Fortunately, Unfortunately

When I was a kid we had a picture book that may or may not have been entitled, Fortunately, Unfortunately. I remember almost nothing about the story except that every thing that happened kept alternating between a Fortunately and an Unfortunately. The day of our first century, from Berwick PA to State College PA, was a little like that.

The day started well enough. Fortunately, we managed to beat the rain leaving Berwick, and after a couple short detours we were cruising. Unfortunately, my front derailleur (the gadget that pushes the chain from one gear to another) was acting up, so I pulled over to attempt to fix it but kind of made it worse instead. Back on the road it (Fortunately) wasn't bringing me down too much, and Kyle R., Katie and I got some sweet pacelines going and knocked off a big chunk of miles averaging almost 20mph.

Around this time my cyclocomputer stopped working (Unfortunately). This is the gadget that tells me how fast I'm going, how far I've gone, and a few other pieces of less crucial information. It also takes a beating, as it's strapped to my handlebars in all sorts of weather. Some water or road grit or something got inside the little bugger, because the button that changes the display mode stopped working. This meant that for much of the rest of the day I was stuck in clock mode and unable to see my mileage, which is a problem because all of our route directions are based on mileage. Fortunately, at this point I was riding with other people who had working computers, so they could keep us on track.

The middle of the day was great: nice weather, beautiful scenery, making good time and having a great time. Until ten or fifteen miles after lunch #1 (on 90+ mile days we have two lunches), when I got my first flat--ever. Fortunately, everyone I was riding with stopped to wait while I fixed it and we were back on the road before too long.

Unfortunately, on a curvy, hilly section of the ride about ten miles later, I got flat #2. Learned the hard way to check my tire more thoroughly when fixing a flat. Also unfortunately, the people I had been riding with had just rounded a bend and didn't hear me yell that I was stopping. Unfortunately again, on closer inspection my tire was full of little pieces of crap, and I decided that I needed a new tire. Fortunately, I had a spare tire in my bag in the van. Unfortunately, I had no cell service to call the van. Nor did anyone else that rode by. So I asked them to keep riding and keep checking their phones, so that as soon as they had service they could get through to the van, but no one ever got through.

Two hours later I'm still sitting by the side of the road when sweep rolls up. (In case I haven't explained it already, each day two riders are designated to ride sweep. This means that they will ride at the very end for the entire day, and help anyone they encounter with problems they may be having. They also carry a first aid kit, extra tire tubes and extra snacks.) Fortunately, Lindsay and Emma, who were sweep that day, picked up my mood in a major way. Also fortunately, Lindsay had the idea (that should have occurred to me two hours earlier) to walk down to the nearest house to use their landline. (In my defense, none of the houses were exactly visible through the woods so it wasn't an obvious option. Even so, I will never make that mistake again.)

So, fortunately, Lindsay got ahold of the van and they headed back toward us. Unfortunately, it was another half hour before the van got there, and then it took me 15 minutes or so to switch the tire. All in all I was stuck on that hill for 2 hours and 45 minutes, which is an ETERNITY in cycling time, the equivalent of 30 miles of fairly hilly terrain, almost a third of the total distance for the day.

Fortunately, once I was moving again I was in a pretty good mood. Lindsay and I ride at generally the same pace, but unfortunately Emma's bike was stuck in second gear in front, which was slowing her down a lot on hills. So the pace was slower that I wanted to ride, but with my computer wigging out I couldn't set off on my own or I would miss the turns.

Fortunately it was still a gorgeous day and the scenery was still lovely: short rolling hills of farmland. Many of the farms were Amish, and we waved to a lot of people driving horse-drawn buggies in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, the wind had picked up, and by the time we left second lunch there was a considerable headwind. Lindsay, Emma and I tried to paceline but we kept losing Emma on the hills so it wasn't really worth it.

As a Fortunately/Unfortunately aside, I had unfortunately forgotten to call my old friend Kevin (who currently lives in State College) until that morning, when I left him a message. Fortunately, just around second lunch he called me back and we arranged to meet up that evening. Assuming I made it in before midnight, that is.

