WNFW

From some of the bike related books I've read, I've learned there's a thing the French say about a rider who is going very well.  Too well.  They say he is supernatural.  I guess this implies the suspicion that he is necessarily doping.

I think it is possible to just have a good day.  A day where for reasons you don't understand, you ride way better than you normally could.  Writing these ill-planned little blog posts is much like that.  Last week, I blogged about a Wednesday ride.  Thanks to Rafal for linking it on Facebook and Bryan for linking it to Gamjams-midwest, the number of visitors went from roughly about 15 during the week, to well over 100.

I heard a lot of positive feedback from the post, which is nice.  I never know when I write these things if they make any sense.  I'm pretty sure there are less than 5 of them in the history of me posting that I'm really proud of.  So this one (below) will most likely be typical of what I spill out here on a weekly basis and nowhere near as fun to read as last week's.  All is not lost, though.  For your tear-jerking, reading pleasure, I'm going to link my all time favorite post.  It's the one about the pain of raising my daughter as a divorced person (me divorced - not my daughter).  Read that one if you haven't already (It's here).  Then when you get done crying and if you feel like it, read this one.  It won't be as good, but I'll make fun of at least one person.  I will be using a device known as "sarcasm, irony's evil twin."   I won't tell you when the sarcasm is happening.  I will leave that as an exercise for the reader.

So by way of no further introduction, here's tonight's entry:

It has been pointed out to me that some people are not fond of the Trek Store’s, Wednesday night ride’s, nickname’s, TLA.

The Trek Store’s, Wednesday night ride’s, nickname is “Wednesday Night Worlds” and its TLA (3 letter acronym) is WNW.

Since my driving motivation for anything I do is to appease (not please) people in hopes that they will just shut their mouths for another sweet moment, I will henceforth no longer refer to the ride as “WNW”

You’re welcome Shim and Barry.

I am going to now call it WNFW.

I can guess what you’re thinking and you’re right.  It stands for “Wednesday Night's Furry Wall”

I’m pretty sure it is completely clear why, but I have nothing better to do so I’ll explain.

I went on the WNFW ride last night (Wednesday).  There were about a dozen or so people there.  I don’t know all of their names, but the ones I do know or learned were called: Kyle, Shim, Spence, Jordan, Noah, John (Lehman) of back-to-back cat V victory last weekend, Rafal, Mod, Jonathan Wait (I only know this because of Strava) and others.

First of all, I want to get something out of the way. Shim was looking for an awesome lead-out from me toward the end of the ride ( I think he was joking).  I was done at that point and was unable to contribute.  Sorry about that Shim.  I am currently going over the numbers, looking at the pie charts and even throwing together some venn diagrams in the hope of remedying the issue by next week.  So far, my research is pointing to the potential need for everyone to not be in such a big hurry up the hill.  But I’ll get back to you when the lab results return and either confirm or verify my suspicion.  Again, you’re welcome.

One more thing needs to be mentioned before I return to the good natured ribbing stuff.  It is important.  If you take nothing else away from this post, I want you to hear what I’m about to say.  It is a matter of safety.  We travel at fairly high speeds sometimes and there can often be some confusion which I could see potentially leading to tragic results.  Because of that, I have a request.  Ignore me if you want, but do so at your own peril.

The rider I met last night who is called Kyle was wearing what can only be described as the YKSA.  If you know your Velominati lexicon, you know what the "Yellow Jacket of Authority", or YJA is.  Well – I learned last night that they ALSO make those in knee sock/shoe cover things.  Oh my gosh.  They were the same neon green as those safety jackets, but they went from toe to over the calf! 

For safety reasons, everyone must get a pair of those knee socks right now.  End of discussion.  Ok I lied.  I am going to tell you after all.  That was the sarcastic part.  Do not really go get socks like that.  Please.

Back Up!  Get my matching socks in the shot!

Ok so now.  The ride.  I don’t want to just detail what happened since I did that last week.  I noticed some weird thoughts in my head during last night’s ride.  I thought I’d share those.  They may be important.

Because we were trying to beat the night (remember, only Kyle had the socks), we took the same relatively short route as last week. This ride is supposed to be hard.  That's the point.  Apart from an actual race, this is about as hard as you will ever go.  Sometimes, particularly early in the season, a hard ride like this causes a sort of out-of-body experience.  Which is good.  Because there's nothing but a whole lot of pain going on in the body.

