A training, traveling and personal reflection blog featuring international cycling adventures with the random article on knowledge management and stories attending meetings at the United Nations over the last three decades. Recent focus on transitioning from running field operations and raising >4$ million a year,
to becoming a bicycle tour leader!
1) Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones II on planes and in lounges
2) Bose SoundWear Companion speaker at home
Touring Bicycle
Seven Cycles Expat SL with S&S Couplers
Travel Choices
ExpertFlyer for travel planning
Royal Robbins Global Traveler Stretch Pant - S13 and Expedition Light Long Sleeve
Tumi Alpha luggage
STAR1 RTW tickets ex JNB or CPT
Laptop
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon
Racing Bicycle
Pinarello Dogma 60.1 with Shimano 7900 and 7950 compact crank and D1 electronic shifters. Enve carbon fiber wheel set
On 11 March, after a slow start getting out on the road in Houston, Mississippi, I rode towards Tupelo heading to the home of my Warmshowers host, Rufus. The weather forecast was for showers in the afternoon, starting between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm. Wrong. I didn’t beat the rain and almost made a bad mistake in not checking for the current forecast. In short, I got caught out in the open and almost ended up in some trouble.
The rain started coming down pretty heavy just as got about an hour south of Tupelo. My weather app, Dark Sky, alerted me just minutes before the rain started, so I was able to get on my Showers Pass rain jacket and boot covers. The temperature at the onset of the storm was warm enough so that I could ride in the rain with my cycling shorts and jacket, but then things started to get really weird. As the front swept past, the temperature dropped and lightening started to strike around me. I needed to find some shelter and there was nothing along the Parkway other than picnic tables in the turnouts.
Google Maps showed the Natchez Trace RV Park about fifteen minutes up the road. As the rain intensified and the seconds between lightening flashes and the thunder claps were getting shorter and shorter, I rode hard while holding out my thumb when any flatbed or pickup truck would roll past. Yes, I would have abandoned my “Every Fucking Inch (EFI)” attitude and thrown my bike into anything moving faster than 20 km/hr. Just as things got dangerous, I turned off the Parkway on Pontocola Road, dashing to the office of the RV park.
I was that blue dot, with two severe weather warnings aimed directly towards me; the heavy rain and lightening alerts above.
I was lucky. The rain was really heavy and the lightening strikes hit all around me. This was the kind of electrical storm that fries cyclists if they are not careful. As the outside temperature dropped and my core temperature also plummeted as soon as I stopped riding, I pulled the down vest, long warm waterproof pants and waterproof gloves out of my “holy shit” frame bag. (My “holy shit” bag is a waterproof Revelate Sweet Roll mounted between the drops on my handlebars that is there for easy, fast access when the weather changes from nice to awful very suddenly, causing me to exclaim, “Holy Shit” and reach for its contents.)
After an hour or so as the deluge abated, I bade farewell to the RV Park manager, who was very kind in letting me use his porch but treated me like I was an alien who had fallen out of the sky. But, this was a trailer park in rural Mississippi, the kind of place that serves as a breeding ground for Jerry Springer show guests. I was glad to be heading down the road to "civilization", as it is, in Tupelo. After having ridden for five days without a break, my plan was always to take a rest day in Tupelo. However, with the growing coronavirus threat, I did not want to push the limits of hospitality with my Warm Showers host. Rufus was very gracious, taking me shopping at the local Walmart (always a cultural experience in this part of the world) and providing a perfect landing spot in town where I could shower, cogitate on my situation and make plans. Sketching out my next moves were complicated by a nasty forecast of rain and headwinds for the upcoming weekend, combined with a rapidly deteriorating public health crisis. The region was stuck in a weather pattern that funneled a lot of moisture across the area where I was riding.
Although most of the people who I had spoken with in Tupelo, and the folks on the local news programs were far from taking the pandemic very seriously, I had been listening to podcasts and watching the national and international news. Sadly, most of the people in this region get their news from Fox News, which had been downplaying the severity of the impending health crisis and had not be warning its viewers to avoid contact with others, maintaining social distance or even the importance of testing and handwashing. No one was panicked in Tupelo.
But, I knew that there was a possibility that if I were to head off along the Parkway, headed to Nashville, there was a chance that the situation could change and leave me far away from home with no place where I could "shelter in place." Even worse was the possibility that the states up the road, either Alabama or Tennessee, could enact Italian-like measures that prohibited cycling. Also, the weather for the next week was lousy, with the possibility of thunderstorms and possibly tornados. I used some of the Marriott Bonvoy points and checked into a local hotel for two nights to rest and evaluate. During that stay, I decided that the prudent thing to do was to head home to New York where I could shelter with Pam at home in case draconian measures were put in place.
On Saturday morning, 14 March 2020, I rented a car one-way back home to New York. After loading my bike and bags, I drove up to Cave City, Kentucky to spend Saturday night. On Sunday morning I took the Historic Tour at Mammoth Caves National Park and drove over the next two days back to New York City.
I’ll be back to Tupelo to ride the rest of the Trace, maybe when the coronavirus runs its course. This road is simply one of the best bike roads in the world and I still have another 321 km (200 miles) to ride into Nashville. Although I drove the Parkway from Tupelo north, it just wasn’t the same as doing it on two wheels.
And, in addition to finishing up my bike ride, I also need to return to Tupelo, specifically to the Neon Pig for another chance to eat the best burger I have ever had in the world. The Belvis Burger (coarse ground hamburger meat with pimento cheese, pork belly, sweet and savory sauces and soft ciabatta bun) was fantastic.
Tupelo, I will be back… if not to cycle, at least to eat this scrumptious thing again.
On 29 February, I left New York on the Amtrak Crescent to New Orleans with my bicycle. As I have shifted most of my online posting to Facebook, rather than here on my blog, below are links to my public postings for this trip.
Here are my postings from March 3 through March 11, after riding from New Orleans to Tupelo. Mississippi.
After a long Amtrak ride from New York to New Orleans, and a short night at the Hosteling International hostel, I've...
From 1804 through 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Corps of Discovery Expedition across the Western part of the nascent United States, through the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and the Northwest Territories. Their route, both on the outbound and return journeys, passed through the areas where I was riding over the next six days. While not on horseback, my two-wheeled mounted adventure during these kilometers led me across terrain not much changed in the last two hundred years. To help with my imagining of what it must have been like, I had downloaded Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage”, the classic (but dated) history of the expedition. It was at times surreal to be climbing through mountain passes while listening to the story of exploration, discovering routes over the Rockies and hearing about the trials and misadventures of explorers more than two hundred years before.
My only criticism of the book was that Ambrose failed to acknowledge the roles that the local indigenous people played in assisting the expedition at crucial moments during their journey. It was good to stop in Darby, several days later, to visit the monument to Sacagawea, the Lemhi Shoshone teenager, who traveled with Lewis and Clark (carrying her newborn infant), serving as interpreter and guide. I’d like to find a more modern history that avoids Ambrose’s romantic, western-centric interpretation of the Corps of Discovery Expedition.
Over two days I rode from the west side of Yellowstone, north to Twin Bridges, following the TransAmerica Route.
I had been told about a great place for cyclists to stay in Twin Bridges and it had always been one of my planned stops along the way. After a day struggling into a headwind and after a long climb, I was happy for a bit shorter day (only 71 km) from Ennis to the fabled Bike Camp. Rough weather was rolling in and there couldn’t have been a more perfect spot to stop for the night.
Bike Camp was originally created by the late legendary Bill White, a local guy who realized that there was a “gold mine” of tourists pedaling through the city but who were not stopping. Now, after his death, the town of Twin Falls maintains this special place where cyclists touring along the TransAmerica bicycle route can pitch their tents for free (donations accepted and expected) and, like I did, head into this sleepy “wide spot in the road” to spend money. The Bike Camp is located walking distance from town, across the Beaverhead River. There is a shower, bathroom and large indoor area with a sink and some couches.
I arrived just at the same time as Eloise, another rider who was pedaling east along the Transamerica Trail. We shared the space and stories/tips from the road, each of us riding off in opposite directions just after dawn.
I had originally planned to ride up into Bannack State Park and the Bannack ghost town, at altitude off of the pass on Highway 278 between Dillon and Jackson Hot Springs. However my Dark Sky app was warning that a big storm was going to roll in from the northwest later in the day, bringing rain to the valleys and snow in the mountains. So, I booked a room in Dillon for the night to get out of the adverse elements and rode up through the historic Beaverhead Valley, along the Beaverhead River under a threatening sky.
