This post is to say thank you to those who donated in support of my 100 mile AIDS Ride For Life yesterday, my friends and especially my aunts and uncles and parents. With your help I raised $544 dollars for the Southern Tier AIDS program! I write to share about the experience of this ride.
We were about 280 riders, starting at a park in downtown Ithaca in the dark morning, and then stretching into a line of colorful jerseys as we threaded ourselves up a grand hill overlooking the lake. We headed north on the east side of the lake, fields of soybeans golden for harvest backdropped by the hills and the lake nestled below. Cows, white farm houses, riders passing you or you passing others. The fluid flow of physical movement lulling me into a gentle trance. The sun was behind clouds, the wind was at our backs. We flew.
A ride like this has such a sense of community, anyone has reason to talk to anyone ("nice bike!", "Is this your first year?", "How about this hill!"), given our common goal and shared suffering. All sweating and in stupid outfits. It's a beautiful thing to be part of.
I met so many people, and i wish I could check in with all of them now, how was it?, how did it feel to finish? Little conversations to pass the miles, pedaling together if our speeds matched, or maybe only a momentary greeting if someone was flying past another. Mr Plant Biology, Miss Spiky Grey Hair I'd seen from contra dancing, Mr Cornell Police Dude, Orthopedic Surgeon Avi, Mini-Santa Ned who'd ridden 17 years and was here with his brother, and Mr Head Brewer at Bacchus Brewery and his buddy, Struggling Trevor. No-Nonsense Laura of the Spectacular Tattoos. I rode sometime with Mr Dentist, both of us talking of my grandfather, oh small town. "You're the granddaughter of JD Wayman?!?" he exclaimed, "let me tell you, I used to keep a cigar in my pocket when I'd be with your grandad and when I'd get tired of listening to him, I'd pull it out and he'd go away. He hated them."
After we had pedaled through Montezuma Swamp (me admiring the dark muck soils sporting tremendous soybeans), we turned south to ride the western side of the lake. The headwind now was like biking into a wall. I was going about half the speed I had been on the east side. The sun was out now, baking beating heat, and riders could be found resting under trees along the route. Everyone checking in with everyone, "doin ok? Need any water?"
"I feel like I'm pedaling in SAND" said Mr Brewer. This was apt; to expel so much energy and feel like a giant hand is rudely pushing you backwards is disheartening indeed.
For me there was a period in this hot blasting wind where I felt like a single life boat alone at sea; no other riders around and how I wished for my powerful large uncle (who had ridden last year) to cut a hole in the wind for me. But I thanked my times in Southeast Asia and South America for having given me experiences like this so many times before. I wasn't scared out alone on that windy treeless empty stretch; I was stoic and i knew what I needed to do: drink electrolytes, eat tiny amounts of sugar frequently, go and keep going.
I had no question whether I'd finish the ride, the only question was how much suffering there would be.
A joyous moment was coming upon Mini-Santa Ned in the overwhelming wind, and amidst a choppy conversation we began tacitly drafting each other. Trading off punching that hole in the wind, like two geese in a little formation. I felt we had a bond, this retired satellite engineer and young organist. It was all big grins when I found him again after the finish line.
When I have seven and a half hours in the saddle, sometimes the best way to remember the day is through specific little moments.
--The moment looking north and seeing not the continuation of the lake, as I had for the first hours, but seeing the curving end of it. The northern most tip, the part I rarely get to see, and I'd arrived there under my own power.
-- That moment in astonishment, where I surface from a response I made so fast I didn't even realize what happened. I had just joined a line of youth who were biking with their mentor, a tight pack on speed bikes tucked close as if they were racing. This was the unbearably windy portion of the day and i tacked myself to the end of the line to participate in the drafting. But without warning a boy ahead of slammed on his brakes and his bike was then fully longways across my trajectory. In one amazing movement I grabbed my brakes so hard the rear wheel bucked high, I lifted my right leg and arced it over the seat, and somehow got my left leg out of the stirrup. I found myself standing, holding my bike, and facing this kid. My heart was blasting, but I had avoided one of those terrible gangly tangles of bikes and riders. It was miraculous. Thank you Right Leg.
--Seeing a Wayne County sign, the county in which I grew up! And here I was, bicycle riding adult, touching back in.
--The nearly transcendent moment of ice coffee at the lunch stop. Cooling caffeine power yeah!
--Sitting on the pavement after 70 miles in a sliver of shade at a rest stop, legs asplay, holding ice to various limbs to cool them, and reaching out to introduce myself to Laura of Tattoo. She looked fierce but also beaten, and i was drawn to this combination. Maybe i looked the same way too.
--Finishing a conversation about chloroplasts and peptides and ribosomes with a Mr Peptide (who had noticed my bike parked at Cornell actually) and then finding a descent upon us, revving up in nerdy rejoicing and hitting 44 mph zipping down that hill.
--A Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Uninspiring bread with a flippant spread of peanut butter and gooey jam, not to the corners, but irregardless, eating this made chimes ring and symbols clash it was so pleasing and needed. My body knows what food it wants (or doesn't--some oatmeal made me feel deadened and I had to stop eating it) by responding with joyous taste buds. The route was peppered with rest stops for us, so I ate and drank myself around the lake with ease.
The following occurred with Ned and his brother, probably 80 miles in and this illustrates how fried of brain I can become while riding, even though the legs are still churning out miles.
[Scene: something regarding helmets and styles thereof]
Ned: "Well YOUR helmet TOO."
Brother: "What, are you commenting on its age? Like what century it's from?"
Sandra: "It's like....the ones you'd wear, [trying to get at gladiator], the Romans...um, in the arenas. My brain is fried."
Ned: "I'm surprised it's not leather"
Sandra: "What?! My brain?"
Ned: "No! His helmet."
Laughs and legs and views and good people. What a special day.
