Darkness Approaches!!
The Dark 100 is
only 13 days off and I’m a little worried about my fitness level. T-shirts, prizes, route and primary
logistics are largely in place (lies, all lies), but this business of being
physically prepared is entirely different.
Actually, the only thing that is really up and running is my
Fund Raising Page, and that just happened today. Best not to
rush these things. Having said
that, I encourage you to hurry on over and donate to the
Fabulous Cause of
sending kids, whose parents have or had cancer, to a fun filled week of camp
where they can just be kids.
Man!
That was an awkward sentence.
I hope you understood it.
The Dark 100 is
not primarily about raising funds for a good cause, it’s about doing something
fun and unusual. Because of this,
I want to be clear that the fund raising piece is completely separate. All donated funds go to the cause; none
go to supporting the ride itself.
As far as I know, I’m the only one in the group trying to squeeze people
for donations. Let’s hope we don’t
need to find out what I mean by “squeezing”.
Is a carrot better than a
stick?
Honestly, I don’t know.
Perhaps I should back off with the threats and offer a
carrot. How about a fabulous
prize, chosen by me, to be awarded to one lucky donor? Better? I thought so too.
There’s an important phrase in the above paragraph: “chosen by me”. I have a pretty good idea what it’ll
be, but that’s as far as it goes.
I can tell you that it will be bicycling related, but not in a way that
forces you to actually ride a bike to enjoy it. No, it’s not going to be one of my retired leaky water
bottles. Unless you are Del. Then it will, indeed, be a used water
bottle.
Here’s how you can win this magical mystery prize: For each $5 that you donate
HERE, your
name will be entered once into the drawing for the prize. If gob-jillions of dollars are raised,
I’ll make sure there is more than one prize.
Click
HERE,
HERE, or
HERE to visit my fundraising page and learn more about Camp Kesem.
The drawing will be held on Sunday, June 23, 2013.
Stay tuned to this blog for more information about prizes, ride preparation and training!
Training:
Contrary to what I’ve implied, some of us have actually been
trying to train a bit for The Dark 100. Here is our best adventure so
far, a tradition in the way The Dark 100 hopes to be:
The Third Annual
Ferrous-man!
For years, we’ve ridden the
Minnesota Ironman Bike Ride (MIBR), usually held in late April.
The ride is huge (~4700 this year) and it’s a great way to kick off the
cycling season. We’ve ridden on April Saturdays that
are so bright and sunny that one gets a world class sunburn, we’ve ridden in
snowstorms and freezing, driving rain.
It’s always been fun, except when the weather is so bad that it’s not
fun. On the other hand, parking at
the start/finish has always been not fun.
Three years ago, a few of us came up with the idea of an
alternative, small group ride on or about the same day, with a similar amount
of suffering but with better parking, in Warren’s driveway. Honesty time! I
was not actually one of the few to think up the ride. Maybe I should have said “a few of them”, but that sounded weird.
Every ride needs a moniker, so they came up with
“Ferrous-Man”, because they are a witty bunch of nerdy bikers. Recently, Chris shortened it to
“F-Man”, and we all embraced the truncation for the obvious reason.
This year, The F-Man was held a week after the Ironman in
conditions that were substantially less ride-friendly than the MIBR
enjoyed. In all fairness to the
MIBR, it was long overdue for one of those warm sunny Saturdays. A few days later, a storm came through
that dropped anywhere from a few inches to two feet of snow on southern
Minnesota and central Wisconsin.
The storm was so significant that they gave it a name:
Achilles. I’d have named it Attila or Adolf, because a snowfall this
meaningful in early May is nothing short of diabolical.
By the time the four of us rode on May 4, the roads were
clear and the icy rainstorms had moved in all around us. The clouds held their moisture all
during our ride and we merely contended with cold (for May), something we all
know well.
Dress in layers, dress
in layers, dress in layers! The
problem with all those layers is that there is a certain amount of roadside
un-layering.
On this ride, I was testing out the
GoPro Hero 3 camera that Paul
gave me for Christmas. I’ve been
mounting this little camera on my handlebars for several rides, gradually
learning complicated things like the difference between “on” and “off”. My hope is to get enough experience
that I’ll make good use of the camera for portions of
The Dark 100. This is
what I learned by using the
GoPro on a group ride for the first time:
·
First, I’ve observed that I talk too much on the
bike. Between the talking and the
wind/road noise I now understand why cycling videos usually feature music
rather than real-time sound.
·
Second, review of the video showed that I was
looking ahead at neon yellow jackets… all day. This means I was wheel sucking… all day. There was only a little footage of the
open horizon with me “pulling” and I was only allowed to pull because I was
riding with gentlemen… albeit gentlemen who were OK with belching, farting, peeing
and disrobing to some extent in my presence, but nice guys, nonetheless.
·
Third, though I’ve known it since I’ve thought I
was a distance cyclist, I suck at climbing hills. It’s not even that I dislike it… I actually appreciate the
challenge both mentally and physically.
I just suck at it. I drop
off the back of the pack the moment the grade exceeds 6%, or maybe even
3%. It happened so many times in
the course of 70 miles that, when Chris was hanging back with me one time, I
all but accused him of patronizing me when he said he was also struggling. Turns out he had a flat tire. Really.
More participant bios:
·
Chris
is the Jerry Seinfeld of the group.
He delivers his wit in a deadpan manner and he even looks a bit like
Jerry. Chris is also our best hope
for a spot on
Jeapordy! as he knows a thing or two about a thing or two. The fact that he’s a strong, tireless
rider even on flat tires, well that’s just a bonus.
·
Laurie
is Del’s inexplicably long-suffering wife and probably the main reason Del’s
sisters haven’t disowned him. She’s
also Chris’s even longer suffering cousin. Laurie will be our sag driver extraordinaire, which is not
to say she’s any saggier than the rest of us.* It’s just that she’s really good at keeping track of all the
little ducks on a long course.
She’s also the best I’ve ever met at the question of
The Fox, The Corn, and The Chicken and how to get
them safely across the river without anything being devoured, drowned or
otherwise harmed. In her version
of the riddle, it’s The Minivan, The Toddler and the Tandem. All that said, the main reason she’ll
be driving sag for us is that she’s willing. Superior logic is not always applied to her decisions.
·
Jeff is
just a guy trying to have a good time without getting a concussion. We are hoping he will beta test this
Airbag Helmet . He may be the most patient,
non-judging guy I know, which explains why he’s Del’s friend.
·
David is
the only professional involved in this adventure. He joins us as videographer and he genuinely knows what he’s
doing. The fact that he’s my
son is seldom held against him because people just plain like him.
*Mandatory bike blog sag-driver double entendre
Nancy