This valley, marked by the famous Beaver’s Head Rock, has been a historic crossroads for centuries. Captain Lewis wrote that it was here that Sacagawea knew that she was close to her people, because she remembered the rock from when she was a child. There were places along the road where it was difficult to see the mark of humans on the land and easy to imagine what it would have been like riding with the Corps of Discovery in 1805.
So, rather than climb up to the highest point that the Lewis and Clark expedition passed on their adventure, I checked into my warm hotel room and headed straight for one of the finer breweries in the region for a cold Porter and some Mexican food next door.
It rained and snowed during the night, which is when I like my storms to hit (rather than during the day while I’m balancing across the country on two wheels.) While the backside of the storm was still passing through the Hamilton Range of the Rocky Mountains the next morning, heading up the pass on Highway 278 was a tricky proposition. In the photo below, taken looking west from near Dillon up towards Harrison Peak, there are snow showers ahead above 2000 meters. I knew I was in for a long day of climbs and potentially bad weather.
Here is a shot at the summit, where it had snowed just a few hours before.
While on the bike, my Garmin can show the road profile for the two or three kilometers ahead. My eyes paid close attention to my screen while climbing the two passes this day, always waiting for the moment when the relentlessly upwards line would turn turn downwards, indicating that the pass was near and road would turn downwards. This photo below, of my Garmin, was taken at the same time as the photo above, just before the top of the grade and the anticipated descent towards Jackson Hot Springs. Nothing like riding on a cold day with the prospect of a nice soak in the hot springs as incentive to push onwards.
On the way down the mountain, I was pelted by the most curious type of snow, ice and hail that I learned later that day, over a hot bowl of chili at Jackson Hot Springs Lodge, as “graupel.” Here is a cool video that explains what graupel is, but basically it is a snowflake that falls through freezing rain. Kind of “puffy hail” that still hurts like hell when it hits the skin at 50 km an hour on the descent.
I'd stayed before at the Jackson Hot Springs Lodge, several years before while touring through Montana with Adventure Cycling. The town is small, but has several options for touring cyclists. There are rooms and rustic cabins at the Lodge, a small campground across the street and shared rooms in Harwood’s Bunkhouse Hotel. I opted for a small cabin with a shared bathroom/shower a short distance away, which gave me free access to the wonderful hot springs pool.
My next day’s ride was going to be my longest so far in this trip, all the way from Jackson Hot Springs to Darby, a lovely little town on the descent from Chief Joseph Pass in the Bitterroot Valley. I had already contacted Curtis Bunton, a Warm Showers host, who was anticipating my arrival that afternoon, 122 km away. But, when I woke up, there was a light cover of snow on the ground. Luckily it warmed nicely during the day, the winds were light and sometimes following, and after a great breakfast of pancakes in Wisdom at my favorite little spot, the Crossing Bar and Grill, I rode well all day.
I’ve always enjoyed the Big Hole, an amazing landscape in Western Montana, just at the northern border of Idaho. These great open lands, full of history both sad and inspiring, have been a magnet for me over the years. This photo is from the top of the pass, at the start of the most marvelous descent out of the mountains and down the Bitterroot Valley. A mostly gradual descent that lasted two days.
And, on my final ride of this six-day stretch from Yellowstone to Missoula, I rode along the Bitterroot River for the final 101 km from Darby into the metropolis of Missoula, Montana.
The last time that I had ridden most of this route was in 2016 during the Montana Bicycle Celebration, which coincided with the grand opening of some of the final segments of the route. While it is a gradual descent all along the route, the winds were not cooperating and turned what could have been a leisurely pedal down the valley into a bit of a slough.
Next up: After several days in Missoula, up through Glacier National Park to the railhead in Whitefish.
The rain ended, thankfully, at some point in the middle of the night but a heavy damp fog dripped from the trees. I was not a happy camper… sections of my cool Nemo Tango Down Comforter were soggy from falling off the edge of my sleeping pad into the small pond of rainwater and condensation on the floor of my tent. My Anker 20000mah PowerCore Power Bank was out of juice, as well as my laptop and phone. It was not freezing, but just barely and that Big Agnes Fly Creek HV UL1 was feeling very confining. I needed to get out of my tent after almost twelve hours hiding from the rain, wearing as many pieces of my wool and water-resistant down to stay warm during the long night.
It was a short bike ride to the Canyon Lodge, where I found a wall outlet for charging, a warm fire to chase away the bone chill and some slightly-less than boring industrial US National Park concessionaire breakfast food, overpriced and under-spiced. But I chatted with tourists, posted some photos and arranged with my friend, Joe, arrival arrangements that afternoon at the Yellowstone Forever Institute’s Buffalo Ranch, nestled up in the remote Lamar Valley. All I had to do was to climb a little from 2400 to 2700 meters, drop down past Mt. Washburn and through the Devil’s Den, along the Yellowstone River to Tower Junction for lunch, and then turn east up along the Lamar River.
My panniers must have held an additional eight kilos of water-soaked clothes, ground cloth and tent for the climb. But the day cleared as I climbed and exercise put even more heat back in my body. This panorama shot below is, I think, of Mt. Washburn, heading north on Grand Loop Rd, around the Washburn Hot Springs Overlook.
This is one of my favorite shots, taken by some tourists from Riverdale in the Bronx, who I had met at breakfast. Over my left shoulder you can see the Teton’s, where I had been just two day’s of riding ago.
The descent was 21 km long, all the way down to Tower Junction, where the road branches west towards Gardiner and the North Entrance to the Park, and eastward towards Montana and the Northeast Entrance. But at the bottom of the hill is Roosevelt Lodge, where I stopped for lunch before heading up the Lamar Valley. The ride down got really hectic around the Devil’s Den, where the road drops along Antelope Creek and Tower Creek joins the Yellowstone River in an area called The Narrows. Between the cars, RVs, tourists crossing the road and lots of people and confusion, I rode through without getting any photos. However, I did stop just past The Narrows and took this photo of Yellowstone River.
My first tour with Adventure Cycling Association in 2012 was around Death Valley, where I had the chance to meet Joe Loviska, one of our two tour leaders. We have stayed in touch over the years, touring together and bumping into one another from time to time. Joe has worked over the years at the coalface in the important intersection between the environment and education, training and teaching others about the natural environment. In recent years he and his friend, Katie, have called the Lamar Buffalo Ranch, part of the Yellowstone Forever Institute, their home. Nestled up in Lamar Valley in the northeastern (and most remote and least commercialized) quadrant of the Park, the Ranch is home to scientists, naturalists, botanists, and guests who come to learn about the ecosystem. Katie and Joe hosted me for two nights in one of the cabins on site, where I dried out my wet gear and hung with the bison wandering the campgrounds.
This was my cabin, with my bike on the porch and a friendly curious bison. All the guests at the Ranch were warned to walk cautiously around the grounds, checking before rounding a building or coming out of a doorway. One morning, coming out of the shower/bathroom, I peered out the door and saw a bison not two meters away, grazing on the verbena.
Katie and Joe were wonderful hosts and we had a fantastic night out in Cooke City at the Miner’s Saloon. No big deal in the West to drive an hour to dinner outside of the Park. Distances are so stretched out in this part of the world.
Thanks Google Street View
With my gear all dried, clothes cleaned and chain lubed, I was ready to push on towards the Big Hole and Chief Joseph Pass. Joe was driving up to Missoula, with some backcountry camping along the way, and offered to drop me just outside of Yellowstone Park. My experience so far with the narrow roads and distracted drivers in big cars had not turned me into a fan of bicycle touring inside Yellowstone National Park. I gladly accepted the offer and motored over some of the roads I had ridden before. After three days of riding in Yellowstone, from the southern to almost the northeastern gates, I was not at all relishing navigating any more hectic Park roads with no shoulders.
Now that I know what I know, I think that I would recommend touring cyclists on the TransAmerica Trail Map sections 4 and 5 to avoid Yellowstone. Rather than riding the segment between Moran, Wyoming and near Earthquake Lake (at the intersection of Highway 87 and 287) west of Yellowstone National Park, I would suggest going over the Teton Pass Highway, using part of the TransAmerica Teton Spur. I think that this is the route that commercial operators use with tour groups, since they are not allowed to pass through Yellowstone National Park. Maybe an option would be to route around the park but through West Yellowstone, where you could arrange to leave your bike and take National Park public/tourist transportation into the Park. This would be very doable if you can live without your bike and don’t mind hauling your panniers/camping gear on buses from hiker/biker campground to hiker/biker campground.
