A Saturday 200K brevet — Part 2

Part 2
Part 1 is here

A key to cue sheet notation:

R or L — Turn right, turn left
TR or TL — T-right, T-left (road ends at a perpendicular street; turn there)
BR or BL — Bear right, bear left
SO — Straight on

TRO — To remain on
SP — Signpost
SS — Stop sign

 

THERE’S WEAK, AND then there’s just not having legs.

I knew that they were down there, but the dregs

had swirled around and vanished down the drain.

So nothing bad, no weakness and no pain—

just couldn’t push them harder. It was weird.

I wasn’t going to quit, but it appeared

I’d go like snail while time leaked away,

and then the doubt would end: I’d have my day

at home, maybe run errands with the boys,

waste time on Facebook, work, play Wii, fix toys,

then bathtime, dinnertime, chesstime, and bed.

That sounded good. Let’s go do that instead.

I had the drivetrain more or less controlled;

if shifted gingerly, the chain would hold,

though just as when you shift while going uphill,

I had to break the groove: one must instill

into the cadence an

                      expectancy,

that one may then exploit, attentively,

so as to sneak a link, while nothing’s looking,

onto the next ring up, the next pin hooking

the next oncoming tooth, and then the next,

until enough is sturdily indexed

to keep its grip when you stand up and hammer;

neither shall it slip, nor strip, nor stammer,

but dig into itself, absorb the force

you drive down into it, transform the course

of energy, bend it behind the wheel,

and go. The one criterion that’s real

is does it go? The rest can be worked out.

Leg two’s just seven cues. I know this route.

OUT OF CONTROLE; R ON 9W.

BR where it becomes RT 202.

Then R ON WEST SHORE DRIVE; BR AT STOP,

At WELCOME TO BEAR MOUNTAIN SP, hop

across the highway, downshift, and begin

to stand and dance, or grind, or sit and spin,

up through the park, SO THRU ROTARY,

be careful then to FOLLOW the SP

where it shows you to RT 6W,

R ONTO & UP PERKINS DRIVE, going through

a gate that’s closed to cars part of the year.

NYC riders are known to revere

this Perkins as some do the Alpe-d’Huez,

which none of them can say, since it’s Francaise.

But anyway, before Bear Mountain, you’ll

burn off most of the last half-hour’s fuel:

the highway, as though feeling insecure

that you won’t think it something to endure,

slants skyward, and once you’ve surmounted that

to where it turns and you thought it was flat,

it laughs and hoists again, and up you go.

Something about this stretch that you should know

is all those guys who clog 9W

in summer in their matching pink and blue

aren’t up here. They stop merely 22

miles above great gray GW,

at nice cafés in Piermont or Nyack

and clack around in bike shoes, then ride back,

and drop the distance into conversation,

with pauses you may fill with admiration.

My legs are waaaay down there, speaking of distance.

They feel like pushing string when I need pistons,

which I have not got. I can name the parts

of my drivetrain—but of all mystic arts,

drivetrain repair is second only to

the praxis and grimoire of Cthulhu—

and, like those spells, cannot be overcome

by force of will or pricking of a thumb:

A chain that won’t remain in its driveline

is, if you’re not a dolt, the clearest sign

an apathetic universe can send

that what you thought was START is really END,

which lets me cheat my failure and go home.

I’ll get a blog post from it–or a poem,

which, though it’s not what I set out to do,

well, it is now! I’ll try to write what’s true

of each setback, make each impression clear.

Unfortunately, that could take all year:

Almost as bad as drivetrain work is rhyme,

which hasn’t been in fashion for some time,

and since it pays zip, writing time is scant;

I have a family, and therefore I can’t

give it the time it takes to get it right

(and I can only work on it at night).

So someone else’s bike poem will be faster,

with more expensive parts, like “alabaster,”

which I have always wanted in my verse,

but it cracks under load. And “limn” is worse,

being molded from an etymology

I can’t afford. Even if it were free,

I’d be afraid of trusting it at night

on mountain downhills. I have this dumb fright

of catastrophic failure of the verbs.

They might hit unseen potholes; this disturbs

my sense of my superiority.

To not attain perfection? This can’t be.

However, I can’t spend an hour or two

on polish. I have other things to do,

like help my family through this damn recession.

A verb that doesn’t pay is a possession

of value to no one but Author, and which

does nothing for a boy who wants a sandwich.

So goodbye lyricism, hello story:

beginning, middle, end, not verbal glory.

A paint job with no frame’s nothing but pride.

A frame without a paint job’s still a ride.

A downpour! Doesn’t bother me at all.

I like to ride in rain. My speed’s a crawl,

but that would still be true if it were clear.

I haven’t climbed this pass since late last year,

when I learned to accept its lying ways,

and be content to summit each new phase

of altitude before the whole thing drops

back down to river level and then stops

the nonsense, but by then you’re in the park.

So climb it—with an exclamation mark.

These seven cues—nine miles—take an hour.

INFO CONTROLE AT SUMMIT (ON THE TOWER),

the cue sheet says. That means a little quiz

that I will have to answer. It’s WHAT IS

THE FIFTEENTH WORD ON PLAQUE ABOVE THE DOOR?

I write it on my card, and spend two more

long minutes not quite really getting going.

But heading back downhill, my road speed growing,

(except I brake to take a single pic)

then standing so the wind will dry and wick

(the rain cleared up when I was at the top,

which I don’t take as meaning it will stop)

I know regardless of the whims of fates,

Bear Mountain in a downpour?

Yeah, that rates.

I’m certainly the lanterne rouge, but I’ve

done fine. TR SS SEVEN LAKES DRIVE

takes me to Tiorati Circle and

UP ARDEN VALLEY ROAD, a gorgeous strand

of grades much tougher than Bear Mountain’s worst.

I’m not afraid of it—I have now nursed

my creaky drivetrain up a real climb.

I’m not scared of the chain; I’m scared of time.

Filed under: Bicycling, BikeNYC, Bikes, Poetry, Randonneuring, Senseless Acts