Bike Tribes

by Mike Magnuson

  So why not give it a try?

  I guess I should apologize for my lack of objectivity. Nevertheless, my question—why not give it a try?—is something you will frequently hear from ’crossers, because ’crossers tend to proselytize constantly in an attempt to convert people from another form of bike racing (or from no bike racing at all ) to cyclocross. That’s the discipline’s vibe: We’re doing this, and it’s really cool! Come out and try it!

  Consequently, ’cross is growing at a phenomenal rate in the United States, and among the many miracles it accomplishes is taking hard-core roadies out of their element and forcing them to participate in a mellow, encouraging form of racing. In other words, cyclocross impels roadies, who race ’cross in large numbers, to behave like mountain bikers.

  See, in cyclocross, owing to the course and the conditions and the skill levels of the riders (this goes beyond fitness and into bike handling), the race field is strung out almost from the beginning of the race, meaning there is no peloton, no working together, no drafting (well, maybe there’s a little), and what results for everybody is basically a solitary effort with other people around, sort of like a groovier, mellower, no-swimming version of triathlon except contested on a messy, twisty course, with lots of dismounts and basically no hope of victory!

  As with the top end of mountain bike racing, the top end of cyclocross is serious and competitive, and there are world-class athletes trying to whale the tar out of each other on the courses week in and week out during the season. But for most of the people involved in ’cross, the event is all about the experience of racing—tough and slow—for 35th place out of a field of 45. Like Vince Lombardi once said, “You have to win the war with the man in front of you.” And that’s what happens in ’cross: There’s somebody in front of you and somebody behind you, and in the end, all that matters is how you competed against those people. It’s fun. It’s humbling. It’s a way for people to have fellowship. And on Halloween, the ’crossers race in costume!

  the Rando: ADAM

  Expression is a combination of 1,000-yard stare, lifelong determination, and crusty wiseacre with something to say.

  Panniers holding extra tubes, extra tires, an extra chain, spare cable, spare batteries for the lights, multiple CO2 cartridges for tire inflation, three ham sandwiches, six ClifBars, one container of Pringles, extra socks, extra shorts, extra jersey, a rain jacket, arm warmers, leg warmers, and two tubes of Bengay.

  Handlebar bag holding maps, wallet, and emergency contacts, on which he has listed himself.

  THE LEGEND OF RANDO

  Adam is 62 years old and pedaling steadily down the road, even more steadily than he did 30 years ago, when he was at the top of his racing form, which means that maybe he’s at the top of his racing form now?

  He’s not riding as fast as he used to, this is true, but he can ride longer by factors of hundreds.

  There’s nobody else on a bike near him right now, at least not that he can see, and the only way you could tell he’s participating in an event is by the number pinned on the back of his jersey. His bike setup—huge saddlebag, map case on the handlebar, mirror on his helmet—gives off a decidedly old-man-out-for-a-joyride impression, but at Adam’s age, he doesn’t give a damn what impression he gives; he can do the talking with his legs. He’s three-quarters of the way through his final qualifying event for the Paris-Brest-Paris event, a 1200-K self-supported half-race/ half-self-test that is held every 4 years. This qualifying event is 600-K, and he has 40 hours to complete it. He will finish well under 40 hours, too, and this includes sleeping 6 hours in a hotel last night!

  Up ahead, he sees a gas station/convenience store—seems like it has miraculously appeared in the curve of the road—and he panics. Is this the checkpoint on the route? Does he have to stop at this store, or is it the next one? But it’s all fine. He sees a sign: “Randonnée Checkpoint.” That means he’s on course and on the way toward tall cotton.

  He rolls into the lot, leans his bike against the convenience store wall, and removes his helmet and his gloves, which he chuckles about because it proves his mind is still alert: He read in Bicycling magazine once upon a time that a cyclist should always remove helmet and gloves before entering a place of business. He still remembers that article, and he’s been riding his bike for more than 30 hours. This bodes well for his fitness.

  When he enters the store, the wave of air-conditioning is so strong he feels like he has jumped into a cold mountain spring, and he shivers.

  He is cheerful anyway and approaches the cash register. He digs out his Randonnée card from his jersey pocket and presents it happily to the rather substantial woman behind the counter.

  “I’m with the Randonnée,” he says and smiles. “Will you punch my card, please?”

  “Not till you take a shower, hon,” she says, and winks.

  Adam likes this. He’s not too old to flirt with a big young girl with tattoos and a nose ring. And you tell him all his miles on the bike aren’t worth it? He keeps conversation on the up-and-up, though. He asks, “A lot of riders come through already?”

  “Since my shift started,” she says, “there’s been about 10 of you. So how many miles are you riding?”

  “Six hundred kilometers.”

  “How many miles is that?”

  “Just shy of 375.”

  “That would hurt my butt so bad it might fall off.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think,” Adam says. “After a while, you can’t feel anything at all.”

  “Maybe I should give it a try.” She gives her gum a couple of ferocious chews and smiles.