Next section: Bike Camp in Twin Bridges and through the snow and hot baths across the Big Hole and down the Bitterroot to Missoula
On 14 June, following a lovely pancake breakfast at the Climber’s Ranch and a spectacular sunrise and cap cloud over the Tetons, I rode north into Yellowstone
The route north from the Grand Teton Climbers Ranch went up past Jenny Lake on Teton Park Rd, which is a much better alternative to getting back out on 191 through Moran. While starting off on the bike path, I took this photo of my bike and some flowers in front of the Teton Range. (The bulge in my right rear pannier is due to the long tent poles on my otherwise marvelous Big Agnes Fly Creek UL-1 and one of the reasons that I have just upgraded to the Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL2 Bikepack tent with the shorter poles.)
This is the magnificent panorama alongside Jackson Lake
And finally, I was up the road and in Yellowstone National Park.
Due to road width issues (and the fact that motorists in Yellowstone are looking for bears, bison and caribou and not paying attention to cyclists) a lot of riders and all cycling tour groups will bypass Yellowstone, heading down through Jackson Hole and up over Teton Pass Highway, leaving the TransAmerica route, rejoining it west of Yellowstone. I’d never been in Yellowstone before and was heading to Lamar Valley, so this wasn’t an option. But, if I were to do the TransAmerica route again, I would take the bypass and avoid the narrow roads and drivers who might not be aware of how wide their RV really is.
Many of the US Park Service campgrounds have a special “no-turn away” policy for cyclists and hikers. When I pulled into Grant Village campground there were “ALL FULL” signs everywhere, but I parked my bike, waited in line with those people with reservations, and was given a campsite for about US$5.
The following day the weather changed for the worse. With cold rain coming forecast for the late afternoon, I rode to only as far as Canyon Village with the plan to set up camp before the rain began. Well, that was the plan.
Every opportunity has a price point. It looked like the rain would be heavy all night long and there was a hotel in Canyon Village with some empty rooms. However, there was just no way that I could justify spending around US$400 to enjoy the luxuries of a night indoors. The delay, talking with the staff at the Canyon Lodge (and accessing email and web using their wifi) was my big mistake. I should have just gotten my campsite, set up my tent and then gone to get food and find the internet. But, I dawdled and the rain started coming in. As soon as I got my campsite location and headed over to drop my gear and find a flat spot, the drizzle turned to a downpour. As fast as I could I got my footprint down, staked up the tent, got what I could off of my bike and inside the tent but things got wet and somehow there was water inside. It was chaos. I pumped up my air mattress, which served as an island in the middle of a little lake inside the tent. And the rain didn’t let up all through the night. Luckily I had just enough juice in my portable battery to recharge my GPS and keep my phone going through the night, listening to audio books. It was on that night that I decided to buy a two-person lightweight tent for my next big trip, just so that on long wet nights inside I’d have enough space so that I could have thrown in my panniers and set up my bedding in a dry space. It was a long, long miserable night.
This was a picture inside my tent… condensation. Self-condemnation. Remember.. always get your tent up before the rain begins.
Fedor and I bid farewell to our Warm Showers hosts, Mike and Dannine, riding north and west along the TransAmerica trail as it climbed gradually from 1700 meters to the town of Dubois at 2159 meters over 119 km and 965 meters of climbing. It was a lovely cool day with a pleasantly unusual tailwind that quite benefited us but enraged the TransAmerica racers who we encountered along the road. Some of them had expected a big push as they headed to the southeast, gradually downhill across Wyoming, and a respite from the mountains between their start in Oregon and here.
We ran into this guy racing the TABR from Australia, who was suffering from the altitude and glad to be heading down to lower elevations.
His meal of Cheez Whiz and bagels was the norm for most of the racers who we had met. They just wanted to inhale calories as quickly as possible and get back on the bike.
It was my birthday, June 11, and I treated myself to a motel room in Dubois. The Chinook Winds Motel, located on the southeast side of this small town, was the perfect little cycling motel and there were some TABR riders (who came and went during the night) and a few other casual TransAmerica riders who were also staying there. My Russian friend, Fedor, shared the room and joined me for dinner. We dined at the Cowboy Cafe, one of my favorite spots on the entire trip. Just plain friendly folks and, when Fedor mentioned that he as paying for my meal since it was my birthday, the waitress told us that my meal was already free since it was my birthday.
This photo of Cowboy Cafe is courtesy of Tripadvisor
Fearing the next day’s climb up and over Togwotee Pass, this piece of rhubarb strawberry pie with a big scoop of vanilla ice-cream was offered up as a sacrifice to the coming effort.
Dressing for the next day, I set up my bear spray, moving it from my front bag to a prominent position, strapped across my chest. We were heading through grizzly country and the last thing that I wanted to do if confronted by a bear was to have to fish the spray out. The bear spray canister remained very easily accessible for the next weeks as I moved through bear country. However (or maybe thankfully), the only bears that I saw were surrounded by tourists in Yellowstone, although I did “smell” a grizzly near the road climbing to Chief Joseph Pass coming out of the Big Hole a week later.
Riding out of Dubois early in the morning was the last that I saw of Fedor. We had agreed that if he was way ahead of me at the top of the climb, he would ride on. Fedor was a stronger rider and he was very gracious to ride with me on my birthday, but I could sense that he could have ridden harder (although he said that he had exhausted himself riding hard the previous day before we met in Lander.)
It was a long, exhausting slog up Wyoming Highway 26 to the top of Togwotee Pass, the highest point that I would reach on the entire trip, topping out at 2944 meters (9659 feet). While the grade was never more than 10%, it was relentlessly between 4% and 8% and the twenty-five kilos of clothing, camping gear, equipment, food, water and electronics in my panniers were always a constant presence during the climb. How slow could I go without falling over? There was not a lot of oxygen at that altitude and I was working hard for five hours from Dubois up to the col.
On the climb to the summit there was an ominous electronic traffic sign with the message, “BEAR ON ROAD, REMAIN IN VEHICLE”. Well, that is little help if you are on a bicycle.
The owner of the Lava Mountain Lodge, close to the Pass, said that a Grizzly boar (male) had killed one of a sow’s (female) two cubs the day before and she was now on a rampage. The sow would not mate with the boar while she still had cubs and this was his way of resolving the situation. (I’ve told this story several times since the ride, and there is a predictable female response to hearing that the male would commit murder if thought that it might help his chances of getting laid.)
With my bear spray on the ready, I descended quickly down the pass. It was my first view of the Tetons off to the west, my destination for the day.
It was a long day and I just missed lunch at the Hatchet Resort (five minutes after their lunch hour and they were not flexible.) I had to ride on another 35 km to Moose, WY to get a late lunch. This photo below was taken at the entrance to the Grand Teton National Park coming into Moran, WY.
The road from Moran to Moose is spectacular! This is the view…
It was a long day.. lots of climbing at altitude
I’ve been in a lot of bars over the years, but none with the view from the stools inside the Dornan’s Pizza & Pasta Co. in Moose.
The Grand Teton National Park is located on a spur off of the TransAmerica Trail, a bit off of my route from Lander up through Yellowstone. I think that one of the reasons that many cyclists don’t take the spur is because it is difficult to find camping in Jackson or economical lodging. However, the Adventure Cycling Association GPX file for the “Teton Spur” of the TransAmerica Trail included a reference to Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch located inside the Park, just to the north of Moose. I contacted them a few days before and reserved a platform in one of their bunkhouses.
This was my home for two nights, hanging out with the “dirtbags” who come every year at the beginning of the climbing season to work for free for one week as they maintain the camp, making it ready for the season. This is what US$27 a night gets you at the Climbers’ Ranch (non-member rate).
There is a certain connection between long-distance cyclists and mountain climbers. After all of the RV parks, motels, and even camp grounds, this was one of the best places that I have ever stayed. I was in total awe of the climbers and listened with fascination as they told stories of routes and pitches that they had climbed over the years. They, in turn, wanted to hear all about my ride across the US earlier in the year and seemed genuinely impressed that I had ridden my bicycle, fully-loaded, over Togwotee Pass. It was great hanging out with these wonderful men and women.
Although I’d planned to ride on the bike path down to explore Jackson, my better angels argued that resting my legs after two days of hard riding and visiting with mountain climbers was a better choice. I did return to Dornan’s, about 8 km away, for a huge late lunch/early dinner and to purchase some food for the next push north through Yellowstone National Park.
