The Urban Time Trial (Archer Nelson)

It was about twenty degrees again this morning when I set out for work on my favorite road bike: my '96 Rivendell Road. It's an indulgence. My riding pals say it's just a little heavy for a road bike, but these days so am I. After I drop twenty pounds maybe I'll splurge and buy myself a "real" road bike---some weight weenie thing with Tyvek spokes and a titanium-railed Styrofoam saddle and helium-filled snakeskin tires or whatever the "real" riders are using these days, but for now, this tallish forest green steel bike with its bar-end shifters and scrolly elvish frame lugs that Janie traced in gold sign painter's enamel when it was new is as real as I think I'll ever find. It tracks like an arrow whether I hold the (extra wide) bar or not. It's as stable when cornering as it is going straight. Most of the time it's invisible beneath me. And that's what I care about the most because when I'm riding, really riding, I forget completely that that is what I'm doing and my mind goes somewhere else.

As I've aged, the quality and fit of the bike has mattered more for that to work. When I was young and rode aggressively, the going-somewhere-else aspect of riding didn't matter so much. Then I focused so entirely on the ride that usually if my mind went anywhere away from the riding, it just went blank.

The first thousand feet are the hardest when it's cold. After that, legs overcome inertia and generate heat that quickly spreads beneath what layers I've selected for the ride. If I've selected well, the layers disappear with the bike and it's the same as riding in milder weather. If I've selected poorly, either appendages gradually become numb and distract me, bring me back to what I'm doing and force me to calculate how many more minutes the ride will last, or I'll just arrive at work completely poached inside only so much cookware. Around nine hundred feet into the ride I realize it's going to be very close--I might be counting the miles and minutes today.

eighteen years ago I compulsively counted the miles and minutes of every ride. eighteen years ago I was a young single father living in Chicago. I must have gotten the layers about right today, after all, because suddenly I'm twenty-seven again, riding not on a February morning in Minnesota that threatens a lot of wind and snow in the afternoon, but on an ozone-alert-level hot August morning on the west side of Chicago.

Out on Roosevelt Road my cleats click to my pedals and my mind is wiped clean of all but the ride before me.

Today, Tuesday, my legs are shaved clean, my Masi Gran Criterium tuned and waxed special for this ride. I want to cover the distance today in new record time. The distance: ten miles. The time to beat: twenty-four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.

There is no wind. I circle between cars on Roosevelt Road, waiting for the green arrow two blocks down to go yellow. It will, about four seconds before the main light turns green. I do not look at drivers inside the cars, but I know they are looking at me. My heart beats at idling speed. Coasting closer to the intersection, I go to the drops and caress the clinging handlebar tape with the two front fingers of each hand. I wrapped it myself. It is sexy. This is it. I'll do it today. It is all I need to think or even care about now.

Yellow. The Masi's tubes flex and make a sound as I lift off my saddle. I'm at the intersection
before letting go my first breath and the light is green maybe half a second before I hit the crosswalk, which is where I press the start button on my Cateye Solar cycle computer. There's snot on my mustache and I feel about a quarter second slow. My ass brushes the saddle and I shift and stand forward, knees bumping elbows, chin inches from the handlebar. My speed already is 32 mph, cadence 117.

I'm riding the dark strip between the solid yellow lines and I pass my fifth or sixth car going in front of Fitzgerald's. It's five minutes to Cicero Avenue, and if I can keep this pace the light will be green when I get there. On my way to that green light I like to imagine I can burn the calories I drank at Fitzgerald's last night. Then I'll ease off for a little while.

I had a professor when I was in graduate school who was kind of a flake. He took the El into the city each day from Evanston. So did a lot of professors. So did I, when I lived up that way in Rogers Park. But this guy said he liked the long train ride because it was the only time he had for meditation. Each morning he would take a seat on the Express and fix his eyes on a rivet or a dot in some graffiti, and let his eyes go to slits and focus his entire awareness on that spot as if to memorize it, burn it into the concave canvass at the rear of his skull.

I concentrate on a similar spot each morning during my commute into work, but this spot is nothing you can see. It's the spot, usually just beyond my reach, where my heart nears 195 beats per minute, 200, and the split between my body and my Masi is lost. Sound is gone. Sight is a lightning strobe succession of traffic snapshots. Semaphore truck brokenglass cop pothole taxi sewergrate gravel tincan TransAm CTAbus DONTWALK drunkpedestrian and each snapshot is processed for the bodybike's response and then is behind and forgotten. The strobe oscillates between chest and eyes and is painful in a satisfying way. When the pain stops I stand off my saddle, chase after it.

