tiny victories

It’s been a weird road season.

I was off to a certainly less-than-auspicious start. Pro/1/2 pack fill, but I was making what felt like huge steps in unlearning Cat 3 tactics & replacing them with those I had been gleaning from my race-savvy new teammates. The support & encouragement that I felt from these guys was incredible; I never once felt as if I didn’t belong. Killington Stage Race was a disappointment due to two ill-timed mechanicals, but for the first time this season, I felt great.

Then I hurt my collarbone on my commuter bike.

Then I started running to get back into form, which various joints protested pretty heavily.

So here I am, about two months past KSR. I am feeling mostly healed, mostly positive about things, but it’s hard to get back into the mindset of the week-in, week-out competitive athlete. This coming Sunday marks my return to the NE p/1/2 peloton, and I’m all nerves..

When all is said & done, though: I love bicycle racing with all of my heart & can’t wait for those early, hectic weekends to become reflex again.

So I’ve been hiding bursts of week-long chronic pain for the past fifteen years. Save for those with whom I’ve been closest, sharing love or four walls or both, I’ve kept it to myself. I knew it to be irrational that I never got this taken care of, but: My major phobia is - as self-sabotaging as it sounds - the dentist. Let alone the idea of oral surgery.

It would come in hot, sharp flashes and dull itself to a muted all-day agony, sometimes two weeks of tossing & turning sleeplessness at a time. It would subside, seemingly moments after I had reconciled with myself that professional help & not overmedication & waiting would be the solution. I’d file these experiences away as triumphs over my mutineering body, somehow allowing myself to feel a sense of honor regarding the whole matter - As if I had willed it away, defeated it.

Then came the fevers. Since around July or so, and possibly stretching further back if I actually give it some thought, I’ve been uncharacteristically sick. Fevers monthly, if not bi-weekly. Inflammation, infection traveling from its source. Contamination. The vise around my jaw tightened, the night-sweats & shaking 3am medicine cabinet raids became part of my routine, you could set a clock to them. One can wage a pretty accurate guess, I’m sure, as to what havoc it wrecked on my disposition. Lily read up on all the various ways that I may be dying.

My upper right 2nd molar cracked on a tortilla chip the day before the Fitchburg-Longsjo Stage Race. A week and a half later, possibly due to my body’s interest in symmetry, my upper left 2nd molar also cracked. This left me with no side of my mouth on which that I could painlessly chew my food.

Even so, the pain would subside for weeks at a time. I googled “Emergency Dental” more times than I’d care to recount, but froze up upon reaching the second-to-last number into my phone… Until last Tuesday.

I called my parents. My parents called their friend Peter, a dentist in Natick. I saw Peter on Friday morning, and was swiftly sent to Wayland for a consultation with an oral surgeon named Koo. Spent a solid 15 minutes being zapped by radiation. He wanted to then & there remove four of my teeth: The two broken molars & my bottom two wisdom teeth.

To the best of my understanding, nerves had wrapped themselves around the roots of these wisdom teeth. My head was filled with all sorts of possibilties & disclaimers, the worst of which being the “extreme possibility” (verbatim) that I would lose feeling to my face, if not permanently then for a bit. Head swirling, and maybe half-stupidly, I declined the on-the-spot treatment, because - fuck - if I’m going to be laid-up, I’m going to race the Cycle-Smart International beforehand. Plus, what’s two more days? I’ve already been waiting fifteen years for this.

My appointment: 8:30am on Monday. My phobia. The fear had wrapped its strangling tentacles around me well before I even packed the car to leave for the races. Everything I did was informed by the knowledge that Monday would quite possibly be a very negative turning point in my life, or maybe - when viewed under a less fear-stricken lens - a very positive one. Lily was focused on the latter, as were most of my friends. Though: anyone who has ever posessed an irrational fear can tell you that the gnawing cannot be reasoned away. They’re there, mine was an albatross on my shoulder all weekend, and my racing suffered. Whatever.

So I woke up at 7am on Monday.

Took my 4x amoxicillin on an empty stomach with as tiny a sip of water as possible, per doctor’s orders. Got in Lily’s car & tried shakingly to dispense with my fear, to fully absorb the music on the stereo, the rhythm of the raindrops hitting the windshield. Plodded the death march from the car to the elevator to the office to the leather chair. Made small talk with an elevated heart rate as I waited for the drugs to put me under.

Then I was home, in bed.

So here is what I learned, both from Lily & from a phone call I received from Dr. Koo hours & hours later:

This was one of the most difficult surgeries that he has had to perform.

I flatlined a few times during the procedure.

Part of my jaw broke, but not all the way through & we can hope for it to heal. Failing that, I will need to get another tooth removed.