Back on the road, my computer had fortunately gotten stuck in auto mode, which scrolls through displaying the trip mileage, trip time, clock, and total mileage. Since I could finally see the mileage (even though it had reset itself a bunch of times since that morning) I set off on my own in an attempt to make it into State College in time to get to the bike shop before they closed at 7, so they could look at my derailleur, which was still having fairly serious problems.

Unfortunately, once I left Lindsay and Emma I was without anything to distract me from brooding about how ed I was to have been stranded, and how much pain I was in.

Some very unfortunate backstory: starting on about the second or third ride day, I had been having severe, stabbing pain in my upper back. At the beginning it would start around mile 40, but since the days were ending at mile 50 or 60 it wasn't that bad. But as the days wore on, the pain started earlier and earlier, and the days lasted longer and longer. By the time we left Berwick the pain was starting after only 10 or 15 miles.

So, to wrap up this story, I fortunately made it into State College in time to go to the bike shop, and they fixed my derailleur and gave me a couple suggestions on seat and handlebar adjustments to help the back pain. Unfortunately, I was in an absolutely foul mood. While everyone else was celebrating completing our first century, I was sitting out on the porch trying to fix my bike in the middle of a thunderstorm, while sobbing with exhaustion and frustration and trying to eat some dinner at the same time.

Fortunately, I finally settled things with my bike, got myself showered, and called Kevin. He came up to the house where we were staying and the two of us walked around the block and had a great time, albeit brief, catching up.

After Kevin left I went upstairs and collapsed into bed (read: Thermarest and sleeping bag on the floor with a fleece sweatshirt for a pillow) for some very, very well-deserved sleep.

A first attempt to catch up

Wow, I have been a terrible blogger. I log in to blogger for the first time in weeks and the title of my most recent post, "one state down..." is a jarring reminder of how badly I have been keeping up with this. We are now in our eighth state since that last post. New York, New Jersey (for about 10 miles), Pennsylvania (and its three separate mountain ranges), West Virginia (for under 10 miles), Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois have rolled away under our tires. Yesterday we crossed the mighty Mississippi into St. Louis, the "gateway to the west."

The road here has been long, and it has been short. It feels at once as though we've been on this journey together for months, and as though we've just begun. It's very hard to believe that we've gone about a third of the distance from Boston to Santa Barbara, and that the days will soon tick down to the halfway marker.

Anyway, there are many stories to tell and very little internet time to tell them in. After a short swing through New York and an even shorter swing through New Jersey, we entered Pennsylvania: I somehow lost some pictures so this is from someone else's camera, and I couldn't find anyone else who had a copy of the picture of us turning around so that New Jersey would be in the background and spelling out NJ. Alas. New Jersey doesn't really count anyway.

Our first destination in PA was Mt. Pocono. Stop and think about that for a second.

Yes, our destination was the top of a mountain. I don't have the elevation graph from the cue sheet on hand to show you, but it was relatively flat for the most of the day before curving upward exponentially--not exaggerating--in the last 10 miles. The last 3 miles in particular were a single unrelenting ascent, which was slow and laborious but punctuated by inspirational chalk messages on the road from the riders that the front of the pack and a poster taped to a speed limit sign by one rider's unexpectedly visiting girlfriend that read "Almost there Bike & Build!" And waiting on the church lawn at the top of the hill were my parents, who were almost as excited to see me as Arlo, our puppy. After a nice dinner with the folks at the only restaurant in town I headed back to the church and they headed back to Ithaca.

The next morning we set off for Berwick, PA, famous for a nuclear power plant, a Wise potato chip factory and a ridiculously good high school football team. That evening we were featured on the local news, supposedly including part of an interview with me, but I still haven't seen it. I also got another visit, this time from Billy, a friend from Providence who has since moved back home to eastern PA. The next morning we rolled out of town with the steam from the nuclear power plant silhouetted in the sunrise.


The day out of Berwick was our first century: our first 100 mile day. For me it was also the day that everything started going wrong...