunk of my Pumpkin Pie flavored Clifbar. I was barely hanging on with the first group, so I waited until the next group of riders rolled in, and decided to go with them. John Bosma, his dad (Big John) and his brother were in that group, and it was entertaining to listen how they teased and dug into one another, nearly non-stop. But as we were leaving, I saw some one just rolling into the rest stop, alone.

I remembered passing her on a hill the previous weekend’s ride: Helmet crooked, seat bag attached all wrong, and going uphill a bit too slow, seemingly in the wrong gear. The rider seemed a bit of a neophyte, so I decided to hang back and ride along with her to make sure she was ok.

We rode along, and I learned her name was Jen, this was her first TNT event and her second ride, among other things. It was partly due to the conversation that I missed the left turn onto Pottersville, one of the steeper hills that our coach Kevin threw at us that day.

Now, after a while, talking away, Jen thinks we missed a turn. I check my odometer and it seemed to me that we had, and I asked what mileage she had: no odometer. Well, she was doing better than I was with the thing, until she met me, that is. At this point, I revealed my true identity: “the man who could get lost in a teacup”. And I checked the miles and told her how far we had to backtrack, and she wasn’t happy - “TWO MILES?!” It was then she realized her fate.

But she got off easy. Last year, a 45-mile ride became a painful 63, and that was 98% my fault. (See: “Street Names as Cusswords and Indefensible Stupidity”)

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When we finally made it back to the turn onto Pottersville, I made a painful realization. This was the second time I had missed this turn. I had gone about five or six miles off course on a rainy Saturday with Paul Sova last year. What can I say: I like twisty, scenic roads and hate hills.

A few miles later, Kevin caught up with us. It turned out that, because we missed that turn, we were the last of the pack. And for some strange reason, it didn’t bother me. The clouds had broken and the sun was quite warm. I left Jen with Kevin and picked up the pace a bit.

With about a mile left, my odometer was reading close to 45 miles. And I felt good about it. Of course, that was when a guy rolled up on me, maybe 10 years my senior. He’d ridden 72 miles, working on 100. I thought he meant that he was training to do a 100 miles, meaning a century ride down the road. No, he was doing all of it that day. Ego in check, I rolled into the parking lot, another ride in the bag.

In Vino Veritas

True believers, after my last blog, I came to a realization. You folks like to hear my stories, and if booze is involved, it kicks it up a notch.

I got donations totaling $150 from the "Irish Carbomb" blog, and that made me very happy. (But I am a long way from my goal, so keep 'em coming.)

Click Here to Donate to Eric's Fundraising Efforts

And I am the kind of guy that likes to share a good time. So, I have a way for you all to experience my next misadventure (without all the sweating and getting lost stuff), tip a few back and all the while helping out for a great cause.

My big plan: Wine tasting. All-day wine tasting. And it's for charity. Incredible, non?

And when will we be kicking off this wine lover's paradise? SATURDAY, APRIL 28th.

First off, my hat is off to the generous folks at Prospero Winery in Pleasantville, NY (www.prosperowinery.com), who are really opening up their place to this event. Without even asking, Michelle volunteered the winery's tasting room to the event for the entire day (11am to 6pm), and a tour may be thrown in the mix, as well. Folks will be able to sample the winery's fare right from the barrels and vats.

And I am hoping to have a commemorative label for the event (a "Chateau de Ed"?) ready by the day of the event.

While sipping on Prospero's best, there will be h'ors deuvres and other food.

There will also be raffle prizes being given away throughout the day from local merchants in the area.

Prices have yet to be nailed down, but it will likely be at around the $30 pricepoint, a bargain from every angle.

As I get more details squared away, I will get it out to you.

It's going to be a blast. See you there on the 28th!