Next: Riding north through Yellowstone and into Lamar Valley
It was early 2006 when I first traveled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a meeting of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and an international conference on Chemical Management. I was flying at the time on a round-the-world ticket that included Emirates Airlines and I took advantage of their lax rules on traveling with bicycles as accompanying luggage, I brought my bicycle, thinking that I might get in some good rides somewhere in Dubai. It was that year that I met Wolfgang Hohmann, who several years before had opened “Wolfi’s Bike Shop” on Sheikh Zayed Road. During that meeting and for several years following, I frequently flew through Dubai to ride with the Dubai Roadsters both on their Friday morning club rides and up in the Hajar Mountains, staying at the Hatta Fort Hotel. Emirates had a policy that if you were on a Business Class ticket, they would provide free round-trip transport to any location in the UAE for passengers interesting in breaking up their trip with a stopover. Over the last thirteen years, I have explored a lot of the UAE by bicycle, riding up the famous Jebel Hafeet, frequently up through the tunnels from Hatta over to Fujairah City, the capital of the emirate of Fujairah. It has been very cool to see how cycling has exploded in the UAE with so many more riders and lots of cycling infrastructure.
At the invitation of the UAE Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as a Member of the SDG Council for SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and communities), I flew in to Dubai last week to participate in both the “SDGs in Action” meeting and the World Government Summit. The travel agency gave me the option of two airlines, Air France and British Airways, and it was a simple decision: BA allows bicycles to be brought for no additional charge as part of the passenger’s luggage allowance (AF does not allow bikes as part of the luggage allowance and charges about USD 150.) So, I bagged up my Seven Cycles Expat SL and flew off to Dubai for some cycling and some meetings, packing cycling gear and business suits.
Although the Seven has S&S Couplers and fits into an airline friendly, I decided to fly with my Aerus Biospeed soft case, since BA does not enforce the usual 115 cm (45 linear inches) for a bag. It might not have been as well protected, but the process of disassembly and reassembly is much easier without having to get the bike into the small S&S Couple hard-sided case. No problems at all with British Airlines, particularly since I had called ahead and mentioned that I was bringing the bicycle, so the message was in my reservation record.
On arrival at the hotel the bike was in good shape. Now time to put everything back together.
Here were the necessary tools and accessories.. pedal wrench, double-sided pedals, tail light, front spindle and Flouro Grease for the S&S couplers (so that the coupler joints don’t weld themselves together due to the static electricity arcing across the connection between the front and rear halves of the bicycle.)
The disk brake rotors travel separately from the wheels so that they don’t get even slightly bent. They need to be reattached.
The handlebars get reattached to the stem.
The derailleur needs to be unwrapped and removed from between the rear seat stays.
The spacer between the two front forks, which protects the forks from being bent while in the case, needs to be taken off.
And the derailleur reattached.
The S&S Couplers joined.
And wrenched tight, making sure that the special grease is in the connection.
The cable splitters for the rear derailleurs and the rear disk brake need to be re-attached.
And the seat post inserted and tightened down. I keep a pipe clamp on the seat post to mark the height for where the post should be set and to make sure that the seat post does not accidently slip down into the seat tube.
And, the bike is assembled!! Just about thirty-five minutes from unzipping the bag to attaching the frame bags.
Nothing better than a good “col” to climb while in Europe!
A “col”, of course, is the European equivalent to a “gap” in Vermont or simply where the road crests going over a mountain pass. And today’s “col”, called the Col de Jaman is a classic Swiss mountain climb, twisty, steep, shaded by thick forests and the long traverses across pastures full of cattle and the sound of their bells.
After arriving in Montreux yesterday (while attending a meeting on Knowledge Management in the United Nations in the village of Glion, perched on the hillside) I rented a big heavy bicycle at the train station. I guess that it is a regular bicycle, but after getting accustomed to riding 8 kg bikes, this 12 kb bike feels like a tank.
This is the Victoria Hotel, where my ride started this morning.
The climb is so steep that a funicular railway runs from Montreux to Glion and up the mountainside.
The route went up on mostly 1 1/2 lane roads averaging between 10%-14% grades with pitches that topped out at 25%. But even though the bike was heavy, it had a triple ring in the front and I could keep the pedals spinning at about 70-80 rpm and move slow but steady progress up, up and up.
This is the Col de Jaman, lurking way up there. The road was switchbacks that snaked up the hillside.
Looking back down on Lac Leman with Geneva way, way off in the distance.
Up at the Col, looking back down the hill.
The road ends at Col de Jaman, but a lot of people come up here to park and walk up into the Alps beyond.
The ride was about two and a half hours, or about two hours going up and a half hour coming down. 778 meters of climbing with no break.. just up, up, up.
As promised, after the big crash in January while descending too fast in Thailand, on today’s ride I focused on going up the hill much faster and down the hill very, very slowly. Not the same adrenaline rush, but I arrived back at the hotel without falling down, which is the simple goal these days.
While descending a winding mountain road in Northern Thailand on 25 January 2011 I suffered a fairly serious accident when I miscalculated a hairpin curve and went flying off the road into what I thought was a brushy culvert with my bicycle. Although I didn’t realize the extent of my injuries at the time, I had ripped the little finger on my right hand back towards the wrist, breaking two bones and tearing the webbing between my fingers, as well as cracking two ribs (the 5th and 6th) on my right side, crushing my clavicle/sternum joint and shoulder and injuring my right ear. Now, almost thirteen weeks later, after much rehabilitation and some procrastination, I’m ready to tell the story of the ride that day, the accident, my treatment at the hospital in the town of Pai, my 70-hour journey home to New York, the surgery on my hand, the prolonged and opiate-aided recovery, the detox from the opiates and my current rehabilitation.
While some of the reverse-chronology details can be found on my Facebook feed, I realize now (after recently posting a video of my emergency room visit in Pai) that some Facebook friends somehow missed the updates and there are others who might follow this blog and were surprised to find the narrative of our cycle tour end so abruptly. So, here is the story from it last left off, on the road from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Song.
Slow Easy First Day: Long Ride Ahead (message not posted on 24 January)
(This posting was written on 23 January but not uploaded since we were in rural Thailand, off the grid and far from a WiFi signal.)
Slingbox is a wonderful thing, except when the Jets lose. All the marvels of modern technology allowed me to sit in the breakfast area of the Thaephae Garden Guest House and watch my TIVO back in New York. However, despite a third and fourth quarter surge, all the coolest technology couldn’t get us a Division Championship. So, as soon as the Jets had lost, we loaded up the van and drove just outside of the heavily congested urban area of Chiang Mai and took off on our ride.
The photo below is of Khun Jame loading the bikes and Markus, at our hotel in Chiang Mail
Our dilemma was that the distance from Chiang Mai to Pai was either one very, very long ride with huge mountains during the last eighty kilometers… or a two-day ride with a relatively easy spin the first day and some intense climbs and a shorter stretch on day two. Given that I had just done a twelve-hour time zone change and only slept about four hours last night due to jet lag, Markus and I decided on taking it easy today.
We rode for just two hours, from just outside of Chiang Mai to just before the huge climbs, leaving them for two big climbs tomorrow morning before it gets too hot and the traffic is still light.
Two hours on the bike averaging 30 km per hour is not necessarily an “easy” day. But, on a seven-day ride, the objective is to get stronger and stronger during the ride and not burn out on day one. The geography and topography was against us as we started and this was the best option. So, when we got to the lunch spot, rather than to decide to push on for the next three hours through some 15%-20% hills, we ordered Heinekens and our guide, Khun Jame, found us a very nice pair of bungalows for about US$20 a night. Our plans, tomorrow, are to fuel up on toast and eggs before departing just after dawn in the early morning calm.
We drank a few beers, had some good Thai food and saved the big push for the days ahead. This is a marathon, not a sprint and our worries were that we would hammer like hell today and feel like crap for the next seven days. My best multi-day events have been where I paced at the beginning and got stronger as the race went on. Let’s hope that strategy works here.
Below, a tasty Pad Thai as fuel for the day ahead.
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January 25 2011: The 80 km of hills from near Mork Fal Waterfall into Pai (almost)
Markus and I had breakfast at dawn, with the intention of getting out on the road early so that we would be climbing during the cooler part of the day. As you can see from the Google Earth image above, the route for the day rose and fell through a series of hills, gradually topping out at about 1400 meters. All together, we climbed about 2000 meters of vertical elevation during the day, which was about what we wanted to do on the second day of a six or seven day ride with some big climbing days to come later in the week (or so we believed at the time.)
