This entry is coming to you from the moving desk of Brent (I don’t have an office, so it rotates between the public library, local coffee shops and various houses)
The past couple weeks have been full of many adventures and learning experiences. I totaled 170 miles last week, which is the most for me to date. (Not that much considering we hope to average (60-80 miles per day during the expedition) I was planning to ramp it up a bit this week, but as you read on you will learn that things didn’t exactly go as planned.
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| Cross-training! |
I graduated this past May, but daily learning has not ceased. Over the past couple weeks I have had a number of interesting learning experiences, some being more comfortable than others. A quick list of what I learned was, keep salt pills with you when riding, dogs don’t always want to play, check your tires regularly, always carry money on your bike, keep your eyes on the road and olive oil can attract attention! I shall now go into greater detail as to why and how learned each of these lessons.
Upon arriving back in the US I went out for a ride with Megan’s father and it was one of those warmer days with the whole heat dome being over the eastern US. We took off around 10:30/11:00 and when we walked out of the door it felt rather cool to me. We intended to ride for two hours at a leisurely pace. About halfway through the ride I remember thinking to myself, “Wow?, I usually sweat when I ride”…I was completely dry at the moment, but for some reason didn’t think about it any further as I attributed it to the “cooler temps when we started and the breeze you get while cycling.” I didn’t think about the fact that it was nearly 100 degrees out and I should have been sweating, and that was my mistake.
We neared the end of the ride, but it had only been one and a half hours, a bit short of our goal. We said ah well, everything happens for a reason and headed back to the house. (which was a good choice) When we got back I took my helmet off and my hair was completely dry, but a few minutes later I began sweating profusely, had flushed skin and got sick to my stomach. (I won’t provide any details) All of these were signs of heat exhaustion, which I should have recognized when I wasn’t sweating at all. Luckily we were at the house so I was able to drink water and get to a cool shower right away and felt much better about 30 minutes later.
After some research we determined I had heat exhaustion due to salt depletion or hyponatremia. We ruled out dehydration, because I had been drinking tons of fluids and my urine was clear. Salt depletion is caused due to intense exercise, hot weather and lack of salt in the diet. This could have easily been remedied with a salt and electrolyte pills, produced by many supplement companies you can find in just about any sporting goods or supplement stores. I am lucky that we did not continue for a two-hour ride, because the situation could have become far more dangerous. So lesson number one was to eat plenty of salt in my diet and make sure to keep supplement on the bike with me at all times.
Lesson number two came during this past Sunday during a small 52-mile group ride. I woke up at 6am to make it to the meeting location by 7:15. It was a beautiful cool, dew-covered morning with about 8 of us taking off for the ride. We reached mile 34 and stopped for a refreshment break. While we were sitting there one of the guys I was riding with was looking at my tire and asked if that was that there when we started? I look down to see a small two-inch section of my tire bulging a bit like a balloon. Many times car tires will react a similar way when you hit a curb or blunt object. This is caused by two things on my bike tire, one was the fact that it was pretty old and the rubber was wearing thin and combine that with the hot road heating up the rubber and allowing it to expand. So I just crossed my fingers and hoped I could make it back to where we started. I made sure to be extra careful dodging even the most minute of track, and I just took it slow and easy. I particularly did not want to blow out going down hill around a corner.
I nearly made, but at mile 48, only 4 miles from the end there was a huge explosion (maybe a bit dramatic, but my ears were ringing) that sounded like an M-80 firework blew up. I checked it out, and it blew a 2.5-inch gash in my tire. One of the women riding with us showed me how you can use a folded dollar bill to line the inside of the tire to hold the tube in as limp to home to get a new tire. Unfortunately my gash was a bit too wide for this method, but we were only four miles from our starting location so one of the gentleman came back to pick me up in his truck. So during this trip I learned two lessons, check you tires all the time before you start, every time you stop and when you are done. I also learned to always have cash on you in case you need to repair a slashed tire (not to mention needing the fact that it’s always good to have cash on you in case of emergencies).Oh I almost forgot! On this same ride I learned a couple tactics to fend off dogs. While we were riding in the South Carolina back woods, we ran into a number of dogs. Luckily they all just seemed to want to play, but I was still a bit scared when the pit bulls came out of the woods. One of the guys riding with us took a wrong turn and ended up getting chased by a dog, and this one wasn’t so friendly. He was barely able to outrun it, but this is something Michael and I will potentially run into often during Cycle for the Summit.
These canine run-ins sparked conversation on how to fend off dogs when on the bike. Of course the first thing to do is to try to outrun the dogs, but this is not always possible as you may be going uphill, or in our case have 100 pounds of gear strapped to our bike. If you cannot outrun the dog you want to get off the bike and keep it between you and the dog. If or when they do decide to come after you, you want to punch/hit them in the nose or face. You may have to do this a couple times, but it will work. If they jump up towards your face, you can knee them in the ribs and that will typically work the first time. We will also be carrying pepper spray (and bear spray out west) with us to fend off any potential attacks. I hope we never have to use any of these tactics.
