BMX Basics
The accidental tourist.
As long-time "BMX Basics" readers know, I pride myself on having a mildly
clever introduction to each of my columns. In the interest of brevity,
I'm going to break with tradition
here and simply say that: I rode my Klein Pulse from Columbus, Ohio, to
Portsmouth, Ohio on Saturday, May 8, a distance of 111 miles including a
nasty little detour at the end. Having done that, I rode back to Columbus
the following day. My successful completion of this tour proves, to me at
least, that any BMX rider with a little bit of motivation and pain tolerance
can do the same. To further confuse you and to add a bit of John Updike
flavor to this worthless narrative, most of the story will be told in
present tense. The occasionally amusing story of my weekend on the TOSRV (Tour of The
Scioto River Valley) is told below. To prepare my Klein for a tour, I replaced
the off-road tires with IRC Metro 26x1.50 semi-slicks. I also added a Delta
pannier rack and a set of panniers. Panniers are big touring bags. I figured
everyone would have them. I was wrong, but that's another subject and will
be considered below. I pulled my cranks apart and re-greased them. I
rebuilt my front hub. I installed new brake pads. I re-indexed my shifters.
I figured that doing all this would prevent me fron having any mechanical
problems on the tour. I was wrong... you get the idea. One thing I did
not do was install clipless pedals. I have a pair of SPDs in addition to
the Look Sports on my road bike, but I decided I would make this ride
the way I usually go places---on a set of cages. If I
could make 216 miles on cages, there's no reason you can't make it
around a track with them---right?Friday Afternoon: Prepping The Bike
I decided to take my mountain bike on this tour, as kind of a halfway
point between my road bike and my BMX bikes. I also figured that I would
see a lot of other MTBs on the tour. I was wrong, but that's another subject
and will be considered below.Friday Night: Let's Go To A Concert The Night Before My 200-Something-Mile Tour
Everything I've ever read about touring indicates that you should get plenty of sleep the night before the event, but when one of my favorite
band in the whole world, Bela Fleck and the
Flecktones, is playing, how can I resist? Plus, the concert was only 110 miles away, in Cincinnati! Now, some of you may wonder why anyone would drive that far to see any
concert, but I've been waiting two years to see the Flecktones play (for the
fifth time) and I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass by.
Mrs. Boswell and I made it down to the "Jammin' on Main" street festival literally just in time to see Bela and his crew start playing. They started at 10:20 and quit at 11:50 to make the Cincinnati midnight curfew.
As a die-hard Flecktones fan, I must say that I was upset by their play list, which consisted entirely of songs from the new album and songs that will probably appear on their next album. I was absolutely heartbroken that they chose "Cheeseballs in Cowtown" for an encore instead of their traditional ending song, "The Sinister Minister." Worse than all of that, though, was the idiot who was standing in front of me. You know that stupid Saturday Night Live skit where the two guys go to the club and bob their heads back and forth? This was one of those guys! This head-bobber was about 6'4", which made it impossible for me to see over him. A normal concertgoer would have accepted this in silence, but not Jim Boswell. I moved to his left and, as I have instructed you to do in a corner, slipped my elbow under his. I used turn-style leverage to ensure that every time he bobbed his head he got my elbow in his stomach. After fifty minutes of this he got the point and stopped bouncing up and down like a mental patient. You see? BMX Basics advice applies to more than just BMX.I don't know downtown Cincinnati very well, so I got lost leaving the concert. By the time I hit Route 71, it was past one in the morning. I finally made it into bed some time after 3:30. The last thing I remember seeing was the alarm, which was set for 6:30. "What a mistake," I mumbled, and fell asleep.
I wake bright and happy three hours later and head downtown for the start of the tour. I stop at Tim Horton's and buy two doughnuts, which I put in my panniers. Sounds like an odd detail to include, eh? I wonder if these doughnuts will come into play later. When I make it downtown, it's obvious that most of the 4,000 riders on this tour have already left. I take a look at my tour instructions. "Only superbly fit riders should consider leaving after 8:00am." Hmm... I check the Discovery's clock. 8:05. Superbly fit-- that's me. After all, I've finished several BMX races and one twenty-five-mile road ride in the past three months, and if that's not quite the 400 cumulative miles, including one fast seventy-five-mile ride, that the tour brochure recommended, what does that matter? I came in third in my 25-29 Cruiser main at a local race two weeks ago! I'm ready to rip this up! Woo-hoo! Let me grab my trusty Camelbak hydration system... Darn it, I left it at home. Well, at least I've got one water bottle. That'll hold me... I hope.
The TOSRV folks require a helmet, so I slap my Pro-Tec trail-jumping lid on and start wheelying down the street. My "BMX Superstar" shirt, courtesy of Colin Stiles, flaps unaerodynamically in the breeze. Many of the tour support people are pointing to me and laughing. I hear one shaved-leg type say "He'll never make it," as I pass the enormous sponsor tents. Reminds me of the guy who told Han Solo, "Your Tauntaun will freeze to death before you reach the first marker." Not this Tauntaun, pal. I pat my Klein, which grunts reassuringly, just like a Tauntaun. No, wait... that's the cranks making that noise.
