The Best Cake in the World

09.15.2005 | 6:47 am

This Best of Fat Cyclist post — rescued from my MSN Spaces Fat Cyclist archive — originally published September 15, 2005.

It occurs to me that I have been spending far, far too much time in this blog on the "Cyclist" part of "Fat Cyclist." So, today, I’d like to present what has been determined by Renowned Scientists and Certified Dessert Experts around the globe as the Best Cake in the World.

It is a Chocolate-Chip-Oatmeal cake. It is not a fluffy, airy cake that collapses away to oxygen and a whiff of chocolate when you put it in your mouth. No. It is a substantial cake, something you could make a meal of. The oatmeal keeps it dense and moist, and the chocolate keeps it chocolatey.

Do not put frosting on this cake. Frosting is what most cakes need to hide the fact that they are dry, over-airy, and flavorless.

I promise you, if you make this cake, you eat will three pieces before nightfall. You will gain three pounds before dawn. And you will look for reasons to make this cake again soon. You will make this cake whenever you are asked to bring a dessert over to a picnic, and you will be invited to an increasing number of picnics when people learn that you will bring this cake.

Your enemies will approach you to resolve your differences, just so they can have some of this cake.

I will, by coincidence, be making this cake later this afternoon for my wife, for it is her birthday. I will also give her an iPod, onto which I will copy our entire library of music — importing this library into iTunes has been a tedious labor, and ordinarily my wife would appreciate the work that has gone into it. But when she sees that I have made this cake, I expect she will toss the iPod — now forgotten — into a box and will throw her arms around me, grateful that I have gone to the effort of making her The Best Cake in the World.

I only hope that I have not undersold this cake.

Recipe for the Best Cake in the World

Ingredients

  • 1 3/4 cup boiling water — do not put your fingers in this water, for it is hot!
  • 1 cup oatmeal — regular oatmeal, not instant, you cretin.
  • 1 c. brown sugar — how come it tastes so good?
  • 1 c. white sugar — I have no clever comment to add to this ingredient, unless you consider this comment clever.
  • 1 stick butter — No, don’t use margarine. Use butter. Margarine is gross.
  • 1 tsp baking soda — I tried brushing my teeth with baking soda. Once.
  • 1/2 tsp salt — Or go crazy and put in a whole teaspoonful.
  • 1 3/4 cup flour — Warning: flour may contain wheat products.
  • 2 eggs — From a chicken; ostrich eggs are too big, and taste nasty.
  • 1 pkg milk chocolate chips, or semi-sweet if you think you are too good for regular milk chocolate chips.

Instructions
Pour the boiling water over the oatmeal and stir. It’s best if the aforementioned pouring of boiling water over said oatmeal occurs in a bowl. Stir and let set for 10 minutes. Put the butter in about 5 minutes into this ten minutes, so it can melt.

Meanwhile…

Stir together in a different bowl:

  • Flour
  • Baking soda
  • Salt

Once the 10 minutes has elapsed…

Stir the brown sugar and white sugar into the oatmeal mixture.

Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then stir the eggs into the oatmeal mixture.

Mix the flour mixture into the oatmeal mixture. You should now have one mixture. If you have more than one mixture, you need to reevaluate some life choices you made in your childhood.

Stir half the chocolate chips into this mixture. Do not snitch more than 5% of the chocolate chips as you do this.

Grease and flour (or, in my house, just spray with Pam) a 9 x 13 pan. Note that this is an update. Originally I said that "you should use a 9 x 9 pan. Or an 8 x 10 pan. Or a 40 x 2 pan. Something that comes out to about 80 square inches." I was guessing. I was wrong. I regret the error. I have other regrets as well, but another time, another time.

Pour the cake batter in, then sprinkle the other half of the bag of chocolate chips on top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, or until the center of the cake is not a gooey mess. Let cool at least a little bit or the molten chocolate will burn the living daylights out of the roof of your mouth.

Serve warm, or at room temperature if you must. With vanilla ice cream if at all possible.

Eat.

Rejoice.

Comments (46)

 

The Best Place in the World

09.14.2005 | 8:35 pm

I like living in the Northwest. I like riding in green countryside. I like the incredible forests. I like the big evergreens that surround my house. I like all the lakes around me. I like that it never really gets unbearably hot, nor unbearably cold.

