The Comeback Trail

We're going to play a little game called "find the bike or cyclist in this picture". I didn't plan on it but there were so many cyclists training on this road I just went with it. There's one in about every other shot.

Click on the photos to enlarge and they'll be easier to see.

The subtitle of this blog is: "It's All Terrifying and it's All Beautiful". Never before have I witnessed a scene that exemplified that sentiment so well as what I am about to show you. As many of you know the neighborhoods around East and West Mountain Road in Santa Barbara were laid waste by the Tea Fire. That road is the way to the infamous "beyond category" 3,998 ft alt. hill climb simply known as "Gibraltar Road" and therefore a favorite haunt of cyclists including myself.


I watched as the 300 ft flames climbed into the sky that night and roared, fast, ferocious and deadly down the hillsides, whipped by 70 mph winds. I prayed for the people in those houses. "Run! Get out!" I whispered under my breath. When the fires had all been put out I made a point to ride up to that area on the days that followed, my goal being this:

What had happened to the art collector with the sculpture garden and the cyclist fashioned into a mailbox? I had to know. It took over a week to get there. Edison crews pulled the barricades back a block at a time as they replaced the torched telephone poles.

Here he is today:

As I rode past driveways I knew well I saw instead the houses that high hedgerows had hidden, now reduced to smoking ruins. The air was still oppressive, the smell of smoke filling my nostrils. I rode slower and slower and slower... I couldn't take my eyes off the blackened smoldering hillsides, the trees, the mailboxes, the twisted metal and wire of all the things that days before had been an everyday part of someone's home.

No time to get the mail.

This bike tried to run from the fire by climbing a tree.

I wasn't alone. There were other cyclists and motorists and joggers. We all had the same look on our faces. The way people look at a wake for a child. All I could think about was how horrific that night must have been, to be trapped in one of these canyons. I could see how the hungry fire had fingered through the creek beds like a thief, torching the trees from underneath, curling up the embankments to devour everything. The power had gone out shortly after the fire had started. No light to gather your belongings, children, pets. No street lamps to show a way through the thick smoke. The few narrow roads out must have been chaos. I have never been filled with such sorrow simply looking at a landscape. On the first trip I couldn't take any photos. I would raise my camera and slowly lower it back down and turn it off. The camera couldn't see the way it felt. I slogged back the way I came and didn't pick up my pedal stroke until my path was greener and I was beyond the burn zone.

I resolved to return and document, document, document. When I did I began to see such beauty. Cast-iron black trees against blue sky and chocolate earth. A thousand shades of umber, sienna and rust. Then on the last trip... GREEN! Like a fresh splash of cool life on the eyeballs, NATURE was coming back. And that made it even more beautiful. I wish I was more of a photographer with a proper camera and lenses because I can't hope to do it justice. My friend Carson Blume, cycling photographer, is sick this week otherwise I would have got him up here. I hope you get the idea anyway.

Green

Remember Christo? The artist who wrapped an island in pink plastic? I know it's hard to see but this is an entire hillside wrapped in burlap. It looks so surreal up close and it's BIG.

More burlap hill
(see tiny cyclist?)

A sculpture I could not see before because it was beyond the gate, obscured by trees.

Kind of proud of my calves these days. They're not massive or anything but I've always had trouble growing them and for me they are huge. Thanks for reading and Enjoy your rides!

Psychic Gifts

It's always thrilling when a gift we have secretly wished for magically appears under the tree or on a birthday, bestowed by a thoughtful friend. Even more rare and dear is the gift a friend thought to give you before you were aware you wanted it.

Such is the case with my new "The Cyclist's Training Diary" by Velopress (with an introduction by Joe Friel).

My heart leapt with glee as I peeled back the paper to see cycling helmets in the picture on the back cover. It was a BIKE GIFT! I gasped when I turned it over. A training diary! I didn't recognize the kit but that even looked like my fave, Robbie McEwen on the cover (now know it's Tim Johnson).

You see, what is so remarkable is that the friends who gave it aren't into cycling. I'm usually the only one in our circle who talks about it. You know the feeling, you're rattling on about Disco and Astana vs. Chipotle while eyes glaze over and you think 'oh jeez, shut up already, no one cares but you...' But no, this meant that they had been listening, listening to how important it was to me. Those are real friends.

