The Most Elusive @Strava Segment Ever

In chest waders with a fly rod, I walked back from the creek after striking out fishing for Steelhead trout.  I wasn’t much of a bike rider then.  A camouflaged gentlemen rolled up the double track in a blue sun-faded early 80’s Chevy Imapla with black steel wheels sans hubcaps.  Using the crank on the inside of the door, adding to the backwoods drama, he physically rolled down his window.  Locking eyes, he quizzed me, “Nuttindoinaina?”  I stopped dead in my tracks.  A bit of water sloshed in my waders around my feet.  What the hell did he say?  Nuttindoinaina.  Miles from anything resembling civilization, I wasn’t scared, only caught off guard that I had to translate the native dialect in this land.  Nuttindoinaina was his way of asking, "Nothing going on huh?"  “Oh.  No.  Didn’t catch anything,” I answered.  He thanked me with a nod and a wave and drove off.  A few miles from the town of Gay (really...look it up), that was my first encounter with a real live native Yooper, a person from the upper peninsula of Michigan.  I’m thinking about going back, this time with a bike.

A Pastie is Like a Homemade Pot Pie

Traveling through Wisconsin, there is no physical border going into Upper Michigan.  It’s porous, sort of like Mexico.  The roads get skinnier, the signs for restaurants selling Pasties get more frequent and four wheelers seem to be the preferred mode of summer travel.  In winter they use “sleds.”  We call them snow machines or snow mobiles.  Coming through Lower Michigan however, you have the majestic Mackinac Bridge linking Mackinaw City with Saint Ignace in the UP.  It towers so high and stretches so long; you’d think a northern San Francisco is on the other side, not summer cabins.  As I discovered last night, the Mackinac Bridge is a Strava segment.  As I also learned, it must be the most elusive Strava segment ever.  I kinda want it.

It’s a 4.4 mile segment with 180 feet of elevation gain.  It’s a bridge, up one side and down the other for a zero net pitch.  The KOM is 16.1mph.  Don Kring of Grand Rapids bagged it in a time of 16:24.  I have no idea who Mr. Kring is since his Strava profile photo is a picture of a sock that says “I Heart Beer” but I thought I could easily take this one while on vacation.  There’s nothing better than bagging out of town segments, leaving the locals to scratch their heads wondering who “that guy” is.  It’s an odd segment; only 16 cyclists are on the leaderboard, not the triple digits we see in major cities or tourist destinations.  Still Mr. Kring’s KOM has stood since September 4^th, 2011.  Now I realize why he rests easy.  No one will have a chance to beat him for another few weeks. 

“If we go here, we are so doing this bridge,” I said to my wife.  I could average 16.1mph over four miles in cutoffs on a beach cruiser with a puppy in a flower basket.  Then I looked at Don Kring’s ride where he set the KOM on the Mackinac Bridge.  He rolled a very respectable 76.1 miles in 4 hours.  He ain’t no slouch.  He wasn’t riding platform pedals or stopping at the pastie-selling tavern I imagine on the other side.  There’s got to be more to this bridge than data allows.  

DALMAC2009

It's no bike path noodle.  There are deep dish wheel-yanking jacket-puffing 40mph winds howling across the deck.  I heard rumors of a steel mesh deck, sasquatches and trolls too, but haven’t seen proof.  Reader Holly told me she was once on the bridge in a car over Thanksgiving.  On windy days, the police will caravan the cars to limit the speed.  Halfway across, they closed the bridge.  Ice chunks were breaking loose from the cables and pelting Holly’s car.  I understand Mr. Kring didn’t set the KOM in November’s Edmund Fitzgerald sinking gale force winds.  It was early September, where temperatures are in the lower 70’s, the leaves start thinking about changing colors and Da Yoopers start thinking about their sleds.  Digging into it, nearly all the people on the leaderboard rode the bridge in September.  2^nd Place rode on Sept 2^nd, 2012.  5^th Place rode on September 6^th 2009.  

According to our readers on Facebook Jeni and Seldomseen, native Yoopers from what I gather, the bridge is only open once or twice a year for pedestrian traffic, otherwise it’s a freeway.  One event authorities open the bridge for is the DALMAC bicycle tour, which takes place annually from Lansing to Mackinaw around Labor Day.  However, the 2013 application deadline has passed.  It’s a multi-day bike/camping tour.  So now you can guess that Mr. Kring might have set that KOM with some heavy gear as he rode up and over the Mackinac Bridge with strong crosswinds.  Either that or he took part in the Mackinaw City Bike Tour.  This year’s event is on September 15^th.  Click here for details.  There’s still time for that, but only 400 some spots are available according to the website.  Like the Eminem song “Lose Yourself,” also a Michigan original, if you want this KOM, don’t let the opportunity slip.  The Mackinac Bridge is the most elusive Strava segment ever.

