The Crap eating dog

This was not "the dog"
I didn't have a camera with me at the time.
(This dog will have to do as a stand-in.)

***

When we are really training hard for something in particular there is noting better then looping around the Island multiple times. This was the case when a friend (Ann) and I were looping around the Island three times. The net effect from this ride is about 90 miles and 9,000’ of climbing.

About halfway through the ride we wanted to stop at Battleground Park for a bathroom break and to refill water bottles. It was a very cool surprise to find the horse-show going on when we arrived. In addition to all of the cool riders and horses—there were a lot of great food booths—which we sampled most of.

It was about this time when our blood sugar was bubbling happily after all the food and our stomachs were telling us to lay in the warm grass—but our heads were telling us we needed to keep on peddling.

The scene of all these elegant horses and riders also included a lot of horse crap everywhere. Inevasible I suppose. We were just lounging around in the sun trying to make the next move—when out of the corner of our eyes we saw a pretty dignified guy with some kind of a smallish dog pulling the guy on a very tight leash. Really looked like the dog was walking the guy. Ann was talking with this guy about the horses—and the dog—and the guy was going on and on and on about this special breed and the demeanor and the characteristics and who knows what else. It was sort of bla bla bla.

Then after a little while Ann asked the guy what kind of a dog it was. Immediately (as if on cue) the dog jumped hard against the collar and leash and landed on his target—a not too fresh pile of horseshit. I watched with horror amazement that this dog started grinding his head into the pile and eating huge mouthfuls.

I had been pretty quiet to this point—where by I answered Ann’s question by saying that this was a Shit Eating Dog. The guys face had this sort of twisted perplexed and sort of disturbed look--Ann was about to explode with laughter when I suggested we peddle on—now.

Travels

Traveling is simply the best. If I had the chance to create a national policy for the school system--I would require kids in schools to to spend a year in any foreign country. This would give them the opportunity to see life from a totally different perspective where family, work and life is generally very different. This might even give them a fresh viewpoint on their own country.

Deer Encounter

5:30 AM / Park Street

The fog and mist hugged the ground—and the smoke from the fireplaces from the houses enveloped you.

This morning was like so many, many others. Kind of like on remote control. Cruising up and down hills. Listening to all kinds of crazy music. Singing along on old songs. Just having a lot of fun. You get in this weightless zone where you don’t have any obligations or have to say or do anything.

At this hour it is perfectly quiet—and the only sound you hear are your tires, your breathing and your (well my) bad singing. Turning a bend in the road at about 20 mph I saw directly in front of me a huge deer. It was simply standing there looking directly at me. I wasn’t very far away from him. I frankly didn’t know what to do—so I just stopped and looked at him. This is what we did for several minutes the deer and I. It was just surreal—in this dark, foggy road absolutely silent this huge creature was trying to figure out what I was all about—just as I was trying to figure out what he was thinking and was about.

The Tree on F/U hill

Sunday 6AM

F/U Hill isn’t very long-probably only a few thousand feet at most-what it has going for it is location—location—location. You come screaming down a hill at about 40 mph do some very fast banks and you see the hill—and you always think that your built-up speed will ricochet you over the top. Once you hit a certain point of the hill gravity puts a lock on you and you need to really work.

This isn’t a big—huge deal. Bainbridge has lots of hills. There are long hills and some really hard hills. The fact of the matter going over this hill only one time isn’t such a big deal. When things get interesting is when you start looping around the Island more then one time. This is when some of my companions have dubbed this special hill F/U Hill.

One Sunday morning—I was supposed to meet a group of cyclists for an early morning ride. The weather was sketchy. OK it was raining and it wasn’t sketchy and all the riders made the decision to stay in bed. It was their loss. Being that it was a Sunday morning—and raining there was nobody at all on the road. It was very exceptionally beautiful. The rain wasn’t bad—nothing crazy-nuts or anything—just heavy, heavy mist.

There is something very spiritual riding through mist and rain when it is quiet. Everything has an amazing smell. I wasn’t too disappointed riding alone.

I wasn’t too concerned about going downhill in the rain. The fact of the matter was you had no brakes—so you simply knew not to hit the brakes—you would skid. The bigger issue was retaining traction going up the bigger hills. You couldn’t climb out of the seat as this caused you to loose traction on the rear wheel. You just had to stay seated—and dig in.

