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We waited at the top. The Bubbas wended their way up a long, nasty series of hairpins that twisted up the face of a local ski slope. Some racers had shown up for the Bubba ride. Fast guys occasionally "ride Bubba" if they need a rest day or if they have the flu. Such is the Bubba reputation.
By the time I reached the top, the racers were already involved in conversation. UnBubba talk. Fast guy talk. I got the stranger-in-the-hot-tub welcome.
The Bubba Boys are a loosely formed group of Midcoast Maine mountain bikers who ride together several times a week. They are locally famous for their frequent breaks, long travel all-mountain machines, and wide open descending. After rides they lean on pickup trucks and tell lies over hopped-up microbrews. They are not famous for their climbing abilities.
The Bubba's staggered arrival went on like the Academy Awards. The red faces. The beady eyes. The self-congratulating. Many more Bubbas needed to appear. During this wait I overheard Mike, one of the fast guys, talking about this thing called the Metric Mash.
I asked questions:
My inquiries were met with a narrow over-the-glasses squint, and elevated rough talk about the Mash and its 50 percent attrition rate.
All day group ride.
Metric century (62.5 miles).
Not a race, he says.
Confused, I asked about pace.
"Not like this," he shrugged in the direction of a new Bubba arrival. This one looked like something brought up from the deep, bulging eyes, gasping at unworkable air, pre-hurl written all over his face.
"By invitation only," he finished.
Fifteen years ago I could plan on a top place finish in any regional sport class mountain bike race. Now, I'm a 45-year-old dad with two small kids. I have become a recreational mountain biker. I ride with the Bubba Boys. I'm a Bubba.
I rolled this around in my mind, the helm of my middle-aged ship.
A reckless plan formed.
I bought a slick back tire and appeared at a road-training ride where I knew I would find Mike.
There were six or seven of them; their high tech road machines gleaming like scalpels. Serious racers. I felt suddenly foolish on my mountain bike. I still had a 2.25" aggressive knobby on the front that buzzed and bobbed along under my squishy shock. But I would keep up. It's the motor, not the bike, I told myself.
They sent no ambassador to greet me, no welcome wagon. I was a dump truck in the starting grid at the Indy 500.
"You've got to be kidding," Mike says, gesturing toward my bike, still crusted with mud from the last several rides.
"I put a slick on the back," I said, trying to sound upbeat.
"Yeah, that will do it," he said, shaking his head and riding away.
The cat and mouse games began right away, and they dropped me after a couple of miles. They dropped my dirty, fat tire bike, but mostly they dropped my engine. My Bubba engine. I dug in, giving my best chase as they rode away. I caught up with them down the road when they pulled over for a repair. I asked if they minded if I went on ahead. They seemed surprised to see me again. Someone muttered over a shoulder, "Yeah, fine, go for it."
I blasted until my vision blurred. I turned the cranks through the waves of nausea.
The first guy caught and passed me after a couple of hilly miles.
I looked back for the first time. Riders were staggered off into the distance. The guy was humping to tear the group apart like that.
Mike caught up with me later on a long hill. We rode together for a moment.
"Nice," he said smiling. Then he put the hammer down and rode away.
Eventually they all passed me. My effort to stay away had taken its toll. I rode home alone.
The next day I got an email with the details of the Metric Mash.
The Mash is Mike's vision. He plans the route, caches the food and water the night before, extends the invitations and cooks the egg sandwich breakfast.
He keeps the ride together.
I catch the whistle of my coffee water early, so I don't wake up the kids. I get a sleepy kiss from my wife.
There are three veterans of the ride, Todd, Rick and Mike. I am one of two rookies. Trevor, the other rookie, placed well in last year's Mt. Washington hill climb. Tyler Hamilton won that race. Trevor is in his mid-twenties. Fog hangs heavy on the morning landscape. My ranking in this group is clear.
I made two rules for myself before the ride. Simple rules for when things got strange, when my emotional flywheel broke loose of its shaft. I would need something very simple, mantra like.
First Rule: Finish the ride.
Second Rule: No pulling out front.
I chew and swallow my way through the egg sandwich. My mind is elsewhere, on my fear of failure in this company. These things sit heavy in my stomach.
It's almost eight a.m.
Mike hands everyone a map, sealed in a Ziplock bag like a biohazard. It is for finding the nearest road and riding out alone. This map is failure. No one studies the map. We quickly stuff the things into our packs. Like packing a tourniquet, you don't want to think about actually using the thing.