Bikefucious: A Flat Is Good Team Training

Bad Bikefucius Rendering

PSSssss!  I heard it, looked back from my drops and saw it was my teammate Mark.  “Flat!”  I shouted over the buzz of 30 hubs on Binning, a one-lane beat-up twisting flat farm road famous for chewing up tubes.  It was a pinch flat for sure.  I held up a hand, moved left and eased up to help.  A third teammate, Kris stopped too.  As I look back on the flat, it’d be a great team drill, perfect for a budding team of juniors or a group of mismatched hammer headed masters alike. 

Try this team drill on for size.  Put a cable cutter in your jersey pocket.  At a rest stop with an hour back to civilization, split the team ride into two evenly matched groups.  Tell the 1^st bunch they’ll get a 30 second lead and send them out.  Then immediately turn to the 2^nd group, snip the valve stem off the fastest person’s front wheel and shout, “Go!” 

Actual Flat Tire Fix

We laid the bikes at the edge of the farm field and tag teamed the flat.  Mark stripped the old tube out.  Kris unraveled the fresh rubber.  Like a 14 year old junior, I man-stared across the field.  Just like Belgium, for every one mile of road, two miles of ditches.  In a few months we won’t be able to see above the corn.  Mark woke me out of my day dream, tossed me the old tube to roll up and began dressing the new one.  Diagnosing it as a pinch flat and not debris saved us time.  Kris aired it up as I stuffed the old tube in Mark’s saddle bag.  We were off in a respectable 3-4 minutes. 

Cincinnati's Binning Road Rendering

Changing a flat quickly is half the battle.  Now you need to try and close a 3-4 minute gap in an hour.  Not that blazing group rides aren’t fun, but I love me some good team paceline and the challenge of the chase.  The strongest rider pulls longer not harder.  Hands on the drops, backs flat, we traded even pulls the whole way back.  Elbows flicked and the momentum flowed forward.  No one got gapped off crossing the railroad tracks.  Instead of fighting for air in pursuit of a KOM, we gauged each other’s efforts and kept the group together up the last climb.  As we crested, we could make out a rider turning left ¾ of a mile down the road, almost there, but not quite.

Ten minutes later, we turned the corner into the shop lot.  The other guys still hadn’t taken off their helmets.  They must have just stopped, and were sitting on their top tubes chatting.  While we didn’t close it down completely, we probably weren’t more than 1-2 minutes off the pace.  When you look at it upside down, if the flat cost us 4 minutes, we still took 2 minutes back from the fastest guys in town. 

Bikefucious say: only when you fall back can you move forward.  Teach a team to close a gap and you’ll give a team confidence to bust a breakaway.

Warning: Bike Jersey May Cause Hallucinations

Like I was a speedy splash of color, perplexed and off balance, she cringed, hunched and looked cockeyed upward at me. An Annie eyed guy, who I assumed was her boyfriend, held her by her upper arm to keep her from falling as she tried to make sense of the streaming colors of my approaching team kit. Both skinny, pale faced and red-eyed, they freaked out on my team kit, she more than him. What made it odder was that they didn’t say a word and instead contorted their bodies toward the railing to allow my trailing colors to pass. That happened 100 yards after I was caught off guard by Raccoon Man.

With an red-collared pet adolescent Raccoon clinging to his upper back, in a cool with the world voice he said, “no problem brother,” as I gave him a heads up that I was approaching. I silently worried that the Raccoon would freak out and jump on me or over the railing into the river. “Thanks man,” I said and looked at my clock. Yep. Sure enough. It was just past 8 p.m. again on the western pedestrian walkway of Cincinnati’s Roebling Suspension Bridge.

The bridge, a model for New York’s Brooklyn Bridge that locals call “the pretty bridge,” seems to lure a cast of castaways late in the evening, about the same time I wrap up my northern Kentucky rides and cross the bridge to head home before dark. As far as I can tell, the traffic of characters seems to travel southward into Covington, Kentucky this time of day. Judging that below the bridge on the Cincinnati side of the Ohio River is a makeshift homeless camp, I’m guessing that maybe a shelter or a soup kitchen opens on the Covington side of the bridge around 8:30 p.m. Maybe these folks are heading in for the night or to grab a free bite. As I digested my encounter while rolling past Great American Ballpark, home of the Reds, I couldn’t help but think that she could be on the cusp of needing medical attention. I looked around thinking I might see a police officer. I didn’t see one. So I, like the hallucinating couple and Raccoon Man, went about my business of getting to where I was going.

Hungry Covered Bridge Chows Down Another Cyclist in 2009

I dare not venture underneath the Covered Bridge, but curiosity may get the best of this cat next time through. Last night the Covered Bridge tallied another victim. The 2^nd I’ve been party to this year. The rider made it through thankfully with all his teeth and parts intact. A severely bent Easton rim was the only toll the bridge exacted from him for trying to ride the tire-width gapped planks of the bridge deck. (For more on the history of the bridge and past victims, see previous articles here)

While he was relatively lucky, I can only imagine in the years of the bridge's existence, others may not have fared as well losing bottles, keys, seat bags, deraileurs, even whole bikes to the bridge. I’m convinced that underneath the Covered Bridge lies not a peaceful Clermont County creek with buzzing dragonflies and flowered lily pads, but a gaping purgatory of cycling history. A pile of bent chromed fork steel bikes with Mafac and Suntour serve the base for a mountain of dented aluminum Cannondales and despoked Mavic Open Pro’s dangling from Shimano hubs. These days the Covered Bridge hunger growls for carbon frames, Kyseriums, Sram Red and Campy 11.

