It seems an awfully long time since I hopped in that cab on a snowy day at JFK and headed into mid-town Manhattan. This is as good a time as any to reminisce, when trying to hang with the super fast pack on a benefit ride through the Sammamish Valley of Washington State. It is three years since last in the city and I am intrigued on seeing I can now swipe a credit card in the back seat of the taxi to settle my fare. Tempted into doing so I can’t help but wonder about the cases of fraud we see from Ghana, Nigeria and from NYC itself as unidentified persons use stolen card numbers to attempt flower purchases for whichever witless squeeze they have fooled into aiding and abetting them. Guys from Ghana seem to have the capacity to have women from Spokane fall for them site unseen…. and usually for roses. How special!
Despite the intervening years the staff at The Lucerne Hotel instantly access my history and address me as If I had never been absent and I was an enjoyable guest to have stay. Remarkable how adroit they are at making one feel this welcome. I head up the elevator in search of hot water and momentary respite from the travel. Heading the bike up the first notable incline and already well back in the pack of twenty and thirty year olds and with a gal, an Olympian and a past national champion of New Zealand I seek a better gear and promptly drop the chain. While not getting run down from behind was a major blessing I am left gasping at road side, scrambling to get the chain back on with the odd upward glance revealing the brightly hued pack disappearing unmercifully upgrade at an abusive speed.
In walking down towards Times Square and beyond I was thinking how much I had missed the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. It was a gorgeous sky blue day with traces of snow remaining on street and sidewalks with toxic looking melt water puddles to jump out and over at every intersection, peoples exhalations are just visible, a perfect cashmere and scarf day, fur for the ladies of course. Love those people that still see “beyond the pet” purposes for animals rather than the folks that trip to the Pet Whatever food store and breed dogs small enough to stuff in purses and sometimes are pampered to the point of being pushed around in baby strollers dressed as if possessed of human traits and sensibilities. Heck, In Encinitas the other week I saw what was basically a rat dressed in a dog’s suit with a sun visor on its head…for Pete’s sake!
New Yorkers and their guests are neat to be around and walking and gawking is a pleasure. The sounds, the smells and tastes are heady and in my case good for three days and no more. I am heading for Madison Square Gardens and a lunch spot nearby to meet Mr. Clinton Kelly. Yes indeed, the current style guru and co-host of “What Not To Wear” who happens to be a fan and long time customer of Flowerbud.com. Always fun to meet and dine with a new outlook, a different vision, a constructive critic and as we chat the ladies at lunch, recognizing Clinton Kelley in a heartbeat await with visible restraint, their chance to pounce. This comes immediately outside as he gives me directions for a return to The Lucerne Hotel via Hells Kitchen. All we need is the paparazzi to add to the fun.
I may feel beggared when jumping back on the bike but am not nearly ready to give up this early into 75 miles. I chase and pray for the far distant traffic lights to stop the pack now led by Galen Erickson and Kyle Lobisser. No such luck as I see them cant left and pass through a light resolutely on red by the time I arrive with a heart rate also very much in the red. For the next ten miles I gain little additional ground, the best I can cajole my psyche with is that they remain in sight (just) and that sooner or later I will find a never before seen or felt motor and talent allowing me to close the gap with decisiveness. Pretty scenery along the river and through fertile bottomland keeps me nicely distracted and unhindered by the light wind and perfect temperature. Glimpses of the North Cascades and Mt Baker way up on the Canadian border drive home the grandeur of the route laid out by Glenn Erickson. The fast and the slow are here to raise funds for the Davis Phinney Foundation. Davis and Glenn, both smokin’ hot bike racers in their day are now living and riding with Parkinson’s disease and I am grateful of the chance to contribute to the foundation while having it brought home just how much a desk and plane bound jockey I have become.
With dress boots and overcoat it is a warm and blister inducing trek up through Hell’s Kitchen but enjoyable all the same and it could not be a crisper, bluer nor kinder day to see Manhattan and with the mission underway it is time to let Delta take the straight line back from JFK to PDX. No credit card for the cabbie this time and I think cold hard cash makes us both feel better about the transaction. He has a keen appreciation of merchant fees also. Caught in no man’s land I am thinking that the slower pack will catch me up and I will ease in amongst their ranks and go along for the ride as “pack filler”. No such luck however as they seem in no hurry to bridge the gap and I am beggared If I will slow that much. Sure, this is making for a rigorous afternoon… but an ever more refreshing pint at The Red Hook Brewery results when all is said and done.
The months leading to this summer have seen a steady mixture of work, travel and leg breaking rides with insufficient shorter, lighter training rides… and all those seemingly done in rain, sleet, wind and temps always below 40F. It is far more than 40F as I am shown around the Botanical Gardens in Sao Paulo, Brasil and hike through a city park viewing a pair of beautiful Toucans and numerous monkeys climbing, eating and hanging languidly…. oh and don’t let me forget the yard long poisonous snake an aging ‘parky’ came along and scooped up with a stick. Fangs to give you nightmares! As exotic as it all is there is still time to reflect on those grinding climbs of winter when the 16% & 18% grades are made dangerous with ice in the shaded spots and great sprays of gravel from the sanding trucks. Still the competitive spirit is there and no matter who is along for the ride you, as much as they, wish to be the first back to the barn and someone is always going to get dropped off the back and get ribbed about it. On this trip to Brasil, Delta has ever so efficiently taken away many hours and miles of bike riding opportunities while the mere fact of being cramped in coach only adds further to the loss of form. As always Sao Paulo offers up wonders and the pastries, the orange juice, the cold beers sitting street side . It (the travel) seems a small price to pay until it rolls around time to ride again.