This was my state when I flew down –and approached F/U hill. I was digging in and grinding my way up. All of the sudden without any warning—and without any sound what so ever a large tree flopped down across the entire road in front of me. The tree was about 500 yards in front of me—so there was no immediate danger. I slowed down and got off the bike. And really wanted to say to somebody: Did you see that?!  It was just completely crazy. Apparently all the rain from the preceding few days weakened the trees roots—and it was simply too much for this tree—and it was time to come down.

There was nothing to do but ride up to the tree climb over and carry the bike over the tree to get to the other side of the road. It occurred to me that cars would be flying down that same hill towards the fallen tree—so I waited at the top of the hill stopping traffic and turning them around. One driver had some flares and we put them down. We contacted the fire department—and somebody came with a chain saw to start fixing the situation.

You couldn’t help but wonder the what- if’s. The one that went around my mind the most was what if the whole group of riders actually had shown up? Always going up a hill—especially a steep hill—there is always a stretched out group of riders. Who knows what might have happened. Crazy-lucky.

Nutrition / Hydration

Steven's Pass

Cancer

Everything you can ever imagine.

Cancer

I have been told just how great it was—and how good of a job I did when it comes to my beating cancer. The truth of the matter is I was simply lucky.

Don’t get me wrong—I was willing to do anything and everything to fight—but many people who fought just as hard just weren’t as lucky. I always told my doctors that I would be happy to double the dose of any medication and treatment—and do if for twice the prescribed time period—if it would give me better odds of beating this sickness.

It has been about six months since the doctors have given me a clean bill of health. This comes after a lot of work from a lot of people—and they all did a great job.

The funny thing is that I remember three odd events during the treatment periods. These events were mini vignettes. The first thing is embarrassing—not because they were poking around in funny ways or anything like that—but funny in the way you see yourself—and then feel ashamed about what you were thinking. It went like this:
One of the things you do very regularly is get your blood taken. Everybody wants some of your blood. It happens so often that you never ever get rid of the bruising from the needles. Most times the nurses do an amazingly great job poking you—but once in a while you get someone who should be in a different line of work. They keep sticking you and not getting to the right place---and you are trying to be and stay calm—but you can’t help but being really tense.

So I am sitting a waiting room waiting for my name to be called and for some reason things are really backed up and it is taking a really long time to get inside. There is this guy and his 2 and 4 year old kids in the waiting room with me. His kids are going crazy. They are running around knocking tables over—making lots of noise—laughing and the dad isn’t paying them any attention at all. All I can think of is what a lousy parent this guy is. I am assuming that he is waiting for someone who is inside getting poked—or perhaps—he is waiting to get poked. This makes me feel a little bad—because if he is waiting to get poked—he probably has a lot on his mind and I should cut him some slack. But I don’t—not really. His kids are really just going nuts.

As it turns out they called us all in at the same time—and I was very surprised to see the phlebotomist (the person who takes your blood) being ever so gentile with the younger of this guys two kids. Turns out that the two year old had leukemia—and was the patient. I didn’t see that coming. The father was so freaked out—about what was going on.  I had imagined that he didn’t know how to discipline his kids. But he was only trying to cope with an unimaginable situation.

The second event was when I was in the “vault” Deep in the basement of the cancer center they have a room dedicated for radiation treatments. They keep everything very clean and tidy and everything is very clean and high-tech. But none the less is is a very strange place. You enter the room through a thick vault door which is lined with lead. Inside the room looks a little bit like a recording studio. The room is very large and at one end of the room there is a very large and thick glass window where all the technologists, physicists, radiologists and oncologists look at the equipment—and control the machines remotely while you are alone in the room.

The process if fairly interesting. Based on your problems and diagnosis’s the team create an electronic three dimensional model of your body on the computer. They design a computer program which makes the gigantic electron particle accelerator beam move in a special way to move in front of you—and around you and in back of you. The table also moves around in the dance. It is actually quite amazing.

Before you ever start the treatments the doctors tattoo you with eight black dots all over your torso. They do this while beaming a test “spray” of electrons on you. This is calibrating you to the machine. By doing this—they can precisely position you each time you come back in perfect registration—so when the machine is turned on it can do it’s job of killing all the cells. The goal is to kill everything good and bad cells alike. They keep beaming these high powered radioactive particle bursts at you over and over, day after day—and week after week in the goal of killing everything in the localized area where you have the cancer. The idea and hope is that only the healthy cells will grow back. The process makes you sick and very tired.