Thankfully the rider, my teammate TJ, managed to stay upright and ride through the bridge's jaws. However, upon inspection at the exit of the bridge, the wheel was bent enough to hit the brake pads and stop on both sides when spun up. A secondary danger of the bridge is that it is about twenty miles from Cincinnati, a long walk or miserable wait to call and get a ride home. Without anyone in the group carrying a spoke wrench, the wheel was passed to Mitch, an expert mechanic and owner of BioWheels in Madeira. Mitch carefully found the bent area on the wheel, double checked his precise diagnosis and BANG! With a single resounding whomp against a tree, like a blacksmith he hammered it straight enough to ride home on. He added, that this was not the first time he wonked a wheel into shape at the Covered Bridge. It certainly won’t be the last.

Hungry Covered Bridge Snaps At Jimmy, Jimmy Bites Back

It was dinner time.  Just coming out of hibernation of a relatively cyclist free winter, the bridge was hungry that day my friend.  Like the foul breath of a sleeping monster, you could feel the warm wet wind rush through.  Lying in wait for the perfect prey, the bridge let four pass its jaws before it set its starved eyes on Jimmy, the young meaty looking one.  Right away, the bridge could tell that Jimmy was different.  Obvious from the hundred yard approach, Jimmy’s shorts were black with no logos.  Jimmy's jersey was grey and baggy, making him appear plumper and juicier.  Oblivious to the hunger pangs of the bridge, Jimmy was marked before his rubber met the wood.  Doomed.

Jimmy wasn’t a newbie by definition.  Jimmy raced cyclocross last season.  Jimmy’s been mountain biking, but Jimmy still had to master a few odd ball trappings of the road, one being The Hungry Covered Bridge.  The four that passed knew the carnage that the covered bridge was capable of delivering.  At one time or another all had dabbed upon crossing, and although it’s never been confessed, I hear one had lost a wheel to the bridge.  The first four respected the bridge and its foot-wide deck boards separated by a wheel grabbing inch and a half gap from each other.  In turn, the bridge respected their skills.  Each rider no doubt could ride on top of a roadside curb for 75 feet without turning into the grass or dropping onto the street.  A foot wide deck plank was no trouble anymore.  Not for Jimmy.

The bridge could see that Jimmy’s handlebars weren’t quite as steady as the others on the approach.  Jimmy had a new bike, a beautiful Trek Madone.  Having ridden it for only a few weeks, Jimmy was still getting used to the racy feel, the Madone being more twitchy than a steady cyclocross our mountain bike.  Jimmy saw the first four enter the bridge on the right.  Probably guessing he should give the others some room, he stuck left.  Jimmy knew the bridge had gaps between the planks, but Jimmy didn’t know what the others took for common knowledge.  Probably being hand-built, the plank widths weren’t uniform.  The widest deck planks were about three feet right of center.  The bridge drew another foul breath and opened its jaws.

Jimmy entered the uphill appoach which placed him on a 10 inch wide plank.  Like a skilled rider, Jimmy knew the bike will follow the eyes.  Concentrating, Jimmy looked ahead down the bridge.  However, since he was entering on a hill, he had not seen the first few feet of the bridge's deck.  Jimmy’s mountain biking logic betrayed him.  Jimmy didn’t see that the plank he had entered on was thinner than the others, broken and narrowed to only 6 inches at the other end.  With an unsteady twitch of the new Madone’s front end, he veered toward the abyss, a five to six inch gap in the bridge deck.  Jimmy’s wheel dipped.  Jimmy’s bike flipped.  Jimmy nearly s*&%, but Jimmy bit back.  Literally.  With a big bone shattering chomp that echoed through the gaping mouth of the covered bridge, Jimmy bit that bridge with enough force to break his front tooth.  (Look closely at photo.  That's Jimmy's blurry tongue poking between his front teef)

Jimmy quickly got up and dusted himself off.  We inspected Jimmy’s bike.  Jimmy’s bike was still rideable.  Jimmy was shaken, but aside from the tooth, unbroken.  Jimmy picked up his tooth (seen in photo), stuffed it in his jersey pocket, mounted up and rode remarkably strong and in good spirits with the group the twenty or so miles home.

 Before he made a call to the dentist this morning Jimmy sent me an email to thank us for making sure he was okay the whole way home.  Jimmy added kiddingly, and I quote, “next time I cross that bridge I am bringing matches.”

For more history on the Hungry Covered Bridge read this previous entry titled "When It's Okay To Bail Mid-Ride"