The click of my cleat latching to pedal punctuates the gray sensation of the egg sandwich welling in my gut. I remember Mike saying, "If you think you've eaten too much when we start riding, that should be just about right." I feel sick. The plan is coming together nicely.
We begin the thing in earnest. My feet go numb. The cold, dewy grass whips at my legs, reminding me that I am not in my warm bed.
Not a race, I remind myself.
The group rides as an entity. We ride only as fast as the slowest guy. The ride lives between the first and the last rider. Consensus determines pace. Peer pressure pace.
We start off slow. No cat and mouse today. Quick comments float with us followed by short, bike-jiggled laughs. Then we ride in silence. The bikes talk.
The sag hits as my heart chugs to keep up with the early morning demand.
The specialists at the helm are cautious. We are not even to the first of the four food caches.
In front of me, I watch Todd in slow motion as he takes a sharp, slow left down a nasty pitch. Something catches his front wheel and his rear wheel floats up, describing a sickening arc. He disappears into the pine deadfall to the sounds of shoes unclipping, branches snapping, heavy thuds, and bouncing bike noises. I get off and walk down.
Todd scrambles up. Says he's OK, but I see blood on his knee. Mike grins down at the bottom of the hill waving a bag over his head. Food. The first cache.
We eat overlooking a quarry, our hearts pounding blood with no help from our suddenly still muscles. My eyes seek rest from the constant trail reading by staring at the water ripples far below. Visual silence.
Medical talk brings me out of my peaceful trance. Todd's bloody knee. A wad of biological stuff has herniated out of a small gaping hole, a dark center hinting at the depth of the wound. His fall had consequence.
Todd prods the bloody glob back in the hole, hoping that it will go back to its proper place.
Packs are zipped and we ride away from feed stop #1. I multiply the already done part of the ride by four. Feeling good. Ride's in the bag.
We pass a graveyard, and cut though a yard with engine blocks dangling from the trees. Mike thinks we should ride quiet here. Maybe not talk. Our Lycra-clad fashion show might not be a welcome addition to this guy's Sunday morning ritual. Rick's expensive freewheel sounds like a party noisemaker. We all agree that Rick should pedal through the dangling tree engine gallery. We don't want to provoke a conversation with its curator.
Miles later, on a boulder-strewn hill climb—I can't remember not being here, riding up this endless series of decisions, throwing my front wheel over boulders, twisting my gut to keep the pedals turning. I am deep in this world when I hear a shotgun-like blast just behind me that puts a kink in my neck. Tire explosion.
There is Trevor squatting beside his bike, poking his finger though the huge slash in his sidewall.
Mike moves in, executing a classic Powerbar wrapper and duct tape repair on the destroyed tire and has us all trundling along in short order.
At a nondescript junction of a dirt trail and another dirt trail, Mike gets off his bike and smiles. His smile is met with numb, faraway looks.
"We're here." He translates for the unenlightened.
We are in Mike's World. We must trust. Another cache of food. Animals have torn the bag apart. Contents are fine.
We eat. Between my sore ass and my fear that I will have trouble getting back up, I do not sit.
If Mike had catered this feed with an espresso cart, it would not have been much better. The simple sauce of exhaustion.
Shadows are getting longer, and my brain is shutting down.
Mike pulls over, a rabid grin on his face. "This goes on climbing for two or three miles." I look up at a trail that rises at a disheartening angle and disappears in the trees.
This should not bother me, but it does.
Angst creeps in. My legs turn the cranks, but I keep thinking, there must be a lower gear. My right thumb is sore from this thought.
At the helm things have gotten messy. My team of professional specialists has become a room full of panicking first graders. The ship is coming apart. Multiple systems failure and so forth.
I bask in the quiet simplicity of a dictatorship.
I carefully consider each redlining dial and then carefully smash each one, with the peen end of my hammer, leaving broken glass and snaggled needles waving their vague distress signals at an unsympathetic me. The time for rules and information is over.
Then, I break rule number two.
The one about not pulling out front.
I click the shifter for a taller gear. My legs hold it. I gear up again, and stand, the bike swaying underneath me as I pick up speed. I go from off the back, staring at the dirt under my front wheel and thinking about dropping from the ride, to out front looking up to where the trail bends out of sight. The pinging of gears up-shifting under pressure draws double takes from each rider.