The business end of the gigantic accelerator beam gun is very intense. In reality it is a supper-powered x-ray machine with a magnitude of several million times the power output. Because of the servo motors which control this huge machines movements—it is really something to see in action. I began to wonder what the other end of this monster machine looked like. I only say the part coming out of a clean smooth wall. So one day I asked the technologist who was finishing up with me—what was on the other side of that wall. Nobody had ever asked him before—so he looked kind of funny—but took me through a lead lined passageway door to where the gut of the machine was housed.

The inside of “this” room was a lot different then my treatment room. Here metal panels had been removed from some part of the beams control access panels to reveal circuitry and controllers. Apparently these machines have to be serviced all the time. The scene looked like something like a horror film in the land of the Xerox machines. There were wires and lights everywhere. The difference between those two rooms was unbelievable.

The final event I keep remembering has to do with a woman I would see regularly at my appointments. Generally speaking you have a lot of appointments—and they are regularly scheduled. You start to see familiar faces right away. You know who goes in before you—and who goes in after you.

The process and procedure is always the same with everybody—you are led to the back room just in front of the vault door where they have two dressing rooms side by side. The rooms are basic and the instructions are always the same: you take off all of your street clothes and put on thin flimsy and funky hospital gown.

I had heard that this one woman who was coming in after me wasn’t doing very well. She apparently had to do a lot more therapies then I had to do—and she had several of the procedures repeated over and over. Things weren’t working out well for her. She wasn’t lucky. One day I was in the dressing room on the left side completely naked in the process of changing into or out of clothes. Just then the door swings wide open and the woman who comes in after my treatments who was so sick mistakenly went to the wrong dressing room. She of course was totally mortified that she had disturbed me in some way. I thought that the scene was just so ridiculous and crazy that I had to laugh. I told her that this was the funniest thing that had happened to me in months—and then she started laughing too. It was just plain stupid—but funny. We were just laughing our asses off.

I hope that her luck changed for the better. I just have a bad feeling about it.

Friends

Cycle friends are the best friends. In time we all make the connection and get the feedback, which shows you the importance of close friends. If you are lucky you see this early and see how rich your life can be.

Training

The image in your mind.

I hate to say it but because of my background in music the notion of training for sports isn’t too big of a deal. In music—especially classical music—there is always this very big expectation that is put on you that no matter how good you are that there are many, many other people much better then you are. As a result only the most foolish and the most arrogant musicians with large egos ever presented themselves as great talents - because they knew the truth.

No one can get you to practice longer or harder then you can make yourself practice. In music you get a sound or an idea in your head and it is your unwavering goal to try and replicate that sound, that technique or that idea.

Focusing on training skill set goals in cycling isn’t too much different. Once you have in idea in your mind you can try and figure out a schedule of skill drills, training routines, methodologies or coaching to help you move in the correct direction—or get you back on track when you are off track.

The difference between professional musicians and professional athletes compared to armatures is in degrees. If we amateurs slack a little—or break training routines it isn’t such a big deal as it is with the pros. It might take some time—but you can make up lost ground.

Early Mornings

Pre Dawn:
Everybody has their own best time of the day when they are in their best mood, their best functioning time and their best zone. For me it is very early in the mornings before the sun comes up.

It is all about that three hour window when no one else is around--it is generally totally quiet and thoughts, ideas and connections between have room to work themselves out.

Those days when I am able to cycle for a few hours before the sun comes up are always the best days. There are virtually never any cars or people on the streets--just moon light, animals and the sound of the wind. As you get closer to dawn everything starts to change--the world shifts gears and begins the conversion process for production, function and reactions. It never fails to amaze you to start to see the sun begining to appear. Sometimes while you are riding and happen to be facing the East looking at the water and are lucky enough to see the light levels build. It is always the same-yet never exactly. You realize that the magic time is about gone--and those thoughts and ideas in your head need to be buttoned up or writen down. It's exactly like those few minutes when you wake up and remember your dreams--if you don't write them down--they simply slip away and disapear.