Acquiring satellites

The sun is up and I’ve got 50ml of caffelatex in each of my tubulars.  There is no way I’m going to call Janet from the side of the road today.  Last week’s ride to Canon City ended with a flat (and the failure of the spare) just at the top of the last climb with twenty five miles of downhill left and a smart tailwind. 

Today we’re riding north to Castle Rock.  It’s cold, but my gloves aren’t freezing to the bars like last week.  The sun is out and we have a slight tailwind as Byron and I roll to Palmer Lake.  A quick latte and my hands are thawed.  A left on highway 105 and we’re over the rise of the Palmer Divide and my favorite Colorado road stretches out sixteen miles in a gentle downhill.  A turn at Wolfensberger road and we’re climbing four miles up the side of a small mesa.  Byron is sixty pounds lighter than me, and he moves away, a foot here and there, until he crests a couple of minutes ahead.  There’s one other cyclist going our direction and I catch her right before the road descends to Castle Rock.  A good morning to you!

Another latte at Daz Bog.  We’ve gone fifty five miles and I feel pretty good.  Just fifty miles until home.  The wind has picked up.  I look down at the Garmin and we’re going just thirteen miles an hour.  A tap on the computer… 250-300 watts.  That’s a lot.  I can maintain about 300 for an hour, my threshold wattage.  An hour is only thirteen miles away.  I move into Byron’s draft and feel slightly guilty.

Riding into the wind is an emptying experience.  First I lose my expectations about the ride, how fast it will be, what time I’ll get home, how much it will or won’t hurt.  Then, slowly, I lose most of my other thoughts as well, until all that’s left is the white noise of the wind in my ears.  My thought for a few minutes is limited to, ‘What noise do my helmet straps make when I tilt my head?  Hmm, that’s interesting.’ or ‘How close can I get to the northeast quadrant of Byron without hitting his bike?’

Life is simple in the wind.

At two o’clock we return to Palmer Lake feeling much different.  I realize we likely won’t make it back to Manitou with the sun still up and put some of the layers I shed a few hours before when the sun was high and we had a tailwind.  The sun was behind Pikes Peak as passed the Great Monstrosity and descended into Colorado Springs.  ‘Hey, Byron, we just passed one hundred miles.’  A fist bump and I climb the hill back to the house.