But today as I rode my bike to work, I started thinking about Tibble Fork, and now I miss Utah something awful.

Tibble Fork — the reservoir and the trail that starts at the reservoir — is at the North end of American Fork Canyon, in Utah County. It is all singletrack and is, from a purely objective analysis, the best mountain bike trail in the entire world.

 

Wrong Way

Most people — in fact, everyone I’ve ever seen, except my own little group — rides Tibble wrong. They take a shuttle to the summit of the Alpine Loop and ride their mountain bikes down. There should be a law against that. In fact, I hereby decree: henceforth, all descending on mountain bikes must be earned by corresponding climbing on said mountain bikes. So let it be written, so let it be done.

There, I feel much better now.

 

First Mile: Ow.

That said, there’s a reason most people ride Tibble Fork down, not up. It’s because it’s unbelievably steep. The first mile, in particular, is pure agony (but it’s the good kind of agony). It’s steep and often loose, with a couple of near-impossible switchbacks at impossible angles, followed by a quick maze and climb over roots and rocks. When / if you clean that first mile, you haven’t had just a good day. You’ve had a red-letter day — the kind of day you talk about in your Christmas letter to friends and relatives.

Please, allow me to illustrate. A few years ago, my college-age niece told me her boyfriend would like to go out mountain biking. I tried to get a sense of what he could do as we drove out toward the Ridge Trail network (of which Tibble is a part). When he said, "Oh, whatever you can handle. I don’t want to put too much hurt on an old guy like you," I made up my mind: Tibble.

Instead of riding behind a guest as a good host normally would, letting the guest set the pace, I took off at race pace up Tibble. I was seeing purple spots, but it was worth it, because "the boyfriend" as I now called him in my head, was dropping off the back, fast.

I got to the end of the first mile, which is where we usually regroup and rest for the next third of a mile, which is considerably steeper than the first mile.

I waited. And waited some more. After about 5 minutes — remember, I had only gone a mile so far — he rolled up, got off his bike, knelt, and threw up.

It was my proudest moment ever.

 

A Brief Respite

The next third of a mile is about as severe a climb as can be ridden on a mountain bike. It’s also very muddy in the Spring. Horses tromp through it, churning up the trail and leaving postholes with every step (yeah, it’s the bikes that are ruining the trails). When the mud dries, this section of trail is pretty choppy for the rest of the year. And there are a couple of logs and waterbars you’ve got to wheelie over. And some boulders.

Once you make it past that climb, though, you’re in for a treat — a beautiful mountain meadow, with a beaver pond at the far end. A thin line of singletrack cuts through it, and your legs stop burning for the first time since you got on the bike. And that’s one of the things that makes Tibble great: intense climbs are always followed by a little flat spot where you can get your air back.

I’ve snowshoed up to this meadow in the Winter at night, during a full moon. I was the first person up there since a big snow. I tromped out to the middle of the meadow, flopped onto my back, and for a little while was the only person in the entire world. I apologize for any inconvenience I caused in making the rest of you disappear. My bad.

Anyway, a couple hundred yards later and you’re climbing again — in fact, you’ve got two more miles of climbing. It’s still small ring climbing, but you can ride parts of it in second and third gear.

 

The Blair Witch Move

Next up, the Blair Witch Move. This is a jumble of embedded rocks and a big root ledge. There are basically two ways you can try to ride up: the rocks or the ledge. The jury’s out as to which is better. Sometimes I can clean this on my first try, sometimes I can’t clean it no matter how many tries I have.

Why is it called the "Blair Witch Move?" A group of us were riding at night, trying this move, when we heard the most hideous screaming/yelling/dying-by-murder-most-foul sound I have ever heard. Human? Animal? We couldn’t tell. It sounded close, though. "It’s the Blair Witch," someone said. We finished our mandatory three tries at the move, and got out of there.

Afterward, we decided it must have been elk calling, or something like that. The thing is, I’ve heard lots of elk in my day (my dad’s big on hunting), and this sounded nothing to me like elk.