"Do you need a tube?" I ask.
"No," he replies, looking down at his front wheel, but his rear tire is obviously flat.
"Your tire is flat," I say. He doesn't respond. "Listen, friend, I have a spare tube. Do you need it or not? It's fine with me if you don't." He stares at his handlebars.
"I need it," he says. We stop and I give him a tube. What is it about these roadies and MTB types? This kid had 180 miles to go with a flat tire, but he was too proud to admit that he needed help. It's another reminder to me why I quit road riding eleven years ago and returned to BMX. He's on his way now, but my margin of error is gone. I have one spare tube and almost two hundred miles ahead of me, and I know what that kid knew when I first spoke to him---the roadie creed is, "Don't help." If I need a second tube, I'll be on my own.
"This is a serious rear-wheel hop," I reply. Is it ever. It's so serious it half-knocks my panniers off. Oh well.
I take a half-hour nap at the rest station just south of Chilicothe and fill up on water. I don't notice the "Water is not drinkable" sign. That's okay. Tonight, when I'm in the bathroom for an hour, I'll figure out what it probably said.Now the headwinds and the hills start. The hills are so steep that I have to pull over after nearly every one and tighten my cranks, which are flexing right off the spindle from having to pull 23 pounds of Klein, 45 pounds of rack and gear, and 210 pounds of Boswell up these hideous grades. When we get to the top of the hills, the headwinds hit. I'm down onto my middle chainring and I'm still passing people. A lot of riders are walking. At every parking lot, there is somebody loading a bike onto a car. I stop briefly at a SuperAmerica in the town of Waverly and buy three containers of Gatorade, most of which I spit back up by Mile 85. I still haven't really spoken to anybody. This is something I haveresolved to do alone.
I've been pushing myself at the maximum possible spin for a long time now, and my lack of sleep is starting to show. I hear bikes behind me and turn, but the road is empty. I hear someone say, "This is some hill," and I nod in agreement. As I pedal faster, I pass literally hundreds of riders. I say to each one of them, "This is some hill." We're on a big hill, after all. They look back in amazement. Some of them tell me that we are riding on flat ground, that there is no hill. Others look back at their friends and laugh. The hell with them. I'm passing everyone. Once in a while I spit up a load of Gatorade and ham from the rest stop sandwich forty miles back. The key is to turn your head to the right when you do it, so you don't spray another rider. I know I should stop and call Mrs. Boswell, but I know that if I stop I won't get back on the bike. I'm so close, and I'm flying. Won't stop now.
The streets and areas I am passing all seem to be named something-"Run." There's Dry Run Road, Trail Run Road, and, believe it or not, Boswell Run Road! I search in vain for "Kessel Run Road," because, as you may know, the Klein Pulse is the bike that did the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs. "She's fast enough for you, old man," I mutter, causing the forty-something guy on the tandem next to me to give me an awfully odd look.
I pass a sign that says "West Portsmouth" and whoop with joy. Almost there! How far away can the non-West Portsmouth be? My map is lost in my bag somewhere, so I really don't know. I stop to call Mrs. Boswell. "I think I'm almost there," I say. "It looks good. Have to go." I'd thought that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to get back on the bike, but in fact I can't stay away from it. It's raining now. There's a sign that says "TOSRV detour". The riders I pass are confused and angry. "Ought to be there by now," one older man screams. He's on a high-tech recumbent bike with an integrated GPS.
"How many miles?" I ask, having no computer of my own. He looks away and doesn't answer. The roadie creed. Don't help.
The detour takes us out of the rain and onto a freeway. I pass groups of people walking their bikes. Up ahead, an ambulance has pulled over. There's a bike on a kickstand and a man sprawled out on the street. I pass a group of riders that is "breaking away" from a lone older woman. She puffs and spits on her handlebars. "Wait," she calls, panting. "Don't leave me. We're almost there." I would slow down myself and stay with her for a while, just out of courtesy and a desire to improve the image of BMX, but I have long since stopped controlling my feet, which move on their own, and there is no stopping them.I follow a tandem off the freeway and into the town square. This is the end! I did it! I ride up to a line of people waiting to use the porta-potties and bust a huge no-footed endo. Nobody has anything nice to say, but so what? There are hundreds of people milling around, most of them somewhere near a tent giving out free beer. I don't drink, so instead I walk my bike across the street and order a large Domino's with pepperoni. When it comes, I return to the town square, sit on the ground, and eat most of it. Every muscle in my non-supremely fit body really hurts.
Everyone on TOSRV is assigned sleeping space of some type. For me, "space" is one sleeping bag's worth of floor in a downtown elementary school. I sit and read for a while, but the atmosphere of this old building is uncomfortably close to that of a jail and I am driven outside.
I find myself walking through a Civil War-era cemetery in downtown Portsmouth. I catch myself chatting with the various tombstones. I try to explain this tour to them, and BMX, and cycling in general. Most of them fail to respond. We were a profoundly more serious country a hundred and some years ago. Approximately half of the gravestones belong to people who didn't live to be a frivolous twenty- seven-year-old, as I have. Only in this modern era do we have time and effort for stupid things like two-hundred-mile bicycle tours to nowhere, the Internet, Deore XT components, and English trucks that cost more than a single-family home. For all of the above, and for many other things in my life, I am profoundly grateful.