The three charts above are a good story of the day.. the accident occurred at about 68 km on the descent into Pai. However, I forgot to turn off my Garmin so the speed and elevation from 68 km until we arrived at the hospital in Pai were not from cycling. You can see from the heart rate graph that right at 68 km it (and I) fell sharply. The Garmin data from the moment of the accident shows that I was doing just about 53 k/hr at the moment of impact. It is not the flying off the road that will hurt you but the stopping and that was a pretty brutal deceleration!
We stopped mid-morning for a bowl of soup at a roadside café, which also had some amazing cellophane-wrapped baskets of fresh strawberries.
During the long climb I turned on a little micro video camera attached to the handlebars and recorded two segments of the ride up through the National Forest. (Unfortunately, although I had my camera recording on the descent and at the moment of my crash, for some reason the file didn’t save properly and the recording of the accident is lost. We tried to recover the file using several tools, but nothing worked… so the video of the crash is lost, maybe for the better.)
The video below was taken about an hour before the crash. It is shaky and with very little narration, but gives a good indication of the terrain and how the curves on the road are laid out in sort of a predictable pattern, which is significant later in the day on the descent.
Just after 1:00 pm that day we met up at the crest of the climb and this is a picture of Khun Jame:
And, Khun Jame took this one of me just before the long descent into Pai and the accident about twenty minutes later.
From this point, the road descended downwards heading into the town of Pai. Most of the descent was a mixture of long easy curves and some switchbacks, in a fairly predictable pattern that allowed me time to anticipate and slow down as necessary. However there were two factors that I think contributed to the crash: 1) I was riding with some cars that had passed me at the beginning of the descent and as the road got steeper and more curvy, they were slowing in front of me and keeping me from going as fast as I'd wanted (bicycles can go down curvy mountain roads much faster then cars); 2) although it was in the early afternoon, only three days before I had been in New York where my body clock said it was just about midnight. So at one point in the descent when I saw an opening I passed the cars and was accelerating down the hill as fast as I could in order to stay in front of them, all the while with a brain that might have thought it was the middle of the night. Maybe I wasn’t at my sharpest.
As I had just finished going around one switchback and was going down about a 12% grade the road turned to the left and then suddenly got much steeper (maybe 18% down) and there was a switchback to the right that I had not anticipated. I was going exactly 53.8 km/h according to my Garmin 800 when I had one of those awful split second choices; either attempt to brake hard, lean into the curve and probably lose it and crash off the side of the road down the cliff, or dump the bike and head towards the side of the road into what I thought was a softer landing in the bushes.
Minutes after the crash, I walked about 25 m up the road and took this picture back towards the place that I crashed. This picture was taken right from the point where I decided that I wasn't going to make the curve and I headed between the small white road barrier and the sign. It looked at the time like a better choice. In the picture you can see Khun Jame in the orange T-shirt standing just to the right of the road marker and I had aimed just between those two road markers.
Over the last 11 weeks I've had a lot of time to think about the moment of the crash and what happened. I really had thought that I was going to be landing in some bushes rather than plunging down into a ravine and landing in a pile of dirt. In hindsight I probably should've thrown the bike away from me, because when I landed I think that my little finger got caught in the handlebars and got bent back towards my wrist and as my front wheel slammed into the dirt I fell right on the stem, which attaches the handlebars to the frame, snapping my two ribs. Somehow I also landed very hard on my shoulder and the right side of my helmet, spraining the joint between my clavicle and sternum and slightly separating my AC joint at the top of my right shoulder.
I was conscious throughout the entire event, however as I tried to climb out of the pit I had to stop as I went into shock and the entire world got very dark and I came close to passing out. Just after the moment of the crash, I caught my breath and looked up out of the hole to see the car that I had passed several minutes before slow and stop to check that I was okay. At that moment Khun Jame pulled up, called down to me to see if I was okay, and the other vehicle continued down the road.
This is the hole that I landed in, about four meters down from the road and most definitely not a soft landing.
As strange as it might sound, one of my first thoughts in getting out of the hole, was to take some photographs of the crash site and the road up and down from where the accident occurred. I had been in too many incidents where it later occurred to me that I should've taken some pictures and so this entire event and follow up is pretty well documented.In the photo above, which was taken about 3 min. after the crash, Khun Jame is climbing out of the hole where he was checking to see if anything had fallen off of my bike. The photo below, taken later, is of my helmet which was pretty much destroyed by the impact. For anyone who needs to convince their children that they should wear bike helmets, please feel free to use this photograph as part of your sales pitch.
Within minutes of the crash, Khun Jame had loaded my bike into the van and I had absolutely no idea how badly I was injured. It's amazing how adrenaline kicks in during these times and makes you feel like a Superman. In the picture below, I was smiling but I can see by the droop in my right shoulder that it must've been slightly separated and I thought at the time that my ribs were only bruised and that my right little finger might only have gotten sprained.
The two pictures above are both taken looking back up the road from the crash site. You can see from the pictures that the road curved to the left and then immediately dropped off and hairpins off to the right again. At 50+ kilometers per hour I must've been almost airborne when I tried to brake off of the first curve.
Khun Jame and I got into the van and started the nearly 10 km trip down the hill into the town of Pai. I was mostly worried about my little finger and took a picture of it (see below) as we are heading down the road.
We drove that last stretch into town slowly, looking for Markus who had ridden on ahead and was unaware of what happened. I tried several times to call him on his mobile and send some text messages. We finally reached him when we got into the town of Pai and found him at a little restaurant drinking a beer and waiting for me to ride into town and join him. He certainly didn't expect us to pull up together in the van and certainly didn't know what to do when suddenly the gash between my fingers started spilling blood on the pavement and we all decided that rather than have a beer we would head to the hospital. I honestly at that point had no idea how badly I was injured and thought at the time that it might be best to check into a hotel in Pai and wait for a day before starting to ride again. Until there was major blood, only when we got into town, did I have an inkling that perhaps our cycling adventure was over and that this was much more serious than I had thought.
Khun Jame, Markus and I drove over to the hospital and walked into the emergency room. There was no wait and they attended to me immediately. Marcus took pictures and helped me remove my glove, rather than cutting it off. I'm still now firmly convinced that without the protection of my riding glove, that little finger would have been torn completely off. There was just enough structure in the glove to keep the finger attached to the hand.
It was probably my own stupidity and a fair dose of self-denial that I thought my ribs were only bruised rather than broken. So the nurses in the emergency room concentrated on my hand and the lacerations on my ear, and sent me off only for an x-ray of my right hand.
This is a snap of the x-ray taken in the little hospital in Pai, with a clear fracture of the right fifth metacarpal and although I did not see it at the time, a fracture of the next joint past the knuckle; the proximal phalanges.
The nurses began to work, cleaning up the hand while Markus pulled out his phone and began documenting everything. I don't think they let you do that in US hospitals, but Marcus took my favorite approach to these sorts of situations; it's better to seek forgiveness later than ask permission. The following two videos are not for the squeamish and probably have too much information, but there are fascinating look at the treatment. In one I learned the word for "pain" in Thai (GIP! GIP!) as I'm injected with painkiller. In the other one the Dr. puts one or two of the seven stitches between my pinky and ring fingers.
Not for squeamish! Injecting pain killer into finger
Stitching that finger up
Kudos to Markus for this shot and these videos, since I would never have been able to sit there with a camera and shoot this stuff.
The Dr. also attended to my right ear, which had gotten pretty torn up probably by the helmet shards as it broke on impact. They thought that they needed to put in some stitches to reattach some places where it'd pulled the skin from the ear cartilage, but they just fixed it up with a number of butterfly bandages.
Markus also grabbed a picture (see below) of the two of us in the emergency room.
The doctor there, who spoke very good English, said that since I was from New York and "they have very good hospitals there in New York", I should go home to have my hand operated on within the next 10 days.
So after about an hour of scrubbing up the wounds, some x-rays, stitching back on my ear and my finger and a prescription filled for Advil, it was time to pay the bill. I was a little nervous and thought that I should call to my insurance company back in the United States to let them know that I've been admitted to an emergency room so that I could later get reimbursement for the hospital bill. However when the total bill arrived it was for 720 baht, or about US$23. I know that back home in the States this would've been a $3000 bill at least. So needless to say I didn't contact my insurance company and we paid the bill, loaded up the van and decided to head back to Chang Mai immediately.
It took us about 2 1/2 hours to drive from Pai back to Chang Mai. Markus had already called his wife Lisa, who had sent an e-mail to Pam telling her that I'd been in an accident. I decided that it was pretty important for me to call Pam so that she could hear my voice and know that I was okay before she got the e-mail from Lisa.