 

Crux of the Matter

Immediately after the Blair Witch Move comes the Crux Move. It’s a brutally-steep hill, about 50 feet long, littered with loose rocks. You can’t bring speed into this move, because the approach is littered with loose dirt and fist-sized rocks, followed by an off-camber left turn. From there, you’ve got to pick your line and keep enough weight on the front wheel to steer, while keeping enough on the back to not spin out. Adding insult to injury, it gets steeper at the top. If you clean this, you have earned the privilege of thumping your chest and standing at the top of the move, shouting bad advice to the poor saps below.

In the hundreds of times (have I really ridden Tibble hundreds of times? Maybe not. I’ll bet I’ve ridden it close to 100, though, and you get three tries at any move) I have attempted the Crux move, I have cleaned it exactly once.

You know where I said earlier that making The Boyfriend barf at the top of the first mile was my proudest moment ever? I’d like to take that back. Cleaning the Crux Move was my proudest moment ever.

 

Endless Move

A quick zip through another meadow brings you to the last move of Tibble: Endless. This move isn’t especially technical, though there are parts that will throw you off your line if you’re not careful. But it is long. And since you’ve been climbing an unbelievably steep mountain for 2.5 miles, you’re probably not at your strongest anymore. I have never measured it, but I believe you are climbing in the red zone for just about a quarter mile.

And then there’s a little more climbing, a few switchbacks, and you’re at the top of Tibble, the best climb in the world.

 

Joy

At this moment, you could turn around and go down the way you came up. I’ve done this dozens of times. Or you can go down the other side, down South Fork of Deer Creek trail, which is the most unimaginative name for a trail ever. Instead of using this clinical name, we call the trail "Joy."

You’d have to ride this trail to really understand why it’s called Joy. It’s a little like being in that scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke and Leia are being chased through the forest on their motorcycle-esque landspeeders. Except it’s real, and it’s downhill, and the trails are banked to perfection, and you’re threading through the aspen and evergreen trees knowing — but not caring — that if you fall right now you will wrap around one of them, and then there’s a little jump on the side of the trail (you need to know to watch for it), and you’re pedaling in your big ring, not quite spun out but oh-so-close and then you’re suddenly in sagebrush, still flying, and the trail’s banked just where it needs to be so that you can just open it up on your mountain bike like nowhere else in the world.

And then it’s over. It ends at a little campground, where everyone regroups and tries to describe what just happened. But it always comes out just giggles and big sloppy grins to match.

Joy is the only trail that has ever brought tears to my eyes. It is perfect.

 

Mud Springs

Now you’ve got more climbing to do — up to the summit of the Alpine Loop, and then across the Ridge Trail — in order to get to Joy’s opposite: Mud Springs. Actually, "opposite" is a poor word, in some ways, because both are spectacular descents. It’s just that they’re spectacular in opposite ways. Joy is smooth, open and fast: a perfect ride to get someone to love mountain biking. Mud Springs is twisted, technical, and treacherous (I swear, that alliteration was not intentional): a perfect ride for someone who is already hooked and is ready to be challenged. Rocks, ledges, roots, chutes: Mud Springs has them all, in such a perfect combination that one is forced to conclude that God is a mountain biker. Or at least that the Forest Service guys in UT care deeply about the trails they maintain.

 

Back Where You Started

I’ve said before that I’m terrible with maps and location in general, so it shouldn’t surprise you to know that I’m still a little surprised every single time Mud Springs drops me back onto Tibble, about two thirds of the way up. I mean, I’ve just been riding all over the place, and I’m here again? How is that possible?

And yet, it is. You’re back on Tibble Fork, and get to fly down as fast as your courage will let you go. Usually, we would race it — Dug and Rick would give me a head start, because I’m the slow guy going downhill, and they’d catch me with about a half mile to go.

Flying downhill Tibble is totally different than going up it. (Yes, well, duh). What I mean, though, is you see different things, get a different perception of how long a certain part of the course is, think of different parts of the trail as the "good" stuff.

If you think about it, the people who shuttle — not just Tibble, but any great mountain bike trail — only see half the trail. Climb it, and you get to see it all.

 

Wrapping Up

Whenever I get to the bottom of Tibble Fork and am packing up, I feel like I’m one of very few people who knows an incredible secret. Consider: everyone in the whole world was doing something right then, but only a few of us were mountain biking at the best place in the world.

Note to my friends back in Utah: If you aren’t riding Tibble today, you are complete idiots.

 

Today’s weight: 164.4 lbs.