Learning to keep my eyes on the road was the least enjoyable lesson I have learned thus far. I met up for my typical Monday ride at Outspokin Bicycles. There’s typically as small group of around 7-10 people on this ride, and we ride about 21-27 miles at a reasonable pace, to recover from the big rides/races of the weekend. We spend most of our time riding at Fort Jackson, the local Army base. Outspokin is about 3-4 miles from the entrance to the base, so we take a leisurely pace along small neighborhood streets to reach it. This allows us to warm up our muscles and dodge the heavy traffic on the main thoroughfares.
During this warm up, I like to talk to the other riders. Talking is ok, but I made the mistake of looking at the guy I was talking with. Due to the leisurely pace I dropped my guard and did not pay attention to detail as I would at a faster pace. So as we ride down this quaint city street and I am holding a conversation with the gentleman to my right (I’m sure we we’re discussing some worldly issues, ha!) The birds chirping and the breeze in our face…the BAM! The next thing I know my hands are no longer on the handlebars. I do not know what to think and the next thing I know I am on my back and I here brakes screeching (don’t worry, they were bike brakes) and people saying whoa and what happened?!
Well, while not looking at the road, because I was chatting with the gentleman next to me, I managed to hit a four inch wide and three inch diameter chunk of wood laying in the street. I had the entire stinking street and I managed to hit this. (If anyone is great at probability out there, please figure out the possibility of me hitting the piece of wood, because I bet it’ll be pretty stinking low.) IIt all happened so fast, I could not remember a thing, but thanks to my injuries I could piece it al together. The wood stopped my bike dead in it’s tracks and my hands flew off the bars. I then began to rotate over the front wheel (serving as a fulcrum) I shot my hands out to catch myself (figured that out by the giant gashes in my palms) then tucked and rolled (scratches on my helmet and scratched up should were a testament to this. WEAR YOUR HELMET!) Then the bike followed over the top of me as it was still attached to my shoes and upon hitting the ground in front of me broke free and bounced off to the side.
So that was a lot, but luckily nothing was broken. I’d say I was pretty close as my collarbone and shoulder are really sore. But I hopped right up and was ready to keep going (thanks to a combo of my stubbornness, embarrassment and want to just keep riding) Well, that wasn’t going to happen 1) because of my hands and 2) because my bike was pretty jacked up. The front rim was extremely bent, as were the handlebars and seat. Thankfully Outspokin owner Brian called his wife and she took me back to the shop where Megan picked me up. The stars must have been out of alignment, as I found out that later in the ride when the group stopped at a light, someone was not paying attention and rear-ended another rider, ripping off his derailleur.
So, from this event I learned to always keep your eyes on the road, no matter what, and also to wear gloves. It’s rather funny, but it required a shift of thinking to actually associate gloves with saving my hands. (it sounds funny, I know, but it’s true) In my early riding days, I purchased gloves, because my fingers would go number while riding. The gloves had padding in the palms to reduce a bit of the stress, so my association of gloves was purely with relieving numbness in my hands. It’s funny how everyone can look at items in many different ways. So sure enough, I will be more focused and riding with gloves from this point on.
I am realizing that I need to blog more often as this is getting extremely long, but I shall push on. Now it’s on to a bit more about Cycle for the Summit and one more thing I learned this week. I am now beginning to switch gears to promote Cycle for the Summit around town. This past weekend we participated in two events; Arts and Draughts at the Columbia Museum of Art and the Summer Celebration of Water. They were both a great time and great exposure for the expedition.
At Arts and Droughts (witty play on Arts and Crafts) my friend Kenny (worked with him at the USC Office of Outdoor Recreation) served as bike valets or really just bike babysitters. People who rode their bikes to the event just left their bikes with us under the tent until they took off. Arts and Draughts is a amazing event held once a month at the Columbia Museum of Art with music, featured breweries, art and much more. This created a wonderful relationship with the museums and I hope you hear more about them later as we may partner together for more events.
The Summer Celebration of Water is a local event to educate residents about the importance of clean water in our everyday lives. They were kind enough to allow me to come and promote Cycle for the Summit so I anted to find a way to tie in how cycling contributes to improved water quality. I had a number of interesting facts to throw out, such as cycling cuts down on emissions and engine leakage, decreasing acid rain and oil running off into our water sources, but I did not having anything visual to attract people. Then I remember a conversation with the Dutch men on the train from Prague to Amsterdam. They told me you could use olive oil as chain lube. Perfect! Not only is this good for your bike, it’s good for the environment and water quality. So I took a bottle of Olive oil to have on the table with me and it was amazing. I don’t know how many people walked up and said “so what’s with the olive oil?” This will become a stable of all my promotional events, I will always have a random bottle of olive oil sitting on my table to peak peoples attention, lol!
Well, that is enough for now. I have more information on sponsorships, or projected route, bikes, and other interesting information coming soon! So stay tuned.
Tudo bom (Portuguese for “all is good/well,” courtesy of Greg Sims, currently on an internship in Portugal)
Brent