When I set big goals I normally keep them to myself and prepare quietly until I'm reasonably certain I can make them happen - then I tell everybody. But this fall I decided that I would race in 2008. This goal scared me. I've participated in endurance events where the only challenge was to raise money and finish alive. I've never tried to compete and be fast. This would be a BIG stretch. So as a counter measure I started telling everybody because I knew it would prevent me from backing out.

I was so excited as I began leafing through the crisp pages. Then I started seeing things that confused me. It spoke of setting goals for hours per week, measuring distance in kilometers and logging my maximum heart rate... I always set training goals in miles and distance - 50 miles on the flat on Monday, hills on Tuesday, 60 flat on Wednesday...If my heart was beating and I didn't feel like I was gonna throw up or die, I was doing great!

I closed it sharply, put it down literally on the floor and circled it warily as if it were a porcupine with PMS. I was suddenly struck by how different a world I was about to enter into. Just who in the hell did I think I was? How presumptuous of me! How NAIVE! I took a few deep breaths and picked up the book again, sat down. It says: '500-700 annual hours of training for Masters 35+...' Yeah, OK, not so bad, I've done that in a year before. Another deep breath. I guess this is real.

I started making friends with it and found it has spaces for every possible notation. There are grids in the back if you want to graph your progress and charts to note how you've modified your bike as needed. It doesn't just say 'log your heart rate' it tells you how and what you should be looking for. In fact it's not just a logbook it's full of tips that although not the same as a live coach take a lot of the mystery out of developing a comprehensive training program for yourself. Most importantly it introduced a notion that hadn't occurred to me before: tracking my progress in detail after the ride, as opposed to just making a check mark on a list that, 'Yeah I did my fifty miles and I feel pretty good. Time for a trough of lasagna!'

I have a feeling I'm going to grow to love this little diary. And what's really awesome is that every time I look at it I see my friends who cared so much about me and my goals that they searched for something that would help me achieve them. Now when I ride I roll with an invisible posse of friends who believe in me and are already proud of me just for getting out there. COOL!

For those friends I represent spandex and toeclip cycling. I won't let them down.

SUBLIME

My neighbor's 12-year-old son made me a sandcastle menorah for Christmas. Apparently, there is a way of baking the sand in the oven with baking soda that turns it into clay. He had it all decorated with shells. It sounds funny, I know, but we lit the whole thing and with candlelight glowing on the sand it was really quite beautiful.

I can see the menorah candles burning down as I sit on the patio in a tank top and shorts, spread out on two deck chairs munching on maple bacon and drinking Green Machine. Breakfast part deux. On the patio side the other neighbor's child has obviously received a Billy Joel songbook of sheet music. An accomplished pianist, she is ripping through the highlights of the Turnstiles album, a personal favorite, such as Summer Highland Falls and Miami 2017. The kid is really GOOD!

Moreover it gives me a cozy feeling. These days when I say "I'm going home for the holidays" I mean my uncle's place on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He's a concert pianist. By the time a jet-lagged Southern Californian wakes up in New York it's damn near noon and my uncle has started practicing. He usually warms up with jazz standards and oldies from the fifties before launching into Franz Liszt. Closing my eyes I soak in the warmth of the sun and the melodic sound of live ivory. The clear winter sunlight is glinting off the blue water of the marsh and the dense eucalyptus and pines on Torrey Pines Hill look soft as green velvet.

Ahhh contentment. Peace. Is this not what Christmas Day is about? To be at peace with all and HAPPY with what simple pleasures are provided?

Life is GOOD today and I am LUCKY.

My cousins are playing tennis together in Brooklyn, it seems for now the sun is shining there too. Another friend informed me he had already ridden his bike a hundred miles today - in 4 hours! Stud. I know I should get out there too. It's criminal to waste this gorgeous day while my north-eastern brethren and sistren are shivering and riding trainers in their garages to stay in shape...

But, Dayanu! - 'It is enough' what I have right now.

'Thank you for sending the beautiful blue pigments. I cannot pay you because the Pope has not paid me. I am penniless, therefore I cannot be robbed."

-Michelangelo, from a letter to his brother Buonarroto.

Ok. I'll go for a walk to the beach.

There, Tim. I bloggeth therefore I am (self absorbed. tee hee hee).