Comments (20)

The Best Place in the World

09.14.2005 | 10:29 am

I like living in the Northwest. I like riding in green countryside. I like the incredible forests. I like the big evergreens that surround my house. I like all the lakes around me. I like that it never really gets unbearably hot, nor unbearably cold.But today as I rode my bike to work, I started thinking about Tibble Fork, and now I miss Utah something awful.

Tibble Fork — the reservoir and the trail that starts at the reservoir — is at the North end of American Fork Canyon, in Utah County. It is all singletrack and is, from a purely objective analysis, the best mountain bike trail in the entire world.

Wrong Way
Most people — in fact, everyone I’ve ever seen, except my own little group — rides Tibble wrong. They take a shuttle to the summit of the Alpine Loop and ride their mountain bikes down. There should be a law against that. In fact, I hereby decree: henceforth, all descending on mountain bikes must be earned by corresponding climbing on said mountain bikes. So let it be written, so let it be done.

There, I feel much better now.

First Mile: Ow.
That said, there’s a reason most people ride Tibble Fork down, not up. It’s because it’s unbelievably steep. The first mile, in particular, is pure agony (but it’s the good kind of agony). It’s steep and often loose, with a couple of near-impossible switchbacks at impossible angles, followed by a quick maze and climb over roots and rocks. When / if you clean that first mile, you haven’t had just a good day. You’ve had a red-letter day — the kind of day you talk about in your Christmas letter to friends and relatives.

Please, allow me to illustrate. A few years ago, my college-age niece told me her boyfriend would like to go out mountain biking. I tried to get a sense of what he could do as we drove out toward the Ridge Trail network (of which Tibble is a part). When he said, “Oh, whatever you can handle. I don’t want to put too much hurt on an old guy like you,” I made up my mind: Tibble.

Instead of riding behind a guest as a good host normally would, letting the guest set the pace, I took off at race pace up Tibble. I was seeing purple spots, but it was worth it, because “the boyfriend” as I now called him in my head, was dropping off the back, fast.

I got to the end of the first mile, which is where we usually regroup and rest for the next third of a mile, which is considerably steeper than the first mile.

I waited. And waited some more. After about 5 minutes — remember, I had only gone a mile so far — he rolled up, got off his bike, knelt, and threw up.

It was my proudest moment ever.

A Brief Respite
The next third of a mile is about as severe a climb as can be ridden on a mountain bike. It’s also very muddy in the Spring. Horses tromp through it, churning up the trail and leaving postholes with every step (yeah, it’s the bikes that are ruining the trails). When the mud dries, this section of trail is pretty choppy for the rest of the year. And there are a couple of logs and waterbars you’ve got to wheelie over. And some boulders.

Once you make it past that climb, though, you’re in for a treat — a beautiful mountain meadow, with a beaver pond at the far end. A thin line of singletrack cuts through it, and your legs stop burning for the first time since you got on the bike. And that’s one of the things that makes Tibble great: intense climbs are always followed by a little flat spot where you can get your air back.

I’ve snowshoed up to this meadow in the Winter at night, during a full moon. I was the first person up there since a big snow. I tromped out to the middle of the meadow, flopped onto my back, and for a little while was the only person in the entire world. I apologize for any inconvenience I caused in making the rest of you disappear. My bad.

Anyway, a couple hundred yards later and you’re climbing again — in fact, you’ve got two more miles of climbing. It’s still small ring climbing, but you can ride parts of it in second and third gear.

The Blair Witch Move
Next up, the Blair Witch Move. This is a jumble of embedded rocks and a big root ledge. There are basically two ways you can try to ride up: the rocks or the ledge. The jury’s out as to which is better. Sometimes I can clean this on my first try, sometimes I can’t clean it no matter how many tries I have.

Why is it called the “Blair Witch Move?” A group of us were riding at night, trying this move, when we heard the most hideous screaming/yelling/dying-by-murder-most-foul sound I have ever heard. Human? Animal? We couldn’t tell. It sounded close, though. “It’s the Blair Witch,” someone said. We finished our mandatory three tries at the move, and got out of there.

Afterward, we decided it must have been elk calling, or something like that. The thing is, I’ve heard lots of elk in my day (my dad’s big on hunting), and this sounded nothing to me like elk.

