April 28 – I40 and Trains

Today was a hard day, there are no two ways about it, with 128 miles, few thousand feet of climbing, and headwinds at 15 to 20 mph most of the day. In addition almost all the riding was on I40. Interstate riding is noisy, it is hard to talk with other riders. Also using ear plugs would be dangerous because some of the noises you do hear tell you a lot about what is happening around you. Without your hearing you would be in greater danger and more dangerous to your fellow riders. Riding in groups or pace lines helps to reduce the effort as only the first rider is breaking the wind, no not that kind of wind breaking, and the others exert less effort as the ride behind. This can work well on an Interstate but often the shoulder is full of debris and if the lead rider doesn’t point the hazards out to the others riders can crash. Trust is a necessary component of group riding and it takes time to develop that trust with other riders. For a big rider like myself it is more difficult to get the benefit of the pace line because smaller riders don’t block all to the wind that hits me. However riding behind me can be very enjoyable – one friend has called being behind me like being in a micro-climate.

The other problem with group riding is flats. We all get them but if say everyone in a group of six riders waits whenever anyone gets and fixes a flat the group time can be slower that the time for a individual who rides by himself and only stops when he gests a flat. Today was my turn to get flats. I got one when some glass cut my tire, after trying to repair the damaged tire I got a second flat and had to get a new tire. This put me and Dave Thompson toward the back of the pack with fewer people to ride with. This made it more difficult for us to make good time and for a long slow day. I know Dave could have ridden faster than he did today, so I am very appreciative of his staying with me today.

The country side is as vast as it is empty and some of it had a certain beauty. But mostly today’s ride involved counting the mile markers and figuring how far it was to the next exit and how long it would take to get there. At times I was doing this every mile. At one point as I was climbing a long grade my speed in mph decreased as I got from 18 mph with 18 miles to go to 15 mph with 15 to go. I was reminded of Zeno’s paradox and worried that it would always be 1 hour until I reached my next sag point. I will know when the riding is very boring when I start calculating distances in Smoots. Smoots are an MIT institution; 1 Smoot = 5 ft 7 inches.

I also wanted to talk about trains for the last two days I40 has paralleled the Santa-Fe. I have seen more trains today than I have seen in years. From what I can see someone is sending a lot of stuff to someone else. Spencer, the four year old who lives next door in Berkeley, would have loved seeing all the trains.

This didn’t get posted on April 28^th because I fell a sleep at my computer and when I woke up I decided that if my readers would like the saga to continue it would be better go to bed and finish tomorrow.

I have also noted from responses that a lot of different people are looking at my blog. Basically three types 1) cyclists I know, 2) non-cyclist friends, and 3) MIT alums. Sometimes comments are more relevant for one group than another. If anyone wants an explanation of something I said they can e-mail me make a posting on the blog.