So, even though was only about 4:30 AM back in New York I called Pam, waking her up with the not so good news that I'd been involved in a bike accident and was going to make arrangements to come back to New York as quickly as possible. Although not pleased to have gotten a phone call at that time of the morning, she said later that it was the best thing to do so that she could hear directly from me that I was okay.
It was on the ride back, particularly going around those hairpin curves and going over bumps that I figured out the probably my ribs were more than just bruised. Later, on arriving back in New York, the radiologist who examined my x-rays said that he had no problem finding the two broken ribs. My biggest worry at that point was the pain involved in taking a deep breath and what in the world I might do if I ever had to cough or sneeze.
By early evening we were back in Chang Mai, where we had started two days before. Somehow I got out of my riding gear and somewhat cleaned up in the shower, but between my head, shoulder, ribs, and hand I was feeling pretty beat up. Lying down was a real problem, particularly rolling over on the one side. For that first night in Chang Mai, all during the trip home and for the next several weeks I slept sitting up in a chair or recliner.
The Long Trip Home from Chiang Mai to New York City: 70 hours!
That evening while in Chang Mai I called up United Airlines and spoke with the Global Services representative to see about booking my flight back home for the next day. She was able to get me a business class flight out of Bangkok to Los Angeles and a First Class flight from Los Angeles directly back to JFK. I then called Ian Hamilton, my travel agent in Cape Town South Africa, who was able to book me on a flight out of Chang Mai the following afternoon to make my connection on Thai Airways to Los Angeles.
Markus helped me to break down my bicycle and get it into the bicycle bag and to pack my gear in my duffel bag. After a fitful night’s sleep, Khun Jame drove me out to the airport where he and Markus helped get me checked in, my bicycle and duffel bag as well as my briefcase checked all the way back to JFK and escorted me as far as immigration and security. From there I was on my way alone, with a one-hour flight from Chang Mai to Bangkok, a short layover and a 12 hour flight into Los Angeles.Thailand is one of those places where you can go into a pharmacy and get just about anything you want without prescription. Looking back on it now, I probably should've gotten some heavy pain killers like Percocet, OxyContin or Vicodin but I really didn't want to do a long plane flight looped out on drugs. So I stuck with the one painkiller I know well and basically drank vodka tonics all the way home.
It was not a comfortable flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles. The business class seats on Thai only recline to a not flat 160° or so and every single bump and every one of my twists was painful. Looking back now, I probably should have tried to get a first-class seat on a more indirect route but would've had a better journey across the Pacific.
On arrival in Los Angeles, both Thai Airways and the United Global Services representatives were extremely helpful in getting me through immigration and customs and provided transportation over to the check-in counter for my flight from Los Angeles to New York. The only glitch at LAX was that while I could walk just fine, carrying my carry-on bag with my laptop computer and other equipment was just a little bit too much for the broken ribs. The counter attendants at check-in requested disabled assistance but the woman who showed up with the wheelchair said I had to sit down in the wheelchair and could not just put my bag in it. So I sent her away and went back up to the counter where one of the nice Global Services walked with me through security, carrying my bag all the way to the First Class lounge.
However at this point in the journey back home the only glitch was the weather in New York. A snowstorm was approaching and although they thought that they might get my flight off, after delaying it for five or six hours, they finally canceled the flight and made arrangements for the First Class passengers to be transferred over to a nearby hotel to spend the night, and we would be rebooked on a flight the next day as soon as JFK reopened. Normally this wouldn't of been a problem, but I was feeling fairly uncomfortable and just wanted to get back to New York and check myself into a hospital. I even considered at one point just getting into a cab and going straight to a hospital somewhere near LAX, but finally thought that maybe it might be better to get all of this taken care of back at home.
United Airlines was unable to provide direct disabled/handicapped assistance to the hotel, but I did sit in the wheelchair at this point and they took me to the pickup point for the shuttle bus to the hotel where I spent the night and returned to the airport the next morning. It took longer to open JFK after the snowstorm than they had imagined and the flight was delayed several more hours but finally I boarded and arrived Thursday night at JFK, just about 70 hours after having left Chang Mai.
This picture above was taken by my car service driver in the JFK parking garage. I've done a number of endurance events in my life, like triathlons and marathons and long-distance cycling events, but nothing quite compares to this journey from Thailand back to New York City. After the drive from JFK back to our apartment in Manhattan, I collapsed in sobs, so happy to be back home, wounded but at least safe and sound.
The Recovery
Pam accompanied me the next morning to my appointment with Dr. Beldner, the orthopedist hand surgeon, who took further x-rays, cleaned up my hand and made an appointment for surgery 10 days later. Pam and I then went to see Jeff Buckner, my personal family practice doctor, who prescribed some pain killers to help make me more comfortable.
And then four days later, Jennifer, who works with me in the IISD New York office, accompanied me down to the radiologist who took some pictures of my chest to see what was going on there. He had no problem finding the two broken ribs and when I returned to Dr. Buckner's office he increased my pain medication and we had a good talk about how to deal with broken ribs.
What I learned is that there is no treatment for broken ribs, no wrapping or protection and the only thing you can do for them is rest and wait. My two broken ribs, five and six, are both breathing ribs and therefore particularly problematic. I've tried staying very still and not breathing in order to give them a chance to heal but usually can't last for more than about 45 seconds (that's a joke) so these ribs are always moving and that makes the healing process that much more prolonged.
The other big problem is that we normally cough occasionally in order to clear fluids out of our lungs. However my breathing ribs were broken and therefore I was doing everything in my power not to cough and having problems taking deep breaths, actually fearing the thought of sneezing. I learned that most patients with broken ribs are prescribed pain medication in order to be able to withstand the agony of coughing. Because, if one does not cough, the lungs can fill with fluid and this can lead to pneumonia.
Beginning several days before I had begun taking 5 mg Percocet and the dosage was increased to 10 mg, which made me much more comfortable although I don't recall with great clarity everything that took place during February and much of March.
However, in my opiate induced haze, I did have the courage to cough and my pain was managed successfully so that despite some really broken bits I was comfortable and sedated enough so that I didn't try something stupid like trying to exercise. The biggest temptation was to sit down at the computer and do business, since friends don't let friends do business while on opiates. During this period, Jennifer provided a great buffer between me in Lala land and the organization that I lead in Reporting Services at IISD.
I have learned more than I wanted to about the physiological effects of large opiate doses particularly on one's general intestinal tract. I have a greater appreciation for G.I. regularity than ever before. Enough said.
On 7 February my right hand was operated on at Beth Israel hospital in New York, 13 days after my accident in Thailand. It was an outpatient procedure however I was under general anesthetic and woke up in the recovery room speaking Portuguese to a Brazilian nurse who was overseeing my return to consciousness. Dr. Beldner had inserted two pins to set the proximal phalanges and used two screws to repair the fifth metacarpal.
I had a foam splint attached to my cast to keep the hand immobile and upright.
Just about 10 days later I returned to the doctor's office and they removed my larger cast and replaced it with a smaller cast just up as the wrist. And then about 2 1/2 weeks later they removed the cast and the doctor pulled out the two pins, leaving in the screws.
I had fully expected that as soon as the cast was removed I would begin Occupational Therapy and I'd be back to cycling and have the full use of my hand within a week or two. However I learned that whenever the hand and wrist are bound up for a long time like this that the joints become stiff and scar tissue forms in the hand blocking the free movement of tendons. I had the cast removed on 4 March and had my first occupational therapy session on March 7. Now almost 7 weeks later I still have very little movement in my right pinky finger and am struggling each day with finger exercises and trying to get my wrists to bend without pain.
However the biggest challenge that I faced was coming unglued from the opiates. As Dr. Buckner explained to me there are two types of addictions that can take place with opiates; physical and psychological. On 7 March, I decided it was time for me to stop taking the Percocet and went from 16 tablets a day to just one tablet a day almost overnight. I had no psychological addiction and could stop without any problem, however over the next several days I got more and more paranoid and very irritable so that by Thursday of that week, when in a staff meeting, I totally lost it and started yelling at people.
What I now realize is that as I was coming off of the opiates the pain in my hand, shoulder and ribs were coming “unmasked.” The opiates had been doing their job and without them, Iwas in pain! I was feeling invincible and thought that I could simply tell my body it was time to come back to normal and had gone for a jog on the treadmill. Then my ribs really hurt again and I started taking the Percocet, thinking that I had read damaged my ribs. Suddenly, taking the pain pills again the paranoia and the irritability went away as well and I booked an appointment with Dr. Buckner to try and figure out what was going on. He explained that while part of my brain could tell myself to stop, another part of my brain felt that I had promised to give it opiates and that I had a physical addiction that needed to be taken care of through a gradual scheduled reduction. He prescribed a lower dose painkiller, Vicodin with acetaminophen, and over the next three weeks I slowly reduced my dosage so that by 13 April I was totally off the opiates and just taking Excedrin extra strength tablets up to the maximum 4000 mg a day.