I will go out in a blaze and become part of the ride lore. My name will be forgotten, but the exploit, the bravado, the stupidity and strangeness will be remembered and retold. The looks, as I go by, run from pity to confusion. Nobody takes my foolish invitation to frolic in idiocy. Grinning and growling, I sever my last connections with sanity. An economical plan to break both my rules at once is coming together nicely. Pull out front and quit the ride. But then at the top of the hill, I feel better, even fine. My crew sits about in fresh-pressed uniforms, looking competent, consulting their monitors and sipping coffee.
The ride regroups at the top.
I settle in, my brain and body feeling refreshed. A strange, momentary gift.
We go back to Rick out front, setting the pace. The rest of us follow in a bungee-like way.
We are three-quarters of the way through and the ride no longer feels "in the bag."
We reach the fourth stop. Not long ago I did my little craziness on the long climb. That euphoria is gone. I feel a permanent bonk brewing. I don't sit for ass reasons and fears of rigor mortis setting in.
My ass is a new kind of hurt. Slid-down-a-cheese-grater-and-landed-in-rock-salt hurt.
I think about my quiet predawn getaway. The children asleep with their little kid dreams. My wife. Her sleepy kiss. Come back home in one piece.
Songs get in my head and take over. Elton John's "Rocketman."
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
Till touchdown brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home.
How do you tell your five-year-old that you bailed. Quit. Hit the ejection button. Failed.
Self-doubt dominates. The bleakness. The worry. This last part. This last quarter of the ride. The math. The fractions just don't work here. Multiplying a Bubba ride by some factor just doesn't get you here. Wormhole.
There is small hope. I know if I don't stop riding, don't go too slow, don't break my bike, I will finish.
It is not a race.
A brutal singletrack session. Tinglesack.
I am off the back in this twisted boggy section, alone in this dark Tolkien-inspired swamp.
Up ahead I hear the guys again. They are taking off their shoes and discussing techniques for walking across thirty feet of old silver deadfall to the other side of a small lagoon.
I hold my bike in one hand and tightrope across this silver, barkless tree, made slipperier by the previous wet-socked tightropers. I think about the violent reaction of my overheated body hitting this cold water, dark as espresso.
The guys are gone and I am way off the back again.
I jar along, my brain cocooning. I ride with the grace of a feed sack.
I catch glimpses in the darkness, through the trees. Do I hear them? I make mistakes, battling with roots, sharp turns. I am not even sure that I am on the trail anymore.
I catch up again as the trail opens up. The light is fading fast. This sparks new energy in the quest for Mike's house. To my minivan. To home.
Elton speaks again:
I miss the earth so much
I miss my wife
My emotional pendulum swings into damaged territory.
Mike stops out front at the bottom of a hill. We are riding too close and all pile up behind him. A snag of dirty, tired riders.
"Sorry guys," he says, "wrong turn."
It is getting dark.
I hear a groan. Not sure if I made the sound. We ride back up a hill of soft dirt and scattered logging debris that we mistakenly rode down.
It takes my last reserves, but now we are close.
We arrive at Mike's house. It is nearly 6 P.M. We have been going since 8 A.M. Wheels come off bikes. Dirty equipment is loaded in vehicles. No symphony of beer tops popping. No recounts of our exploits. We nod goodbyes.
It's just over.
I left the house that morning in the dark. I left sleeping kids. When I get home they will be dreaming again. I rode over my head all day. My whole body begins shaking uncontrollably, recoiling from what I have done to it. I am shaking enough to make driving difficult.
At the helm sits an unshaven version of myself. Grinning.
| Exclusive Dirt Rag Web-Only Extras For Metric Bubba | | This story earned Stephen Gleasner second place in the 2007 Dirt Rag Literature Contest. Stephen is a plywood artist. At first, he made vessels, vases, on a wood lathe. A few years ago he invented something new called "Plyscapes," plywood carved in very low relief. Click here to check out the Dirt Rag photo gallery of his work. Learn more about Stephen via this Rider Profile. |
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| Comment from Sharon on 2007-11-29 |
| The author did an excellent job communicating how hard the ride was--and I love the implication that he lived to tell the story. I especially liked the stranger-in-the-hot-tub line. Great images in words and illustration. |
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| Comment from Rick on 2007-11-20 |
| Nice story Steve. It sure was a blast but it will be nothing compared to the Trans Rockies! |
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| Comment from Gary on 2007-11-20 |
| I love those rides you get done and you are so shelled you try to remember which car is yours. Beautiful! |
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| Comment from Mo on 2007-11-20 |
| Great story-telling. we do a Tuesday night ride here in Marin and follow it up with a ride report that turns out to be half the fun. Nicely done! |
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