Midaregami

This last Sunday, I rode my bike 100 miles up and down the southern and leeward coast of O’ahu. It was a blast, insofar as 3 hours of intense exertion followed by 4 of raw pain can be considered fun.

Oh, I’ll be doing it again, and soon.

Highlights:

• I had heard that there was a significant contingent of riders who fly over from Japan specifically to ride the event. I was unprepared for the spectacle of 4000 people, at least 2/3 of whom were Japanese, lining up for the ride.

• There were a lot of very nice bikes out there. Good ol’ Buster the Wonder Bike is no slouch—but once you’ve seen your third or fourth $9000 Cervélo/Kestrel/Pinarello superbike, you start regarding the $5000 Treks as mere dross.

• Speaking of Buster and of bicycles, I did a pretty solid round of maintenance on Saturday: New tires (cha-ching!), disassembled and cleaned chainrings and sprockets, cleaned and lubed chain, cleaned, greased, and tightened bottom bracket, minor wheel truing—the point is, somehow I got my bike in a state of tune I can only describe as “perfect.” It was nearly silent on the road. I had to laugh at the hyper-pricey carbon bikes with misadjusted derailleurs and creaking bottom brackets.

• Fellow messengers K. and Rob (who I don’t feel uncomfortable mentioning by name because he’s the the second-fastest messenger in the world) decided to crash the ride by going unregistered. Rob wore a ridiculous skintight time-trial suit, and K. wore an unbuttoned purple aloha shirt, skateboarding helmet, and motocross goggles, and rode his beat-up single-speed. Their buddy C. also rode a single-speed, along with a ridiculous ancient helmet and shirt and tie. What’s important to understand is that these three guys are three of the fastest riders on the island, and they dressed specifically to snub the road geeks. They passed me about 40 miles out, and they were hauling.

• Roughly 60 miles in, just past the turnaround point, I started hurting. Shortly thereafter I discovered an entirely new level of pain and suffering, but vowed not to give in. The final major climb saw lots of riders getting off and pushing; I dropped into my granny gear, but so help me, I rode up and down that hill.

• I wrote “Nihongo OK” (Japanese OK) on my jersey number, and had a couple of very pleasant conversations with out-of-town riders as a result.

• Muscle soreness on Monday was negligible, but my right knee was not amused. It voiced its complaint, loudly, every time I attempted to use stairs.

• I’m thinking of doing 70 miles or so this weekend. Just for yuks. I need a bike computer.

• Final time: about 7 hours, an hour more than I’d hoped. That’s okay. There’s always next year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 1:57 am and is filed under Journal, The Messenger Beat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.