  Adam wants to tell her he’s been riding bikes his whole life—used to be a fast road racer, used to be a cross-country touring rider, and now he’s a randonneur—and that without cycling, his life would have no meaning whatsoever. He wants to say that here he is, in his sixties, still fit and still strong and still going after it, whatever it is, and if she were to start riding bikes seriously right now, she would have such a great future. But Adam’s not a cycling priest. What she does with her life is her business, not his.

  So instead, Adam buys an almond Snickers and some Gatorade and thanks the woman so much for punching his card.

  She asks, “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “My name,” Adam says, “is Rando.” Then he winks at her and goes back outside and gets on his bike.

  The Randonneur

  First, you need to digest the name randonneur and figure out what it means.

  A randonneur is a person who competes in Randonnées, and a randonneur cannot participate in a Randonnée without first competing in a prerequisite series of brevets (pronounced brew-vays).

  You are confused? This is understandable. But if you meet a randonneur in person, please don’t mention your ignorance of the randonneuring pursuit. A randonneur, you see, is a cyclist who rides incredibly long distances without the support of a crew. The classic North American Randonnée is the annual Boston-Montreal-Boston (currently on hiatus for logistical reasons), 1,200 kilometers in length, and riders have to finish this in 90 hours. The most famous Randonnée in the world is Paris-Brest-Paris, also 1200-K. This was really the first major race in the history of bicycle racing, first run in 1891, and would probably have gone on to be the most famous bicycle race in the world had not a newspaper come up with the idea for the Tour de France and promoted Tour de France more effectively.

  To enter a Randonnée, in any case, a person needs to participate in a series of four brevets, distances of 200, 300, 400, and 600 kilometers, and these must be completed within prescribed time limits before a person can toe the line at the Randonnée. Key to this process is that you have to be certified as completing these brevets in the same calendar year as the Randonnée in question. Is this tough? Are you freaked out by this whole idea? Or, like me, do you process the number and think, Yeah, I would like to do that?

  So the process is complicated, but it’s not nearly as complex as the sheer willp
ower, tenacity, and brute endurance required of the randonneurs themselves, who do this not because they want to beat one another but because they want to see what’s in themselves, what limits they have mentally and physically. All cyclists—from the greatest pros to the meekest beginners—owe respect to the randonneurs.

  the Touring Cyclists: JIM and LEANN

  Stuff spread out on table, signifying home is anywhere you can make it feel like home.

  Steel bike with panniers and handlebar pack and fenders: The old school is still the best school.

  THE HAPPY WANDERERS

  Jim and LeAnn—schoolteachers by trade and in their early thirties with no children—have traveled huge distances on their bikes in the last few years.

  One summer, they bike-packed all the way across the United States, from San Francisco to Philadelphia. Another summer, they rode the entire Continental Divide Trail north to south. For part of another summer, they rode around Lake Superior. The rest of the time, they’re out touring basically every weekend for at least one overnight and for a few nights longer than that, if possible. They love touring, the whole process, packing their gear in their bob trailers and taking out a map and making a route and making an adventure of whatever they may encounter along the way. Touring, they like to say, is a way to travel into a life.

  This Sunday morning, they’re awake on the second day of a 3-day leg-loosener tour, having spent last night in this picnic shelter in this small-town park. They had been aiming for the big state park that’s about 20 miles from here but had to abort the mission when a huge thunderstorm blew up from out of nowhere. They rode out the storm in this shelter, but once the rain stopped, night had fallen, too dark to get back on the bikes, so they decided to stay.

  Now they’re sitting at the shelter’s picnic table and drinking coffee they brewed on their MSR stove, peering at the map and getting their minds around where they’re going to ride today.

  LeAnn says, “We can easily make it to this town here—that’s 60 miles maybe?”

  “At least,” Jim says. “We can go longer than that if you want.”

  A squad car pulls up to the shelter and comes to a cautious stop, and a portly officer steps out and walks slowly their way.

  LeAnn says, “Morning, officer. Beautiful day!” She usually talks first. She can’t help it. She’s a cheery, outgoing person.

  Jim chimes in, too, because he’s damned cheerful, too. “It’s a regular postcard out this morning!”

  The officer is pasty-skinned and seems a bit distracted, as if an invisible 20-pound anvil of misery rests on the top of his head. He asks, “Where you from?”

  LeAnn explains that they’re from not too far away and that this is a short bike tour for them but they love to tour for weeks and weeks if they have the opportunity to do so. She mentions how they rode across the United States one summer and how much they enjoyed that and how if the officer ever got the urge to ride across the country, he should go for it because it’s such a powerful experience.

  The officer listens carefully and doesn’t seem amused. “So you have everything you need, right here on your bicycles?”

  Jim rises and shows the officer their gear: the bob trailer, the cook stove, the groovy camping-style espresso maker, and so on.

  The officer soaks it in and asks, “What do you do when the weather’s bad?”

  “Last night?” LeAnn says. “We prayed that we would make it through the storm alive!”

  Jim says, “Oh my gosh, that was a rough one.”

  “Found this shelter in the nick of time, too,” LeAnn says.