Crux of the Matter
Immediately after the Blair Witch Move comes the Crux Move. It’s a brutally-steep hill, about 50 feet long, littered with loose rocks. You can’t bring speed into this move, because the approach is littered with loose dirt and fist-sized rocks, followed by an off-camber left turn. From there, you’ve got to pick your line and keep enough weight on the front wheel to steer, while keeping enough on the back to not spin out. Adding insult to injury, it gets steeper at the top. If you clean this, you have earned the privilege of thumping your chest and standing at the top of the move, shouting bad advice to the poor saps below.

In the hundreds of times (have I really ridden Tibble hundreds of times? Maybe not. I’ll bet I’ve ridden it close to 100, though, and you get three tries at any move) I have attempted the Crux move, I have cleaned it exactly once.

You know where I said earlier that making The Boyfriend barf at the top of the first mile was my proudest moment ever? I’d like to take that back. Cleaning the Crux Move was my proudest moment ever.

Endless Move
A quick zip through another meadow brings you to the last move of Tibble: Endless. This move isn’t especially technical, though there are parts that will throw you off your line if you’re not careful. But it is long. And since you’ve been climbing an unbelievably steep mountain for 2.5 miles, you’re probably not at your strongest anymore. I have never measured it, but I believe you are climbing in the red zone for just about a quarter mile.

And then there’s a little more climbing, a few switchbacks, and you’re at the top of Tibble, the best climb in the world.

Joy
At this moment, you could turn around and go down the way you came up. I’ve done this dozens of times. Or you can go down the other side, down South Fork of Deer Creek trail, which is the most unimaginative name for a trail ever. Instead of using this clinical name, we call the trail “Joy.”

You’d have to ride this trail to really understand why it’s called Joy. It’s a little like being in that scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke and Leia are being chased through the forest on their motorcycle-esque landspeeders. Except it’s real, and it’s downhill, and the trails are banked to perfection, and you’re threading through the aspen and evergreen trees knowing — but not caring — that if you fall right now you will wrap around one of them, and then there’s a little jump on the side of the trail (you need to know to watch for it), and you’re pedaling in your big ring, not quite spun out but oh-so-close and then you’re suddenly in sagebrush, still flying, and the trail’s banked just where it needs to be so that you can just open it up on your mountain bike like nowhere else in the world.

And then it’s over. It ends at a little campground, where everyone regroups and tries to describe what just happened. But it always comes out just giggles and big sloppy grins to match.

Joy is the only trail that has ever brought tears to my eyes. It is perfect.

Mud Springs
Now you’ve got more climbing to do — up to the summit of the Alpine Loop, and then across the Ridge Trail — in order to get to Joy’s opposite: Mud Springs. Actually, “opposite” is a poor word, in some ways, because both are spectacular descents. It’s just that they’re spectacular in opposite ways. Joy is smooth, open and fast: a perfect ride to get someone to love mountain biking. Mud Springs is twisted, technical, and treacherous (I swear, that alliteration was not intentional): a perfect ride for someone who is already hooked and is ready to be challenged. Rocks, ledges, roots, chutes: Mud Springs has them all, in such a perfect combination that one is forced to conclude that God is a mountain biker. Or at least that the Forest Service guys in UT care deeply about the trails they maintain.

Back Where You Started
I’ve said before that I’m terrible with maps and location in general, so it shouldn’t surprise you to know that I’m still a little surprised every single time Mud Springs drops me back onto Tibble, about two thirds of the way up. I mean, I’ve just been riding all over the place, and I’m here again? How is that possible?

And yet, it is. You’re back on Tibble Fork, and get to fly down as fast as your courage will let you go. Usually, we would race it — Dug and Rick would give me a head start, because I’m the slow guy going downhill, and they’d catch me with about a half mile to go.

Flying downhill Tibble is totally different than going up it. (Yes, well, duh). What I mean, though, is you see different things, get a different perception of how long a certain part of the course is, think of different parts of the trail as the “good” stuff.

If you think about it, the people who shuttle — not just Tibble, but any great mountain bike trail — only see half the trail. Climb it, and you get to see it all.

Wrapping Up
Whenever I get to the bottom of Tibble Fork and am packing up, I feel like I’m one of very few people who knows an incredible secret. Consider: everyone in the whole world was doing something right then, but only a few of us were mountain biking at the best place in the world.

