Sunday, We Raced The Train

A handful of riders were polled.  What makes a good group road ride?  They answered: a steady pace, the “best” riders in town, a challenging route.  Obviously those 5 riders skewed the results by having Bath Salts in their water bottles.  I’d answer with road rarity, pleasant conversation, good friends, animal sightings, blue skies, temperature in the mid 70’s, low humidity, great views, and a small general store.  If you said average speed, few stops or anything having to do with physically riding the bike, you need to stop treating your bathroom as a pantry. 

Rolling To Visalia on Decoursey Pike in Kenton Co. KY

“Looks like I missed a good one yesterday,” Mitch, the owner of BioWheels bike shop, said to me Monday night.  “Yeah.  Great route.  Nice pace.” I tossed back too quickly.  Before my Bath Salt brain could dig for specifics, the phone rang.  Mitch answered.  I finished the conversation in my head as I concentrated on wrapping my wife’s handlebars with new tape and getting the spacing just right, no visible logos.  I’m thinking maybe it was the chat at the Visalia convenience store’s picnic table that made the ride so special.  I’m not sure what it was about, but it was light hearted, definitely not politics or even a hint of negativity.  Then I remembered the turn off the beaten path up a road called Moffett in rural Kenton County Kentucky.  To date, there are only 4 people on the Moffett Strava Segment KOM list, all of them on Sunday’s ride.  The climb crested at a farm with two horses at the fence, one umbrella tree an infinite amount of green rolling hills.

In Cincinnati, people rave about the Hyde Park Kroger grocery store with an in-house Starbucks, Sushi chef and wine tasting bar.  While the price tag of the designer jeans and shades of Eastside shoppers may rival the carbon fashion show I see on the Wednesday night ride, the best cycling food stops have no aisles.  There’s nothing better than leaning your bike under a hand painted sign that reads “General Store” and hearing your cleats clop across boot-worn splintering hardwood floors.  You better bring cash.  They make change from a lock box.  If they do take credit cards, the scanner is the analog beep-booop-beee type.  Better yet, they don’t sell gas.  In our area I’m partial to the Claysville and Rabbit Hash General Stores.  It’s a well earned 2 hour ride to either.  Third on my list is the store we stopped at Sunday in Visalia where 536 crosses the Licking River.  While it’s not as historic, far away or nostalgic, it has a picnic table out front.  If you approach from the South, it comes as a nice highlight at the end of a two mile one lane road that parallels the railroad tracks called “Vises Trail.”  Sunday, we took the turn off under the bridge and raced the train as its whistle screamed loud enough to raise goose bumps on my legs.

Technically, it is a barn.

Even after living here for 12 years, a former cheesehead, Kentucky horse farms still hold a mystique for me.  The horse farm on Sunday’s ride was small compared to those outside of Lexington.  There you’ll see horses along the white roadside fence with gorgeous shiny brass bridals, some even with their name on them.  In the distance, the freshly painted wooden fencing leads to an exquisite barn that makes your suburban home look like a refrigerator box under an overpass.  Periodically, you’ll see horses with hoods over their heads, ghost horses.  At first glance it seems a little cruel their eyes are covered up.  Yesterday the horses didn’t have hoods and their whole heads were swarming with flies.  I learn something every time.  The two, one brown one black, were grazing under a tree near the top of the Moffett Road climb.  It was the only patch of shade in their corral.  I felt bad our presence made them shy away and saunter into the sun.  Still it was gorgeous.  We were on top of a ridgeline, horses in the foreground and a sea of soft green hills and valleys in every direction.

What were we talking about again?

Autonearbyu Syndrome: How To Lose Schababerle

Schababerle, the 2nd race in the Ohio Valley Spring Road Series is this weekend.  Here's a summary of survival for those making the trip to this spring classic climb in Northern Kentucky.


Autonearbyu Syndrome:

The incessant urge to quit every time your sniveling broken body passes your car at the intersection of California Cross and Rt. 10.

Toasters:

The crowd of people along the last pitch of the climb who have done this race enough to never do it again and have resorted to heckling your sorry ass as you deliver the mail.

El Perro De Tres Patas

The legendary three legged dog of Schababerle lives along the descent back to California Cross.  Unlike Ghost Dog who lives on Rt. 8 between Mentor and Silver Grove, at least you’ll see El Tres coming.  The issue is, at this point, you’ve finally caught your breath from the climb and closing gaps in the crosswind and all you want to do is chill in the pack.  It’s the perfect spot for El Tres to get a jump on eating you.  Think of it like this.  Ghost Dog comes out of nowhere, from behind another team’s unseen lead out train like Robbie McEwen.  El Tres attacks are as conspicuous as a bag of leaves in a windstorm, much like Cadel Evans.  You’ll see and hear him well before he gets you.  However, because you’re just getting your eyesight back from being over your lactate threshold for the last 20 minutes, you’re easy pickin’s.  El Tres doesn’t come out ever year.  Judging from the fact that he barely raises his head sometimes, it’s been rumored that El Tres has been high on doggy Ritalin from time to time.  El Tres will never die.  If he does there’s no shortage of three-leggers in Kentucky to take his place.