The entire opiate and painkiller experience has been a fascinating one for me and I can now understand how seductive they are how easily it might be for some people to become addicted. I really didn't like the way they made me feel since I couldn't form sentences, quickly remember details or make good decisions. They were great for what they did but I'm very glad to have put them away.
Getting back to moving again has been a whole other experience. For two weeks in March, from the 14th to the 25th, my good friend and yoga teacher, Davi Cohen, came by the apartment to do some home yoga sessions. Just getting moving again was so wonderful as my body remembered the positions and the ways that it had moved two months before. In yoga there is the expression "samskara" , which refers to the etchings, lines or patterns in one's yoga practice. As I twisted and turned my body knew the samskara and it gave me great pleasure, a warm glow and even a tingling sometimes when I'd move back into old asanas. These last two weeks, when I've been taking public yoga classes at Yogaworks on the Upper East Side, it has been the best physical therapy possible. I'm also firmly convinced that having an active, advanced yoga practice four or five times a week for the year before my accident was one of the factors that both made the accident less worse in the recovery much easier. The core muscles and the overall tone and flexibility that comes from a vigorous yoga practice provided a base level from which it was easier to come back.
So today, 24 April, three months from the day of my accident in Thailand I finally felt recovered enough to tell the story. I'm still in a great deal of pain, as my ribs are healed but still very tender and my shoulder, both in the clavicle and AC joint, still move with some discomfort. Every day I spend hours working my fingers, doing hot and cold contrast baths and trying to get full range of motion back in my hand and wrist. Last week I rode my bicycle twice up and back to yoga, but only my fixie bike with the flat straight handlebars that I can grab easily with my right hand. Although my new Pinarello Dogma was finished last week and I had it delivered by John from Conrad's bicycle shop 10 days ago, I still don't have the confidence in my right hand arm and shoulder to go for a ride.
So for the time being it sits on the rack in the living room waiting a few more days until I feel strong enough to ride. Maybe there's just a little bit of hesitation too about getting back on a bike. I’m dealing with that.
The upside to the downside is that I have two great takeaways from the experience. One is that I have mastered the Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software and have written and edited this entire piece without using the keyboard since it's still very difficult for me to type with my right hand. Even though I may gain the entire use of my right hand again I don't think I'll ever stop using the voice recognition software for writing and controlling the computer.
The second thing that is my take away from this experience is something that my management coach, Steven Marks, told me. He said that for the rest of my life I should concentrate on going up so much faster and going down hills much more slowly. I think it's excellent advice!
The MOOSA Tour, put on by InMotion Events, is a six-day fully-supported bicycle trip that begins in Bethel, Maine and loops up through New Hampshire, slices through just a bit of Vermont, crosses the border into Quebec and then swings back to the east and south back to Bethel. This year’s trip began on Sunday, 27 June and finished on Friday, 2 July 2010.
The MOOSA Tour is organized by Al and April, the owners of InMotion, which is based out of Auburn, NY and which usually hosts two-four rides per year in the Northeast of the United States, either along the Erie Canal, through the Finger Lakes, in the Adirondacks or in the Maine and Nova Scotia area. Al is one of the original organizers of the hugely popular Bonton Roulet, which cycles around the Finger Lakes each summer and is hosted by the YMCA in Auburn. The rides are a great formula; you can camp or stay in motel/hotels and they provide some meals and truck your gear from camping site to camping site while you cycle anywhere from 40-70 miles per day. The participants are usually strong recreational cyclists, most in their 30s-60s and are generally friendly and almost everyone mixes in well.
One of the best improvements over the years to the InMotion formula has been addition of an option called Comfy Campers(formerly Camptel.) This service makes camping a whole lot less stressful. For a extra fee they provide nice high-end tents, a big air mattress, a fresh shower towel and a camp chair, which are all ready and waiting when you finish your daily ride. Below are the Comfy Camper tents at our campsite just outside of the Parc de la gorge de Coaticook in Quebec. The blue tents are the deluxe and the tan tents are the standards.
This service used to be owned by Al and April, who sold it to Shawn Stewart who runs it as an independent company for both InMotion events and other bike touring companies.
Day 0 - Saturday, 26 June 2010 – Bethel, Maine
I flew from Newark, New Jersey to Portland, Maine and was picked up by Steve, one of the volunteer riders and we arrived at Bethel Outdoor Adventures just in time to watch the US lose to Ghana in the World Cup. The campground is on the shores of the Androscoggin River, just about a half mile from the center of Bethel and an hour and a half by car north of Portland.
My bike, which I had sent up by Fedex Ground, was nicely assembled by Bethel Bicycle (thanks Peter and Maggie!) We had the pre-ride meeting in the late afternoon and I had a great meal at the Crossroads Diner (along with friendly conversation…. is everyone in Maine so open to speaking with strangers?? This was not NYC!)
Day 1 - Sunday, 27 June 2010 – Bethel, Maine to Errol, New Hampshire
Way up at 44° north, the sky gets bright and the sun rises early in late June. And, living outdoors on these rides, you fall into some non-urban sleep patterns. So, by 5:00 am I was up to shower and head off to breakfast back at the Crossroads Cafe.
At 5:30 the place was full of locals and I sat down to a short stack of pancakes, real maple syrup and potatoes with coffee. This is the kind of breakfast you want before riding off down the road.
And, this was the first road marking as we took off…. and we followed those orange asphalt graffiti for the next 350 miles.
Sunday, Day 1 was a short day since the planned campsite, about 10 miles further down the road, had cancelled on the tour organizers at the last minute. However, we spent the night just outside of Errol, Maine, which was being invaded by motorcycles in the area for some biker rally. All two wheels, but those beasts are noisy. We heard the roars of the bikers all day and into the evening.
My favorite site on the ride north was a cute little pie stand by the side of the road. No one around and all the pies and preserves were for sale on the “honor system.” You just left your money and took what you wanted. There are few places in the world where this works, but you find these all over New England and Upstate New York.
It was a short ride on Sunday and I’d arrived early into the campground where the perverse incentive for leaving early and riding fast was to help Hank unload the gear bags from the truck.
Day 2 - Monday, 28 June 2010 – Errol, New Hampshire to Coaticook, Quebec
One of the challenges of living outdoors for a week is trying to figure out the weather and what to wear during the day. Once we pack up our gear each morning and head off down the road, we are left with what we can carry on our bikes and with changing weather this can present a real problem. During the night, the rain had started and continued through until dawn, falling hard on the tents and leaving the field where we were camped a real bog. Having good information on the weather is not only useful but also essential for having a good day on the road.
However, I had packed my laptop and was able to connect into a WiFi signal and get the latest weather radar at first light. It showed a huge green and yellow blob that had been tracking over the region through the night but there was a break in storm and the trailing edge looked like it would pass over us around 7:30. So, armed with this good information, I spoke to a few friends on the ride to let them know that if they wanted to wait for a few minutes, it looked like drier riding in a few minutes. And, just as expected, the rain stopped and I headed out down the road trying to get in as much distance before the rain might come again.
This day’s ride took us up through New Hampshire, through the very upper right hand corner of Vermont and across the border into Canada. The border officials were expecting us and I used my new Nexus card to cross into Canada.
The rain fell for about an hour half way through the ride and then again after entering Canada. So, it was a day of putting on the rain top, riding overheated but dry and then taking it off, over and over again as the showers started and stopped. With no fenders the rear wheel spray had soaked my shorts and the grit from the road was all over the frame and chain.
Here I am climbing up a particularly nasty pitch, with my rain gear in a sack on my back and wearing clear lenses in my Oakleys due to the low light and heavy rain. It was a gritty, wet day for me and the bike.
So, on entering Coaticook ahead of most of the riders, I pulled into a great little bike shop with a superb mechanic, who pulled off and cleaned the chain, blew the dirt off the bike, removed and cleaned my cassette and put the whole thing back together for me. There is nothing like a clean drive train! Then it was time to dry out the gear while the sun shined in the afternoon.
The picture above is of the InMotion information table, where messages were posted with information for the 80 riders. Also, there were coolers (lower left) with beer, wine and soft drinks and a container for money for the drinks.