We are both optimistic about recovering full feeling in my face. As it stands, the feelings I’m experiencing are a muted pain cloaked under a narcotic haze, a slight and troubling numbness that is mostly concentrated in my lower lip but spreads to my left outward through my cheek a bit, and just complete & utter shock that I actually went through with this.

See, the urge was to blow it off. Then I got to thinking: This is going to be a huge change. An opportunity to rid myself of what I’m assuming to be the root of a good deal of my negativity. The cause of chronic sickness. What I am blaming for an underwhelming cyclocross season. The opportunity to start fresh, to not spend days in bed rather than on my bicycle, to be less moody and impatient with those around me. And you know - if the process of fixing this problem precipitates unwanted results, it probably would’ve anyway had I allowed the situation to continue to decay.

So I’m cautiously hopeful & dedicated to making the most of whatever good health comes from all of this. I’ll try my best to not take my wellbeing for granted, and to take full advantage of the opportunities that it opens up for me. I may be well enough to race again before long - my worries about missing out were misplaced.

I feel like I’m on my way to have completely rid myself of both my paramount weakness & the pinnacle of my fears, and I couldn’t feel better about it.

(I write this as I shovel a few more pills into myself & hope for a restful sleep…)

Hey, just like that & it’s almost CX season again! These past few months have seen some exciting developments in life, and I - being a habitual list-maker - will convey these developments as bulleted points!

-I joined Cambridge Bicycle / Igleheart Frames, initially only for their road team, but now have full-on committed to sticking with them for CX. While my heart is a little heavy and I feel a sense of guilt over leaving Geekhouse before starting, I feel that it is the appropriate decision. I have no love lost for Marty, I think he is an incredible man & very talented framebuilder whose bike I’d have loved to get muddy, but my reasoning is as follows (oh shit, a list in a list)

• This will be only my second full season of cyclocross & I’ve upgraded to UCI Elite. While Joshua of GH has a fuck-ton of experience racing, the team lost Jeff Bramhall & David Wilcox, two people who would probably get bashful if I refered to them as kinda sorta CX mentors from whom I learned more about the sport than I expected to in one short season. Meanwhile, Cambridge / Igleheart fields a huge CX group, among whom I am not going to be the only UCI Elite racer. McKittrick has a wealth of knowledge & experience, and - judging by my experiences with various members of the team during road season - they are committed to growth & optimizing performance by all means necessary.
• CB / IF is providing a huge amount of support, sponsorship-wise, for its Elite team that I feel is unrivaled by most cycling teams in the area.

• The friendships I’ve formed with my teammates are inspiring & strong; I relate to most of the riders in terms of shared-experience — We’re a bunch of tattooed ex-messengers & punks. The thought of not racing with my very close friends made me sad.

I mean, I could go on & on, but it would reach the point of feeling like justification. It was a hard decision in terms of disappointing Marty & co, but also an easy decision in terms of finding the best fit.

-I know that I said in this very blog that I wasn’t going to take road season very seriously. That didn’t happen. I’ve had a strong season, won a stage race, podiumed a few other races, and accomplished the goals I set for myself by halfway through the season. So I set new, ridiculous goals & hope to meet them by the end of the Green Mountain Stage Race, which will be my last road race of the year.

-Ampere toured Europe, where we played on a boat in Budapest with Steve Von Till from Neurosis. How’s that for absurd? It was a great tour & it really put things into perspective for me: I’ve been making it a point to put way more time aside for non-bicycle-racing friends. It’s important, they’re important to me, and it’s been fun.

-On the Ampere tip, we also just finished recording our LP, which was starting to feel a bit like Chinese Democracy. Except it doesn’t suck. I’m really proud of it; Proud of my bandmates for writing the best music we’ve released to date, and proud of myself for the lyrical content. It’ll be out by the end of the year (we still have to mix it & master it, as well as create the artwork & accompanying booklet) and it will be on No Idea Records.

-I moved to Somerville, Union Sq, and love it. Bloc 11 is great coffee and my street is so quiet. Hardwood floors!

Anyway, I’m looking forward to adding to the list. I have a number of race reports from road season up at the Cambridge Bicycle / Igleheart Frames website, and you can expect that for CX season I will be putting them here as well. Before then, though, I will be posting some of the lyrics from the new LP. Yeah, I told you I was proud of them!

Until then, get some sleep!!

Ah, hell.

So, big ideas crash & burn. That’s their very nature; hopes dashed, dreams deflated, everything and everything else comes tumbling down in a fiery fury. I’m being a bit hyperbolic here.. I’m not speaking of some catastrophic defeat; no spirutual death here. I’m embellishing the mundane. Cutting the fat, I could simply say: Oops, I haven’t been writing in my blog.