God-schooled-ya:

Realizing that Godzulla, the diabolical founder of this race with the tattoo arm warmers in the mis-matched Xavier kit who attacked from the gun on Rt. 10 just to mess with you, finished in front of you.  (See Fat Boy 10 Attack)

The Fat Boy 10 Attack

From the start at Flintlocks, with 5 or 6 times up the beast in your future, you’d think it’d be a rather mellow ride up Schababerle at least the first time, at least until the toaster, at least until the first pitch.  Nuh-uh.


If you’re unfamiliar with the toaster, Schababerle is actually a nice scenic climb with two slight stretches of quad relieving lulls on the way up.  The toaster is the last pitch to the tippy top.  When you get there it will feel like riding down and into a BMX style half pipe. Then you’ll realize it’s bigger than anything you’ve seen on the X-Games.  Frantically you’ll dump it into your lowest gear.  If you don’t drop your chain shifting from your 53-17 to your 39-27 at the wrong moment, you’ll soon find yourself looking at your cassette thinking that you brought the wheel with the 12-23.  


That said, no doubt, a slightly grizzly looking dude in an unfamiliar kit will attack well before the base of the climb on Rt. 10.  You’ll write him off as a big boy trying to get a jump on the climb and let him go.  He will be followed by three or four others thinking that his effort to get his caboose on the climb before everyone else is a good idea.  However, 5 guys up the road in different kits tends to make the alarm bells go off, especially knowing that the right turn into Schababerle and the first left on the climb will stretch the pack into a long 2-3 rider wide line.  No matter how you cut it, you’ll be following multiple attacks and be on the edge of crying for mama between bouts of the pukes before your Garmin even registers a change in elevation. 

Hell Hole:

The port-a-poddy along the backstop by the Flintlocks softball field that’s been there all winter and just beginning to thaw.  Guy tip: remove your sunglasses from your helmet before peeing.  Girl tip: invest in a Bumper Dumper.

“Sin” Ders

If you bought brand new road tires for the season, take them off your bike now.  Obviously you’ve never ridden in Mentor, KY in March.  You see, they don’t use salt on the roads here in winter.  Calcium chloride and beat juice are for pussy-towns like Cincinnati.  There’s a giant coal power plant just down the river.  When the coal is burned, cinders are the result.  It’s burnt up coal, what is referred to as coal ash.  Questionably biodegradable, it’s a wonderful thing.  It doesn’t really melt ice or snow.  Instead, being much like teeny tiny shards of black glass, they spread it on the roads.  It embeds itself into the tires of cars, essentially turning them into studded tires.  Brilliant!  It works exactly the same way with bike tires.  Only, your tires are .7 mm thick.  Suddenly those brand new Conti GP 4000 S’s have a hundred cuts on them.  Inside each cut is a microscopic black piece of glass.  If you don’t pull them all out after the race you’ll get flats for weeks.  My best advice: put your crappy-old out-of-fashion light blue Michelin tires on.  The best thing you can do is avoid the "black sand" and every time you hear a rider say “gravel” imagine them saying “glass.”  Throw your tires away after the race.

Indiana:

The state of residence for the winner of your race whose jersey you’ve never seen in your life.

My Bike Bromance

Like the a bratwurst rolling out of the bun at the ball game, he fell to the ground in his skinsuit hooting and hollering, jiggling and wiggling. I love bratwurst and in a Scrubs guy-love kind of way, I love Tony. Despite the scruffy beard and thick glasses, I couldn’t resist. I pounced on him screaming. Woots all around. After years of disappointments, near misses and countless training rides in crappy weather and dank basements, my teammate and bud Tony Franklin won his first cyclocross race and the Kentucky State Cat 3 Master 35+ Championships. I wouldn’t doubt he crapped his chamois when he saw me roll in 2nd. It was also the first race ever that we went 1-2, an amateur cycling wet dream. You better get a hanky or some triple-ply toilet paper, because this two-wheeled bromance gets even juicer and could evoke a man tear.

I got a typical Tony call last Thursday, full of stress, self doubt and tragedy. He was asking how hard it was to get reimbursed for a race after already signing up on Truesport. “What? You’re not gonna race?” I enquired. He said something like, naw man. I just got too much going on. My shifter is totally busted making this awful nose and I don’t think I can get it fixed in time. Plus I gotta work late Saturday night. I’ll be up till two in the morning. It’s just gonna be too much. Being a helpful bro as possible, I gave him a line on the promoter’s email address and offered to pick up his reimbursement when I got to the Storm the Greens course in Louisville. In true guy fashion, the whole conversation took about 1 minute and 23 seconds.