  The officer furrows his brow and rests his hands on his hips, his right hand near his sidearm. “Then you stayed the night here?”

  Jim says, “Didn’t have another choice.”

  The officer says, “For your information, we have an ordinance against camping in the municipal parks.”

  LeAnn explains the situation with the state park, the 20 miles, and how by the time the rain stopped and the wind died down, night had set in and no way could they have safely kept pushing on in the dark. “Definitely no other choice, officer,” she says.

  Jim starts to say something, but the officer lifts a hand to indicate he’s heard enough. The officer gives Jim and LeAnn each a hard, soul-searching stare and succeeds in scaring the crap out of both of them.

  Finally, the officer says, “Seems like no harm’s been done. Maybe in the future, you can have better contingency plans for bad weather.”

  Jim says, “Yes, sir.”

  LeAnn says, “Yes, sir.”

  The officer excuses himself and says good-bye and walks slowly back to the squad car. He backs out and drives away.

  When he’s out of sight, LeAnn grabs Jim’s hand and says, “Holy shit! I thought we were gonna get arrested.”

  “Totally,” Jim says, “and did you see his hand near his gun? What was he going to do? Shoot us for riding out a storm in his little park?”

  “Just when you think you’ve seen everything,” LeAnn says.

  A few weeks later, they have friends over for dinner, and after a few bottles of wine, LeAnn and Jim tell the story with Jim acting out the part of the cop. Their friends laugh so hard they have tears in their eyes because it’s one of the funniest stories they’ve ever heard.

  “That’s why we love touring,” LeAnn says to her guests. “You never know what amazing story you’ll ride into next.”

  The Touring Cyclist

  Purity is what purity does.

  A person has a bike, some panniers or a bob trailer, plus the desire to learn exactly what the word yonder means. To ride across the United States! To ride the entire Continental Divide or around Lake Superior or from Minneapolis to New Orleans—because why? Because why not? Because touring is an epic way to take a vacation. To tour is to explore, and to explore—for touring riders and maybe for all cyclists—is to discover the true essence of the sport of cycling, because exploring is one of the reasons we ride bicycles in the first place. Bicycles transcend transportation from place to place. They are a way to transport between states of mind.

  The touring cyclist, therefore, is the guru of cycling, the person to whom a trip on two wheels is more than a sport. A touring cyclist is an adventurer. In a sense, the touring cyclist is at once a loner, a person who tucks inside the mind and rides 80 miles into a headwind in South Dakota and a person who enjoys the company of strangers during stops in the day and stops for the nights. A touring cyclist is also the most resourceful of all cyclists, because you never know what will happen on the road or trail far from home and far from the comfort of the local bike shop.

  Think about this: Who has not seen a touring cyclist, fully loaded with panniers or a bob, passing through town, and not wanted to ask, “Hey, where you riding from? Where you headed?” The touring cyclist is used to these questions, too, and is handy with the answers. The touring cyclist will never complain to noncycling strangers, which means they are unique in all of the sport of cycling, because, at least to others, they have nothing but good things to say.

  the Commuter: MICHELLE

  Bell. Fun to ring when she rides by her friends.

  Happy expression. This isn’t transportation; this is fun!

  THE COMMUTERS

  Michelle does indeed own an automobile.

  She likes to make that perfectly clear to people, that if she wants to drive somewhere, she can and will and regularly does. She drives to the mall, for example, or drives to the movies with her friends or home to her parents at least 1 weekend a month. So when you see her riding her bike on the way to campus, let’s just say she believes bike commuting is the quickest way to get to class and back home. Her apartment is about a mile and half from campus. If she were to drive this distance and find a place to park and then walk all the way to the building where she needs to be, it would take twice the time it takes to ride to school and lock her bike in a rack and go to class.

  She’s riding her hybrid to class now
and trying to enjoy the ride instead of thinking about the class because it’s a tough class that she hates: Statistics 420: Multiple Regression Analysis, which sounds like a class on serial killers but isn’t. She’s not riding fast and not working up the slightest sweat and merely enjoying the wind in her face and the sunshine and the fresh air.

  She stops now at a red light and puts her feet on the asphalt and looks around and sees a police car driving by with the cop inside, a man about the age of her dad. She waves at the officer, and the officer waves back.

  When the light turns green and she rolls through the intersection, she feels a presence next to her and turns her eyes to the left. There’s a good-looking guy on a mountain bike riding just off her left shoulder! He seems to be about her age—22 years old—a clean-cut guy, rugged jaw. He’s wearing a helmet, too, which signifies to Michelle that he’s responsible about riding his bicycle.

  She takes a risk and speaks to him.

  “Nice day,” she says.

  “That it is,” he says and pulls up next to her and rides alongside. “You always wave to cops?”

  Michelle laughs, or is it a giggle? This guy was really paying attention! She says, “My mom told me to wave at policemen when I was a little girl, and now that I’m a grown woman, I’m still waving!”

  “Makes sense,” the guy says, “if you say so.”

  He’s riding with a book bag on his back, so Michelle naturally assumes he’s a student.