Truth is, there’s been kind of nothing but kind of everything to say. My cyclocross season ended, and I’m back up north. I’ve been putting in base miles & doing a ton of off-bike training. I now have a job at a bike shop in suburban MA, and put my name on a piece of paper entitling me to a year of living in a home in Somerville.

Thoughts & miscellany:

- I’m not going to have too intense a road season. I’m thinking, as long as I can get two or three races in per month, I’ll be happy. My goal in making this decision is to not burn out before CX season starts in August. Of course, since I’m addicted to positive results, this stands to change if I start winning & shit.

- I’ve come down with a nasty habit of buying very expensive clothing. For the first time in my life, I have to actually dress down for work.

- Mountain biking? I think I’m going to do some of it. We’ll see, it seems like a ton of fun. What’s summer about if not fun?

- Negativity begets negativity, and I’ve got to learn how to be stoked about things allllll over again. Jadedness is a luxury that I wish to reject; I believe it to be a choice that I made a number of years ago, and - well - by this point, I’m pretty convinced of that choice.. Subconsciously speaking, anyway. I’ve been trying to do the whole “fake smile until it turns real” thing lately, and it’s been kind of working. I’m tricking myself into being more outgoing.

- My theory is that messengering kind of turned me into an asocial jerk who doesn’t know how to relate to the square world. Because of my horseblinders, I couldn’t imagine a life I’d live where I’d HAVE to interact with people outside of my immediate community, but now I do & it’s interesting, to say the least. (sub: intimidating, terrifying, awkward, unnerving, uncomfortable.)

- We will never be able to self-diagnose. This invalidates the past two dogears in this rambling diatribe.

- I’m such a sucker for rambling diatribes and craziness without precise direction. I pored over that IRS airplane nutjob’s bungled manifesto for days.

- Dude I like totally can’t wait for cross season to return. What, only five months? WE’RE ALMOST THERE!

- I’ve been listening to nothing but soul, skinhead reggae/rocksteady, and the Cockney Rejects. Oi. Oh, speaking of, I’d recommend checking out that underrated Blitz song “New Age” which is definitely definitely definitely hinting at new wave but still very much a Blitz song. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the line “the kids on the streets” is sung several times.

OK. Pressure gonna drop on you.

So as the rest of the East Coast is experiencing some pretty intense cold, I’m still sweating it out in a short-sleeve skinsuit; One life, embrocation-free. I don’t mean to rub it in, but holy hell, this is what I’ve got to do every. Single. Year.

Picking up where I left off: The race in West Palm Beach. It was a four-or-so hour and boring-ass drive from Tampa. I think every southbound trip from here is less than engaging, in a geographical sense. The everglades are beautiful, I’m sure, but the highways cutting through them are the embodiment of visual monotony. Kinda like the highways cutting through CT or Ohio or Upstate NY. Wide-spanning swaths of nothing. I’m sure, though, that their night skies are gorgeous, like most places with little going on.

The race itself, well… how to put this.. It was decently-attended, somewhat decently organized, but the course left a lot to be desired. Perhaps my take on the course is partially based on the physical discomfort I was going through due to the still-hurt hamstring, and hopefully it will improve in years to come, but it seemed to me like the cyclocross version of a highway through the everglades. Not much in varied terrain, nothing very technical, and sorta in the middle of an open field. Whatever - gripes aside: I had fun (despite the pain), did well (finished 2nd in the elite field, again behind Mr. Myerson), and there were some great photos taken:

Due to my hamstring, I decided to take the next day off, rather than participate in another nearby race. No sense in risking long-term health for short-term fun! Anyway, the next two weeks were spent recuperating & enjoying a lot of this:

Yeah, there’s some fancy beer to be had in Tampa, thank fucking god!

Two days ago, I raced in Coral Gables, just south of Miami, in a race called Tropical Cyclocross. It was the most fun I’ve had racing down here; The course was brilliant, the promoters super-friendly, and you could very easily tell that a lot of love & passion went into putting it together. I’ll get into that later on, though; I’m not feeling particularly verbose at the moment…

Starting backwards, moving forwards. So, I’m in Tampa, FL right now. I’m in the middle of a month-or-so long stay whose purpose is several-fold: Mostly, to extend my cyclocross season through January, knowing how sorely missed it will be in the months between now & August. Secondarily, to avoid snow and hang out with buddies. I’m sure somewhere in there are also my aversion to responsibility & my interest in and attraction to the mobility of the idea of home.

How did I get here? Well, airplanes & friends. Literally & figuratively. My flight from Boston to MD/DC nearly didn’t leave, which I suppose is to be expected when you fly a carrier that takes paypal.