So last night after about 15 minutes into the hard riding, I become aware that there's been a single song stuck in my head from the time it first started getting tough.  I wonder why it is this particular song, but am at a loss.  The song doesn't leave my head until we finally ease up once we're back in town in North Omaha.  Of course I'm talking about Infant Sorrow's smash hit "Furry Walls" from the movie "Get Him to the Greek."

We were riding pretty hard, doing the double paceline thing, but since there was a whole bunch of guys there, it was a little crazier.  Because of the wind configuration, the right line was moving forward and the left line was about 3 feet from the right edge of the road.  It was a little scary for me because I don’t have a lot of experience in that sort of close proximity riding.  I pulled through for a while, then got tired and so just sat in on the back, trying not to lose the group.

I was sitting in pretty good, just thinking over and over again, “Furry walls, don’t bring me down.  Furry walls please stay around …”

I’m gritting my teeth and laughing at the same time.  I want to ask around if anyone there knows the movie or the song, but I can’t think of how to form the question with one quick exhale.  Also, someone might have said something like, “Maybe – tell me about it …”  So I decided to just keep my mouth shut (figuratively) and stick to breathing.  The Furry Walls story could wait until after the WNFW ride.

Then something I still don't understand happened at the front.  There was an acceleration.  Ok, fine.  Protected by the group I was able to stay on. Except that whenever I got to where I thought I was supposed to be, they were farther up the road.  This acceleration stopped for me at around 33 MPH.  Then I let them go.  Looking up, I saw a couple others get dropped.  No matter.  We were about a mile from Ft Calhoun.  I almost guttered Rafal at one point, unaware he was sitting to my right and slightly behind me.  My fault, but he kept a cool head.  I felt bad but then I had this in my head, “When the World slips you a Jeffrey, stroke the furry wall.  Stroke the furry wall.”  Really.  I did.

Thinking about that stupid song today, I think it was because in the movie, a Jeffrey is this narcotic they all smoke at this club.  It makes everyone feel really uneasy.  Panicky.  Sweaty.  Short of breath.  I felt like the Wednesday Night Worlds slipped me a Jeffrey.

After we were through Ft Calhoun, I found myself in a very good mood.  I could tell I was exhausted and would have trouble with the last climb, but I didn't care.  I was welcoming the hard work.  It was there that I learned that the deadly combo of Mark Savery and Shim was the reason for all that ungodly speed at the front earlier.  My reaction surprised me.  I was genuinely impressed and not at all bummed out my not being able to hang.  I now realized that I was being comforted by the furry walls.

Finally we got to the last climb of the evening.  At this point we'd been going pretty hard with the wind and I had one of those out of body experiences.  I suddenly looked down and saw a bunch of ridiculous adult men pedaling bicycles really fast on a cold and windy night, just because.  I lost all understanding of why anyone would do this.  I thought of the sweetness of the golf club and how glorious golfing is.  The pain of cycling is stupid.

Nice try, golf demons.  Luckily a few seconds later, the current residents of my soul, the hordes of cycling demons woke up to do furious battle, beating back the golf threat yet again.

As I blissfully let the group of riders climb the hill while I rode within myself, Aldous Snow was crooning,  “Maybe I'm in heaven with the furry skies above, All around are furry clouds, look, here's a furry dove …”
This is absolutely true, by the way.  I laughed my ass up the hill considering what a furry dove is.

After the downhill, down the road about a half mile ahead, I could barely make out a bright green spinning motion.  I knew what that meant.  Time to bridge.

I was able to get a good tailwind spin going and hold about 25-26 miles per hour.  I couldn't be sure, but the bright green spinny beacon off in the distance seemed to be getting closer, "Furry walls, furry walls, furry walls ..."

Eventually I latched on to Kyle's wheel.  Rafal was with him, but I hadn't known that because Rafal didn't have on the YKSA.

They were cruising at around 23, so after my little rest I went around to pull.  Back up to 25 and up the little rise by the water treatment place.  I looked back to let the other 2 know they could come around any time, and saw green socks had fallen off.  Rafal informed me he was still there, then gave me a pat on the back as he went around.  He told me - and I agree - we'll be riding together a lot this year.  Finally, Brady's dream that group riders do some sort of buddy system will be realized!  I hope Feagan doesn't get too jealous.

For me the best part of the ride was knowing I went as hard as I could and felt pretty good at the end of it.  In years past, I would mope around for days at having been dropped.  I truly didn't care this time.  Shit happens.  So what?  It might be part of the HTFU philosophy taking hold.  Or it might be the comfort I find in a good furry wall.  Either way, I'm cool with it.

So if you're ever riding with me and happen to wonder what's going through my mind, here you go.

Actually it's more like this.

The Relevant scene