The last time that I saw Mike was six years ago on a cool summer night in Vermont. We had ridden together for 200 miles to this house on the border of New York before his legs gave out and I left him behindIt was the first year that we had both started in randonneuring, and we had bonded in online forums as rookies, sharing tips and confessing to ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Last year, I volunteered to help with managing a 300k brevet and spent a bit of time on a beautiful May day with Chuck, another randonneur who was organizing the 300k and brimming with ideas for the club. I had a great time volunteering and thought to myself that if Chuck kept on organizing brevets, I wouldn't mind being his volunteer. Then Chuck ( Read more... )

It was 3am on what I remember as a cool May night. I was in my car, the old Benz, driving down Rt. 2A through Minuteman park to Hanscom Air Force base, and I saw a cyclist up ahead. Multiple lights on the bike and on himself, bags strapped to the frame, rider draped lean and low over a spring headwind. He was, of course, a randonneur. This was ( Read more... )

I woke in darkness, to the beeping of my alarm. It was 4:00 and time to go. After 20 hours of cycling, Mark and I only had a couple of hours of sleep before the schedule urged us to keep going. The accumulating fatigue seemed to be evident as we stumbled to pull our gear together and find our way out of the hotel grounds. The cabins that we ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

20 June 2009


( Read more... )

It was 3 am, in the middle of a Saturday morning in May. I was alone, on an empty country highway somewhere in the Pioneer Valley. The night was humid and damp and dark. I had just crashed my bicycle. Again. This crash wasn't as bad as last year's. I still had all of my teeth. But my left forearm was scraped up and bleeding. My shins just ( Read more... )

I was driving out to Westfield for another ride, with my friend, Jake, in the car. The week leading up to this had been busy for me (it seems that every week lately has been busy for me) and I hadn't had the time to do any real research on this ride. I just knew that it was a 300k that Don was hosting, which was all I needed to know. I've always ( Read more... )

I had not seen Don Podolski since my crash on D2R2 last year when, with a busted arm and broken teeth, I shook his hand and thanked him for putting the ride together. I had no hard feelings over how I crashed and freely admitted that such risks were part of the course, and it would've been folly to pretend otherwise. So it was that I dropped by ( Read more... )