So, Tampa, FL.

Home of discreetly vegan donuts, a bus that sells some of the better East-Coast burritos I’ve had, some horrific displays of driving, some decent (but flat!) training rides, and some people that I hold very dear to my heart.

When I arrived, you’d have imagined the apocalypse was about two horsemen deep; people were freaking out about a cold spell that had brought record lows. Thing is, record lows in Florida are still worlds warmer than what I had just left in Boston. Maybe my exposure to 27 New England winters has left me bitter & cold-blooded, but I couldn’t muster much sympathy over what I viewed as “hoodie weather” - That said, it IS Florida, and I certainly didn’t come down here to freeze my ass off. I can do that back home.

So that’s what the first race was all about - Ice Weasels it wasn’t, but it sure was colder than I thought I’d have to be prepared for. As you can see, though, everyone else was way more bundled up than I:

But let me take you back a bit. We drove from Tampa to New Smyrna Beach, which is right next to Daytona, for a three-day race. The first night was a time-trial, which I had never experienced in cyclocross. Showing up late, I only had the opportunity to pre-ride half of the course before my scheduled starting time. It was 7pm, about 30 degrees out, and in the dark, dark woods. We were told at the starting line that there would be fire pits near any technical or dangerous section, but that most certainly didn’t mean that I’d know what the fuck was going on. I tripped over a barrier & got lost for about 30 seconds. Prior to then, I had never been literally lost on a cyclocross course. It cost me some time, and I finished demoralized. Then… we went back to the hotel. Wait, really? I paid $30 to ride my bike for 4 minutes and get lost?

The next afternoon, I lined up for what the promoters were calling a dirt crit, but what I would call just a really short cross course. That’s the picture above; Lining up for the B race. The course involved a triple-barrier set, a loosely packed sand pile (that evidently plays host to this… did I mention that this was all going down on the grounds of a biker bar?), and a sandy corner or two. The race went for 45 minutes, and I literally lapped everybody several times over. Not content with the level of competition, I asked to enter the Elite race. Weirdly, because of taking USAC licenses way more seriously than they needed to for a race that small, I was told no, but maybe the next day.

The next day, I was also told no. I was frustrated for a number of reasons, but looking at the bigger picture - I was still in Florida, racing cross while most of my friends had hung up their bikes until August. They did make one tweak, though, that at least made my race more interesting: They B’s & Elite men were racing at the same time. The course was the wooded area in which I had found myself lost two days before - This time, though, it wasn’t dark. And I wasn’t too late to familiarize myself with the course. Most of the race looked like this:

My new friend Adam Myerson had also come down from MA to extend his cross season & train in the warmth of the south, and he & I went back & forth leading the race for the full 45 minutes. That is, until the end, when he left me in his dust.

Still, though, I won the B category & received a few trophies, some cash, and more gift certificates than I could ever use to places I will never be anywhere near. I didn’t realize this at the time - I had figured it to be simply a soreness from exertion - but, I had managed to pull my right hamstring during this race. I figured this out while, two days later & on a training ride in Flatwoods Park in Tampa (quite the literal name for that park), I dismounted my bike and immediately couldn’t put any weight on my right leg. Oof.

Anyway, the race was interestingly different than any Northern cross race I’d taken part in, I had made a new friend, and.. well.. winning always feels good.

Next up, the race in West Palm Beach…

Big ideas: This blog is one of them. I’ve not had much success in the past with keeping anything like this current or relevant, engaging or interesting, or anything but masturbatory & self-indulgent. I hope that this doesn’t fall victim to the same fate that the burned-out carcasses of other blogs I’ve done have; sunken shipwrecked vestiges of half-cooked half-thoughts left like a time capsule to no one, for no reason.

This time around, there is purpose. At least, I think there is - It makes sense to me right now & will hopefully continue to. You see, my first season of cyclocross racing has come to an end & I’m learning the vocabulary of a worthwhile race report. In the interest of documenting my 2010 season, I intend to do my very best to make note of my races & training. I hope to avoid the narcissistic self-glorification of the typical cycling diaries, and instead focus on the beauty & nuance of the lifestyle that goes along with being in love with our physical anguish & exhaustion.

None of this is to purport that the minutiae of everyday life, boredom, and excitement will go without mention, of course. There is enough room in life for multi-faceted passion, and I think it’s safe to say that my unflinching affection for not only cycling, but also the written word, fancypants beers, dark dark coffee, and punk (fucking) rock will be well within the scope of this weird little experiment in online exhibitionism. I mean, hey: we live in a surveillance culture & it’s only appropriate that I acknowledge my participation.

So that’s my disclaimer. Or, maybe better: My manifesto, my statement of intent, my cover letter.