Through a yellow-red light, a horn breaks in, sprint to sneak in front of the truck. It may have nicked my rear tire. To make a new record today I've got to keep my average speed at 25 mph and only think of that spot in my head or chest or in front a little bit.

The next light is red. I coast fast up to the intersection between two lanes of cars. At the front of the line is a People's Gas truck. I put my hand out to balance against the side of the truck. The driver, a black man with a gold earring and a couple of teeth to match, looks at me in his side mirror and doesn't seem to mind. I press the buttons on my Cateye. My average speed is 29. The light is slow to change, and the liquid-crystal number on the computer changes. 28. I suck huge breaths to keep the blood fed in my legs. I can feel both quadriceps stiffening.

Green. I let the truck pull ahead. It jerks hesitantly while the driver shifts. I tuck in behind the truck and switch onto my large chainring as the driver shifts again. Drafting, I stay two or three feet from the white painted step of a bumper. The acceleration seems slow, but in two blocks we are going 35. Every couple of blocks I drift left and poke my head around the truck to get a look ahead—if this guy stops too fast I'll be wrapped around his axle. He smiles at me in his mirror. We clear three lights.

I am being followed. I look back, sticking my face under my left armpit to see whether it's a truck. I have an irrational fear of being sandwiched on my bicycle between trucks going faster than the speed limit. After all, even compact cars can effectively crush a cyclist. But trucks make an expanded polystyrene helmet seem even less significant. This time it isn't a truck. It's a cobalt-blue '65 Mustang convertible with a vanity plate. I have to look again to read it, upside down: MIMICA.

Heavy brakes squeal in front of me while I'm trying to get a look at Mimica through the glare on her windshield. I lean left and see a flash of red brake light peripherally as I dart out against the wind, a projectile from a slingshot. In front of the truck, I overtake a BMW that is sneaking through the red light, and keep even with it on the left, letting the car shield me through the intersection. The driver puts it to the floor to race ahead of me. Some drivers can't deal when they're passed by a bicycle.

The BMW is waiting at the next red light, revving. I wheelstand next to him for a few seconds, then hop the curb and circle back on the sidewalk. MIMICA is idling by the curb a couple of cars back. She had to have run that red. Her top is folded down and I stop for another wheelstand on the sidewalk right at the curb, so close to the edge that if I lose my balance I'll be in her lap. I'm tempted. Brunette, busty, she's wearing a black bikini top and a black skirt. Mounted between the bucket seats is a cell phone. In the back seat there's a cooler and a couple towels, a bottle of tanning oil. I'd like to say something, I don't know what, but the light changes, and then she looks at my legs, maybe my bike, and lets out the clutch. I drop off of the curb behind her and there's a bumper sticker that says:

How's My Driving?
1-800-EAT-SHIT

I crack up. The laughing messes up my breathing and I start to cough.

Mimica's car idles smoothly toward the intersection. I'm still coughing, but I stand forward and push to catch her. My chain is still on the large ring, and getting momentum again in too large a gear is killing me, but I want to draft Mimica.

I can't do it. My cough is making me choke—I’ve inhaled some spit. I'm not getting enough oxygen. I have to downshift, and Mimica stays ahead. I think she was watching me in her mirror, but it's hard to be sure because of these white sunglasses she's wearing. I sit up, let a few cars pass while I take a squirt of water from my squeeze bottle, try to get into a decent rhythm to carry me to the next light. It's a pretty good stretch ahead. I'm going to lose some time now, but I need to recover. To make the record, I'll have to time the lights just perfectly, or catch a good long draft behind someone.

I'm losing my concentration. I'm looking for flags to gauge the wind, and I'm paying too much attention to the road surface, swerving to avoid small potholes that I shouldn't be worried about. I look to the light at the intersection I'm coming up on, and the light is green but the DON'T WALK light, which is the color of a tequila sunrise, is flashing above the crosswalk. I sprint, sort of, to just make it as the light goes yellow, and I relax again, almost coasting through the intersection. I shift up one cog and try to bring my cadence back near 100, try to find a rhythm to recover with—there’s still a chance for a good time today if I can get it back before I reach Halsted Street, and if I can time the lights through the Loop right.

I can see Halsted now, the third intersection ahead. The light there is green, but the two before are red. My average speed has dropped to 24.9. I have to gain a tenth of a mile per hour between here and the finish. I wait for the first light to change and the second one is still red when it does, and I coast between the first and second lights, and when the middle light finally changes, the light at Halsted is still green so I go like mad. I put my head down to the bar and pull so hard I can feel my shoelaces with the tops of my feet.