Note to my friends back in Utah: If you aren’t riding Tibble today, you are complete idiots.

Comments (5)

Everything I Know About Stretching

09.13.2005 | 5:44 pm

  1. Stretch-ologists say it’s a good idea.
  2. I never do it. Because it hurts.
  3. Even without stretching, I am very limber. For example, I can quite easily touch my fingertips to my kneecaps, without bending my knees.

Today’s weight: 165.4 lbs.

 

Comments (18)

Long Ride, Good Reason: MS 150 Report

09.12.2005 | 6:11 pm

It was Saturday morning, about 2:00, and I couldn’t sleep. That’s normal; if there’s one thing I can count on when I do a long ride, it’s that the night before I will not be able to sleep. I will be so consumed with worrying about weather, the route, my bike, and the gear I’ve packed that I just can’t sleep.

You’d think that it would have been different for the MS 150 last weekend. After all, this wasn’t a race. It wasn’t for time. It was just the culmination of a fundraising event for a good cause. But I still couldn’t sleep.

The rain was keeping me awake.

I lay there listening to the rain on the roof, just knowing that a few hours from then, I was going to have the most miserable ride of my life.

 

Rain, Rain, Go Away.

My alarm woke me at 4:00 AM, so I must’ve fallen asleep at some point. I grabbed all my gear — emphasis on rain gear — and went to pick up Nick for the 90-minute drive to where the race began.

Halfway there, it stopped raining. And by the time we got there, we could see blue in part of the sky, with dark rain clouds in other parts. That actually makes for a trickier clothing choice than if it’s just dumping rain. Do you go with rain gear, figuring it’s going to rain soon? Or do you take the optimistic view and not go with rain gear? Most people were suited up like they were about to do the Iditarod.

I decided to be a glass-is-half-full kind of guy. I suited up in short sleeves and a short jersey, with a rain shell in my back pocket, just in case. After all, people had paid good money to have me write strange things on my legs; I didn’t want to hide those things if at all possible.

 

 

My right leg says "Phat Syklist," courtesy of the Gunnersons, who know that bad spelling irritates me to no end. My left leg says "Brooklyn Roolze," courtesy of my nephew Boone Campbell, who evidently has more money than I’d have expected. These were easily readable when I was on my bike. On the top of my (massive) quads is the phrase "Low-Fat Fatty."

 

Meet the Family

One thing that was cool about this ride was the number of people from Microsoft showing up to ride, and meeting the people on the team who we’d be riding with. And — vanity alert  — I really liked having a few people notice the writing on my legs and saying, "Oh, you must be the Fat Cyclist." Yep, I am now super-famous. Wealth can’t be far behind.

Since Microsoft earned more money (around $50K) for this event than other teams, we got to go off the starting line first, escorted by a group (Flock? Troop? Gaggle?) of Harley Davidsons. I followed the motorcycles with the group for a moment, but we were dropping behind, and it felt like we were going slow. So, along with Nick and an IronWoman named Heather, I jumped and caught up with the motorcycles.

 

Hey, Everyone! Follow Me!

We were the lead group! I was the lead rider! I am using too many exclamation points! I decided at that moment I would never let a single person pass me the whole day.

The three of us rode together for a bit, then the motorcycles stopped at the side of the road and we were on our own. I kept looking back, wondering how we had gapped everyone so badly, so quickly. Oh well, that was their problem; we were clearly the superior riders.

That’s when a guy on a motorcycle caught up with us and yelled, "You missed a turn! Go back!" I looked back and sure enough, hundreds of people were turning left way behind us.

Note to everybody in the entire universe: I am not the guy you want to ask directions from. I am not the guy you want to follow on a route. I am the guy who uses Mapquest to get to the grocery store.

We turned around and got back on course, now sorted about 100 back in the field. Alas, we’d never regain our

 

Road Rage, Writ Small

Apart from my boneheadedness at the beginning, we had no real trouble, with the exception of one confusing moment. About 25 miles into the ride we were going through a residential area when we came across a left arrow pointing us into the neighborhood.