Two small problems in the morning. The first one is that I have spent an hour on the potty. The second one is that when I try to remove myself from said potty, my quads refuse to cooperate. After a thankfully unobserved crawl across the bathroom floor, I manage to stand and mount the mighty Klein for the three-mile ride to the so-called "starting point." At no point during this ride do I shift to the large chainring.
All the "uphills" I was on yesterday are now revealed to have been mild downhills, which I now get to climb. I seem to be getting stronger as I ride, which is good. I spend about ten miles talking to an older roadie about his Mazda Miata and the surprising (to him, at least) fact that it seems to get cold inside said Miata during the winter. Before I know it, I'm at the Waverly rest stop. The wonderful folks at Bike Nashbar give me a free water bottle, perhaps in recognition of the four hundred dollars I spent there preparing for this misadventure. Free swag... cool. I grab a banana and sit down at the top of a large, grassy hill, right in front of a group of roadies. Uh-oh, the (wet) grass is a little slippery. Faced with the choice between letting go of my new free water bottles and banana and slipping fifty feet rump-first down a hill, I decide to hold onto the bottle and banana. Miraculously, I don't break any bones during the long slide, and even eat half a bite of the aforementioned banana while I'm sliding. Good deal. Time to hit the road.
I know what you're thinking. What happened in the eighty miles between 15 and 95? I was hoping to skip it, being a modest individual, but since you ask, the truth is that I put my head down and covered some serious ground with three different roadie pacelines, taking an occasional "pull" at the head of the line. I more or less spun my legs off. Although I was painful to keep the spin up, I discovered that I could ignore the pain if I took one hand off the bars and flicked myself in the nose repeatedly. This works so well that I intend to use it to ignore all sorts of things in the future.
Back to Mile 95. I pull into the Grove City rest stop to fill my empty water bottles and to call Mrs. Boswell, since she will have to drive into downtown Columbus to meet me. I spot a water hose and fill my bottles with it. The heat has been geniunely oppressive for the past two hours, so I take my Pro-Tec off and spray my head with some cool water. I hear a scream. "He's spraying," one roadie yells. "Watch it!" whines another. "You're getting us all wet!" is the wisdom offered by yet another spandex spud.
"Sorry," I say, and smile.
"Try to be more careful, wouldja?" whines a late-twenties male roadie, hysterically pointing to water spots on his Trek jersey. "Now we're all wet."
"Try not to let the water melt your panties, you..." I respond, and I use a word that I don't like to share with "BMX Basics" readers, since some of you are not yet of voting age. Let's just all forget I said it, okay? Great.
The preceding incident was yet another reminder to me why I don't do this sort of thing very much any more. Only in road cycling do people get that upset about getting wet on an eighty-degree day. I have no sympathy for them, insofar as I have seen many people endure much worse suffering. Such as the people in Kosovo, for instance, and also people who have to wear suits from "The Men's Wearhouse."
I ditch my final paceline group and sprint into downtown Columbus. As I make my triumphant entry into the reception area, I throw my hands in the air like Greg LeMond winning his third Tour de France. I did it! 216 miles in two days. More importantly, unless I completely missed someone, I am by far the first mountain bike doofus to cross the line, which makes me pretty cool, at least in my own over-tired mind. (The attentive reader might point out at this point that I was riding slicks. I was not the only MTB rider on slicks; in fact, most of the people dumb enough to choose a mountain bike were smart enough to ditch the knobbies.) I spend the afternoon, and the next couple of days, eating like a pig.
I did it. So what? Well, I pride myself (if that is the right term) on being an average rider who pays an above-average amount of attention to the way BMX works. If I can complete a ride like this, then chances are you can as well. I hear all the time from roadies and MTB riders that BMX does not create fit riders, that we are no good outside the trails and the tracks. Riders like Tinker Juarez and Mike King have already blown that theory into the weeds, but I don't mind beating this particular dead horse a little. I completed a difficult ride, in a competitive time, with no more training than a couple of BMX races and a little bit of commuting to work.
Will I do it again? Definitely. The only question is how. I might polish up my crappy old road bike and go for a spot in the front of the pack, or I might put the pedals back on my 20" and do it that way. Anything's possible.
The above statement holds true for you, too. I know that you have some goal you're a little afraid of. It might be something like completing a long road tour, but more likely it's clearing a set of doubles, moving up to Expert, or rehabilitating from an injury. I think you can do it. Sure, I'm on one side of this computer and you're on the other, but if you are a bright, motivated rider there is very little limit to what you can do with the proper approach.
When I was a younger rider I really struggled with the fact that nobody, including me, really believed I would accomplish anything in the sport. It has taken me fifteen years, and a variety of stupid stunts like the one detailed above, to talk myself out of that mindset. Do yourself a favor---talk yourself out of it now. Switch this box off and go ride a little. Do it now, before I start yapping again about my big tour, I'm so tough, blah, blah, blah. Switch it off, I tell you! OFF!