It is cold and very windy as the Pioneer Century gets under way just outside of Portland and Sao Paulo’s warmth seems very far away as we launch towards the foothills of the Cascade mountains. Towards the end of the first fifty miles the next closest rider to me manages to close the gap and sucks on my wheel as he takes a rather long rest, all the time comparing age and weight in a somewhat derogatory fashion. At some point this chatterbox manages to take the hint that I too would appreciate a tow but (jackass) sprints past me so fast and with no indication I don’t hang on and once again am out there, off the back and into the wind. It took a little venom to catch back up.That was a ride and a half and there is more than enough time to ponder over the disproportionate results versus the effort expended as Delta once again deposits me in NYC to pitch Flowerbud to an assembly of magazine editors ranging from ‘O’ to Redbook, Mens Journal and so on and so forth. Its a pretty good dog and pony show and the attendees are uniformly quite good fun once engaged and for their chotski bags I have Flowerbud branded bubbles for them to blow. “Buds to blow you away”, pretty catchy eh? Some of these jaded editor types have seen it all and one more flower guy who is not a household name is just another flower guy and anyway they view my Coral Peonies and Mini Callas on display as so stunning they are surely fake! The bubbles however are attention getters and infuse the dutifully interested faces with childish delight. There being more than one way to skin a cat they will oddly enough now associate our blooms with bubbles.
NYC equates to more soft living and the first of the Lance Armstrong Foundation Challenges is about on us, this year the season opener starts off from beneath the Space Needle in Seattle. I take small comfort in a cycling log that indicates only 1700 miles year to date as the Delta flight departs JFK. Not bound for PDX this time but rather across the Atlantic for a landing In Manchester, UK. The next five days to be spent negotiating narrow country lanes in Norfolk and low door lintels in the Lake District. While it is unfortunate that no cycling is involved the mode of transportation is almost as economical as the Audi A4, exquisitely powered by a diesel uses a mere 17 gallons to cover our 800 miles. I think it would cost me more in food to cover the same distance on a bike. In between visiting too seldom seen and valued college friends along with parents and siblings I come to understand that the British citizenry is now incessantly spied upon once out on the “open road”. What a mockery the nanny state has made of that phrase. Blair, his champagne socialist minions and now their successors have cast a police state atmosphere over much of the day to day. CCTV is now a part of the lexicon and the once good and fast drivers of the British Isles seem as sheep, ever herded by the speed cameras and the closed circuit TV. The results revealed in the aftermath of twelve very alarming crashes witnessed in those 800 miles.
Am head down and tucked between Kyle Lobisser and Martin”kiwi”Savage as we have a closed street, freeway and tunnel/bridge course from the Space Needle down through Seattle, past Safeco and Qwest Fields, all the way out to Mercer Island and the glorious grades and curves that are making up the first thirty miles prior to being tossed a grade or two over the entire 100. We are just three of approx three thousand entrants in this fund raising ride and Kyle and Kiwi are trying to make sure I have little time to ponder my utter disgust of the “nanny staters” ruling the UK and of my fear that the same incipient and poisonous drivel is inevitably finding its way into our own lives in the US and that all too many of us may have the same sheep like acceptance as evidenced in the UK. The naivete that willingly allows your elected government to spy on you, I find appalling. I still have visions of rose fronted, slate roofed cottages nestled between hills green with bracken fern and slender blue lakes. Also of stately moated homes (tax payers beware), red tiled cottages (also rose adorned), Barley fields from which sprout church steeples dating back centuries and alternating immaculate acreages of red poppy fields and yellow mustard seed. Peering around the full Dartmouth ‘Tuck School of Business’ racing kit of Kyle the view is of much larger homes, larger trees and larger lakes and much like the country lanes of last week we are negotiating the serpentine undulations of Mercer at speeds closing in on 30 mph… and i am doing very little of the hard work being wedged in between these two speedsters.
Giving up my spot between them would see me drop off the back as if I had a boat anchor out behind me. As it is I have no choice when we hit the grades as the years, the weight and the million miles in Delta coach seats levy an instantaneous toll. The boys are nice enough to wait at the top of the grades for me and back off the pace when I am visibly toasted. These two goats actually accelerate up a grade as quickly as I decelerate. As the miles wear on and the scenery is all new and interesting to me the black clouds gather and soon we are hunkered in the goods delivery entrance to TJMax avoiding lightening strikes and rivers of rain. Across the street is the Boeing 737 production plant that pops out a new bird every day! An odd place to contemplate much of anything but how cold and wet we might get I consider that at approximately half way through the ‘09 year of business and cycling the days are rife with torturous economic circumstances and as difficult routes to be ridden. I have been dropped a few times on the bike but I am damned if Flowerbud is going to get dropped off the back. Here’s to competitive spirit and the open road for all of us.