Then it stewed in my head. I woke up Saturday morning thinking WTF. It’s the Kentucky State Championships and for the last 2-3 races only one or two guys from Kentucky have been as fast as my Kentucky bro. He practically had a lock on the podium. If he could hold his fitness and the cross gods would shine down upon him at the race, he had a pretty damn good chance at winning the State Championships. Shit Tony. What are you doing? Plus, I had figured out earlier in the week that if I won the race and my closest competition in the series finished 4^th, I could win the series. I needed him in the race on the outside chance he could finish behind me but in front of the series leader to give me the finishing spread I needed. There was a chance I could win the race and the series and, since I am from Ohio, he could win the KY State Champs. I called him at 10am. Sure I had an ulterior motive, but I also have a big heart for Tony. He’s the type of guy that can get knocked down a hundred times and still come back for more. I didn’t want to see him to have nine months of regrets and give up on a big opportunity. I also had an ulterior motive not to hear him bitch on every single ride for the next nine months that he could’ve won that race.

I all but offered my own bike. “Dude, if you need a shifter, I’ll pull the one off my road bike for ya. Plus I got some Sram Force 10sp in a box that I was planning to upgrade my road bike with, but you can use it this weekend if you want. C’mon man. If you’re too busy, just drop your bike off and I’ll put it on there for ya.” As it turned out, Tony scavenged up a Tiagra shifter on Friday, but still wasn’t sure about having to work late and get up before dawn to drive to Louisville. I started to get mushy on him. “I was just thinking that it’s the KY State Championships. You’re riding really well bud. I think you got a shot at the podium…and…uh…I…I don’t want you to miss it.”

He said something like, “Aw man, I know ya love me. Thanks for thinking of me. Let me think about it.” I added, “by the way I’m about to head out for a little pre-race ride if ya want to join me.” He obliged and on the last of three leg opening sprints, he beat me. I’m pretty sure right then and there he made the decision to race. And, now you know…the rest…of the story. Good…………….day.

For more guy-love goodness check this out:

Screamy Holler Complete – Update Covington’s Devou Park Trail Build

While I was swinging the Rhino, I wondered what this section of trail at Devou would be called.  Running adjacent to Sleepy Hollow Road, Screamy Holler seemed to fit the dirt.  Quads scream on the way up.  You holler on the way down.  Woo hoo Devou!

On the previous trail day I attended, the flowers under the railroad trestle had yet to bloom.  Saturday the yellow flowers were almost surreal.

With the help of well over one hundred Give Back Cincinnati volunteers, CORA tackled the deepest bench cut sections to date at Covington’s Devou Park Mountain Bike Trail.  Some sections ended up being two feet deep on the steep ravine-side roughly two-thirds of the way up to the first vista point.  Section #5 was the toughest.  At the end of the day, it was all hands on dirt, to bench the last of it.

So far, the completed trail section is officially long enough to question whether you really want to hike all-the-way up or take your bike instead.  It’s an hour round trip on foot; at the tipping point to where riding a bike (and all the prep that goes along with it) might be the more logical choice. 

No doubt, Cincinnati’s longest sustained mountain bike climb, or downhill, depending on which way you see it, is complete.  

To learn more and take part in the next trail building day, visit the CORA website here.

A previous post about the first big trail day at Devou is here.

It's No Secret I Love The Cobbles - Cincinnati Cobblestone Streets

Sectors 14 and 15 could be right out your door in your hometown. While we all romanticize about the pave of the Paris-Roubaix race this Easter Sunday, the cobblestones pictured left are not part of any of the race's sectors.  They are on Cincinnati’s Riverfront.  They may look new, but in fact they are historic and harsh to ride on.  I rumble over them every now and then.  However,  I don't have to go as far as downtown to ride cobblestones.  You probably don't either.  Just a few blocks from my house is a parking lot for the Precinct Restaurant that used to be, judging from the old tracks imbedded in the blacktop, some sort of train or trolley stop.  The murals have faded on the trestle walls, but if you look closely at the concrete buttress.  You’ll see images of a trolley car and a historic Ohio River scene.  Below your feet, big long hand cut weather rounded cobbles.  Sure Paris-Roubaix has France, baguettes, the best bike riders and sometimes mud; but cobbles, cobbles are everywhere.  There's history and tradition in your own town if you veer off your normal route, drag your brakes and look around on your next ride.

Last night I did my typical recovery ride, but this time I took a few cobblestone detours through downtown Cincinnati Ohio and across the bridge to Newport and Covington in Kentucky.  The sector pictured above is in Covington.  I owe it to my buddy Tony for showing me the stretches of pave in Covington.  Whenever we ride through one he says in a forced thick Tomeke Boonen-esque accent, “Is no secret I lahv da cah-bulls.”  I’m certain he would say this if he were riding alone too. 

This sector is one of my favorites.  It’s a beautiful little hill leading from the Riverside Drive park up to 3rd street in the historic district of Covington east of the Roebling Suspension bridge.  I looked for a street sign, but there was none.  It may be an alley.  Like the photo shows, they go for a few blocks and it’s a climb no less.  Coming down, if you dare to lift your eyes away from the rumbling pave, you get a beautiful view of downtown Cincinnati with the Ohio River as a door mat.  For cyclists however, the more romantic view is upwards of cobbles pinched between historic homes with flowering window boxes and wrought iron fences.