I slowed down when I saw the sign; it didn’t look quite like a course marking. This put me near an older woman in a Cadillac at a stop sign, going in the opposite direction. She couldn’t tell where I was going because I didn’t know where I was going. I smiled apologetically at her as I figured it out, then yelled at people ahead of me to come back. The older woman powered down her window and said in a voice filled with a surprising amount of rage, "Bikes are supposed to follow the same rules as cars," she snarled.

I smiled, shrugged, and said "Anteeksi kun en osaa sinun kieltää" ("I’m sorry, but I don’t speak your language."). Knowing Finnish comes in handy sometimes (like, three times in my life so far).

 

Go Long? Or Go Short?

Nick and I had agreed to be flexible about whether we’d do the 75-mile route or the 100-mile route for Saturday (both of us had family commitments for Sunday so were doing just one day of this event), depending on the weather. Amazingly, the weather had turned out perfect for the day. Cool and breezy, but not a drop of rain.

So as we got to the point where we needed to go straight for the 75 mile course or turn right for the 100 mile course, I proposed we turn right.

"No," said Nick. "I feel as if I might have consumption."

"Be strong," I said. "We can do this. We are manly men, and 75 miles are as nothing to such as we." I thumped my chest, for good measure.

"I can’t," said Nick, sniveling now. "I feel a sinus headache coming on, and the atmospheric pressure is irritating my adenoids."

"I thought you were from Australia!" I was shouting now, full of righteous indignation. "You guys are supposed to be tough! You guys are supposed to eat armadillos and have kickboxing matches with kangaroos? Are you from some hitherto unknown nancy-boy part of Australia that nobody speaks about?"

Nick didn’t say a word in response to this. He just hung his head and went straight.

"Fine," I muttered, and followed after him. "Just so you know, I’m going to make up an entirely different conversation about why we did the 75-mile ride today."

Which is what you just read.

 

Beautiful Day, Beautiful Ride

To my amazement, by 11:00 am, the clouds had cleared and it was sunny. I had made what turned out to be the exact right clothing choices. Further, I was having a great day on the bike. I felt very strong; the short hills on the course were a blast to charge up and then zoom down. The course itself was gorgeous; I still haven’t gotten over the beauty of Northwest coastal forests and coastline.

 

 

Nick at Deception Point Bridge.

 

Respect

For most of the ride, we were surrounded by riders of about the same speed. With about 25 miles left to go, though, the 75-mile course merges with the 50-mile course and we were now with riders who don’t really consider themselves cyclists — these were people who cared about raising money to fight MS, and so were willing to get on a bike for a day, if that’s what it took. You’ve got to admire people who are willing to go out on a long ride like this. I imagine it’s as difficult for them to ride 50 miles on a bike as it is for me to paddle 50 miles in a kayak. But I didn’t see anyone complaining about it.

Huge props, in other words, to the people who were out there for a person or cause they cared about. I have to say, I enjoyed being part of this cause much more than I expected to be, and I’ll plan to do it again.

 

Pull & Be Damned

With about three miles left to go, we came across my very favorite street sign in the history of street signs: Pull & Be Damned Rd. Hey, it’s not just a street sign, it’s a riding philosophy. "Hey, Nick, I would have pulled more on today’s ride, but I just didn’t want to be damned."

 

 

Shouldn’t that be "Pull OR Be Damned?"

 

Just after Nick took this picture, one of the spokes on his rear wheel broke. The wheel went seriously out of true and Nick had to release the brake in order to ride the last few miles to the finish line. Nick says it’s lucky we did the 75-mile course or he would have had to ride with a broken spoke for 28 miles instead of just three. I maintain that if he would have ridden the 100-mile course the spoke wouldn’t have broken at all.

Anyway, Nick and I finished the ride — true to the spirit of the thing, I didn’t check my ride time or when we finished — feeling good, and were evidently two of the first ’softies (yeah, Microsoft employees call themselves "softies," isn’t that sad?") across the line.

I suspect that the fact that we didn’t have to do another 75 mile ride the next morning had something to do with it.

 

Today’s weight: 168.2. For lunch the day before the ride, my old work team bought be a "go away, fatty" lunch (Malaysian). Then my wife and I went to dinner (Mexican, natch) that night. After the ride, Nick and I had big greasy burgers and fries. Yesterday, I ate nonstop. Gee, I wonder where that weight gain over the weekend came from?

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