I've got concentration again and the road is burning away under my tires and then it turns silver around the edges of my vision and the whole black road surface turns silver, then white and I look up—the light at Halsted is red, I didn't even see the yellow, and I'm already past the painted crosswalk lines—more than 30 miles an hour—and someone next to me, behind, yells "Hey!" and I'm going to be broadsided by a rusting Chevy with metallic green paint. I put my head down, accelerate so hard that my knees are going to pop off, and I feel the frame and handlebar flexing. A rush of air goes heavy over my back before I hear the horn and the rubber shriek of cars trying to halt and my cadence is over 140 because my gear is too low and I wish I had time to shift and somehow I'm through the intersection and nothing hit me and I shift into my highest gear to maximize this great adrenaline rush.

The adrenaline carries me the rest of the way on Roosevelt to where I make the only turn this urban time trial route has, left onto Canal Street, which will take me the last mile or so north to the finish line at Steve's Deli on Randolph, a block from the building I work in.

I haven't missed a light, and I feel terrific as I hammer up the small incline in front of the main Chicago post office after the turn. Then I'm under the bridge, up another short hill to Franklin, through a couple of lights and in front of Union Station. I love this final stretch. At River Place crowds stand on the curbs and sidewalk watching to catch busses and taxis. The street's about five lanes wide here and I command the center lane, out in front of a convoy of taxis. The road is mine. Everyone watches. Many of the same people have watched each morning all summer.

Most of a block ahead the light is yellow. I'm flying. I don't even have to change my pace—I make it through easily. But traffic is backed up ahead—construction at Washington—there isn't an open lane. Without slowing I choose a line between a cab and a UPS truck. The rear view mirror on the truck tags my jersey shoulder. I coast. I push a button on my Cateye while I pick my way between vehicles. With the same hand I pound on the door of a car that nearly took me out trying to switch lanes.

24.30.2 is the time on my Cateye—less than seven seconds to finish. I can see the yellow and red Steve's Deli sign over the tops of the cabs and cars, but it isn't safe to sprint. There are streams of pedestrians mucking up traffic in front of me, crossing from the Northwestern Train Depot. "Look out! Coming through!" I shout, dicing my way through a mass of jaywalkers. I pounce over the crosswalk lines at Randolph in front of Steve's and press the stop button. 24:45.7. Almost nine seconds off.

There are no cars in the tunnel where Randolph passes under the train viaduct, and I ride in the middle of the lane, sitting up with my arms across my chest. The light is green at Clinton and I coast out of the tunnel into the bright intersection. I stare at the black liquid crystal numbers on my Cateye. I was more than eight seconds slow.

A cab honks behind me and, startled, I pull on the handlebar, and the bike leaps erratically to the right. I grab the brakes at the drops and pedal hard, trying to power through my sudden turn, but I've angled too steep and I feel the Masi's wheels starting to skid, then bounce sideways—I’m going down hard and whether I’ve given a moment’s thought to Nick and Nooshin’s wedding will probably not matter after this. Both wheels slide out and my right fist, still gripping the bar, hits the street first. I tumble and my helmet slams backward hard against a chrome bumper.

Blind, vision is pure white-hot ringing static and the roaring brightness in my ears is crushing me into the street. Someone is trying to help me up but my bike is tangled between my legs and the first thing I can see again is my feet twisting themselves from my pedals without sound. I struggle to my feet, lean on the car I hit, yank the bike onto the sidewalk. I say I'll be okay because I think I heard someone ask. I find my helmet's buckle, pull the shell off. I let it drop to the street—it couldn't have survived this crash—and some of the deafening roar falls away with the helmet, a hollow, plastic clatter on the asphalt.

On the sidewalk my Masi's handlebar is pointing away from the front wheel, the stem twisted in the front tube. My hand stings, the back of my shoulder and my hip throb. I get off the car to pick my bike up from the sidewalk. It seems oddly heavy—my head is light, vision still hurts, and now I recognize the '65 Mustang, cobalt blue and chrome burning, that I just cracked my head on, parked on Randolph in front of the building I work in.

I miscalculated my layers today after all: I'm poached. I coast safely past a line of young coworkers shuffling from the parking lot toward the back of the brick building we all work in and I glide up the sidewalk near the loading dock to a stop beside the empty bike rack.

I remove my helmet and balaclava, soaked with sweat. A tall young brunette stepping past on the sidewalk flashes a friendly smile while I'm releasing the big saddle bag that contains my laptop computer, clothing, lunch. "G'morning," I smile back.

A large oily drop of sweat rolls off my nose onto the Kryptonite lock while I'm securing the Rivendell to the rack. Then I badge in and clomp down the stairwell to the locker room to shower and prepare myself for another day in service to the corporate beast.

Archer Nelson

A fictional blog

The Urban Time Trial

TrackBack

Comments (649)