We stayed that night at the Parc de la gorge de Coaticook and I went into town with Harry and Jan, a lovely couple from Pennsylvania, where I feasted on chicken wings, shrimp, steak and some delicious baklava at a Greek restaurant. After a day of riding with no breakfast or lunch, this early dinner was one of the best meals on the ride.
Without the distractions of urban existence, it is easy to run out of things to do by 8:00 pm. There are no web sites to visit, emails to read, no TV shows on the TIVO and no lights to fool one into thinking that it is really daytime. So, by the end of the second day, I was ready for my sleeping bag and air mattress by 8:30 or so… and woke at 4:30 in the morning. Great sleeps, although the thin nylon of the tents does not block much of the sounds coming from other campers, who snore, cough, zip and unzip their tents and roll around on those loud air mattresses all night. It is funny that I can live in Manhattan and sleep through police sirens, music booming from cars in the street and the roar of traffic and helicopters overhead, but am bothered at camp by someone farting three tents away. Go figure.
Day 3 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010 – Coaticook to Notre Dame Des Bois, Quebec
On Tuesday, I rose early and headed to the showers before taking off down the road. On a long multi-day ride, there is nothing more important than keeping that area where the seat hits the meat clean, dry and free of growing bacteria and other flora. It is easy for Candida albicans, that nasty skin yeast infection, to begin growing, resulting in inflamed skin.. which can make for a very miserable day. So, I’m pretty fastidious about wearing clean riding shorts each day, using the expensive but excellent ASSOS Chamois Crème and making sure that the first thing I do at the end of each ride is to get out of the damp shorts, into the shower and then wear loose fitting shorts to allow the area to breath and dry out. The whole idea is to reduce friction and prevent bacteria and yeast from finding a place to call home. This year with 100% effective crotch management, I was as comfortable sitting on the seat the last day of the ride as I was on the first.
On this morning, I left early and went to Le Coin, a lovely coffeeshop in Coaticook for crepes and coffee before heading out. The ride was 61 miles with more than almost five and a half thousand feet of climbing.
Most of the climbing was long, long gradual 1% and 2% grades, which I really love. You can see from the photos below the long rolling nature of the roads.
So, the third day was a perfect day for holding 200 watts while grinding up long straight flat stretches of road, really working hard. It is funny how you can get stronger rather than more tired on multi-day rides like this (although I did end up paying for all this work by the end of the following day.)
From the day’s ride profile you can see that there were those long grades. From 35 to 50 miles the elevation gain was from 700 feet to 1700 feet… 1000 feet total in fifteen miles. Some up and down but mostly gradual up and up.
About 10 miles from the finish, I stopped in La Patrie, a small town mostly remarkable for the fact that two large roads meet there and not much else. However, I sat outside on the porch of a lovely restaurant and inhaled eight hot chicken wings, a big hamburger and three real Pepsi-Colas. It is all about the calories on a trip like this.
In Notre Dame des Bois, we camped at the school and were served two great meals, at dinner and again the next morning, by members of the community. It was home cooking for eighty hungry riders. The rain came in late in the afternoon, catching the stragglers out on the road in a drenching downpour. Luckily, the tents were all pitched and we were able to go inside the huge ice hockey rink (no ice this time of year) while the storm passed. This was the last of the big downpours on the trip and we had pretty good weather, except for some light showers the following afternoon, the rest of the week.
Day 4 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010 – Notre Dame Des Bois, Quebec to Kingfield, Maine
We rode back across the border into the US on Wednesday, the fourth day of riding. We were served such a great breakfast that I was in no hurry to head off riding, particularly since the start of the day was all uphill. So, I waited until almost everyone else had left before riding off, but still ended up arriving early in Kingfield, where the punishment reward for hard riding was helping to unload the truck.
Luckily, I did not get in trouble for taking this picture, as we rode up to the border crossing back into the US. Some of the other riders did, but honestly, if you are going to give someone grief for taking a picture, you should have a sign up that says, “No photos” or something. Ah, back in the US and the crazy mania for security and the misplacement and miscalculation of real risks.
Here is a shot (below) of our rest stop on Day 4, which was a lovely place to grab some cookies, peanut butter on saltines, refill the water bottles and grab some fresh fruit.
This was another high mileage day and, again I was feeling frisky and pushed the wattage. Aside from the vertical up and downs over the first ten miles, the rest of the day pretty much was flat moving through rolling hills until the last twenty miles that followed the river that you can see above.
However, by the end of the day, I was really feeling fatigued. A group of us walked into the town of Kingfield to sit out on the back porch of the Longfellow’s Restaurant for some baked brie and burgers. Two hours later we were served a big spaghetti dinner back at our campsite and I inhaled that as well. Nothing like burning 4,000 to 5,000 extra calories a day to work up an appetite!
This was our campground in Kingfield, with the blue and tan Comfy Camper tents all lined up nicely and the others, who pitched their own tents, scattered off to the right. In the lower right, you can see the bags of the riders who had not arrived yet. The organizers could tell if anyone was still out on the road and needed to be fetched if their bag was still there at the end of the day.
Day 5 - Thursday, 1 July 2010 – Kingfield to Rangeley, Maine
The local Masonic lodge prepared breakfast for us at the Kingfield school and they had everything ready early. I was up at 5:00 am to check my email, recharge some devices (like the battery for my DuraAce Di2 electronic shifters), download some podcasts to listen to during the ride and get some coffee. I had the most interesting discussion with one of the volunteers, who had been in town government (maybe the former mayor) and was interested in new technologies for energy conservation. He wanted to do long term investment in capturing methane from septic systems and cattle/dairy operations and had taken some courses in renewable energy. We talked about sales of ecosystem services and discussed some of the principles of “green economy”, which he found fascinating. It was one of the most intelligent conversations that I had during the week… and all over coffee at 5:15 am.
In terms of distance (42 miles) or feet climbed (3542) it was not the farthest ride or the most altitude gained, but by day five in this ride, I was exhausted. There was no power in my legs at all… which is why my average heart rate for the day was only 119 bpm, which is really low. My fitness was fine, but there was no push for the pedals. This is probably why, after arriving in Rangeley and showering, I went straight to my tent and slept for an hour.
No, I did not see a single moose on the whole trip. I’m convinced that the residents of Maine have us all fooled into believing that there are moose in Maine just to get us to drive all the way up to their damn state.
Here is a shot at the rest stop on Day 5, full of goodies:
The last shower of the ride started just as I was pulling into Rangeley, and so I quickly looked for a place to stop and eat. One of my favorite types of food after riding is Thai, and there it was.. the Thai Blossom Express, right on main street. The owner was a former Thai chef in Tehran during 1979 and during the takeover of the US Embassy he hid four Americans, who with his help managed to get to the Canadian Embassy. The pad thai had too much fish sauce and was far too sweet, but maybe this is the way that people from Maine like their Asian food. But the hot sour soup hit the spot after the long ride.
This was the last night of our trip and we had a big dinner at a restaurant in Rangeley, where InMotion provided beer and we had a big Italian dinner. Gary, our ride leader, circulated pictures of riders from the trip and generally entertained the crowd. By the end of the week, we had nicely arranged ourselves into small cliques, and I we assembled a great table with Sandy and Steve (who were married on a bike ride several years ago), Helen and Steve, Harry and Jan, Nicole (from Comfy Campers), Ed and Bob. (Below is a picture of Sandy, who was a real character, giving me some kind of crap for taking a picture of her with her mouth full.)
Day 6 - Friday, 2 July 2010 – Rangeley to Bethel, Maine
Friday dawned bright and sunny, easily the nicest day of the year. The weather had been cold for the last several days, dropping down below 10C (around 45-50 degrees F) at night. But, this day promised to warm quickly and did.
My flight from Portland was scheduled to leave at 7:00 pm and the ride was long, with almost 66 miles of road between Rangeley and the end of the ride back in Bethel. However, the real motivating factor that got my butt out of the tent and on the bike heading down the road was the World Cup quarterfinal match between Brazil and the Netherlands. I figured that if I grabbed some calories in camp, had a Cliff bar on the road, ate well at the rest stops, I could skip breakfast, hammer up the hills and then ride mostly downhill through the mountains into the town of Mexico, Maine and make it back in time to see the second half of the game.
The day’s ride profile was the perfect one for the last ride in a multi-day event like this.
We climbed early in the day, heading up to the summit overlooking the lakes in the Rangeley area and then descended through the forest before heading home on a long flat (mostly) stretch into Bethel.
Thanks to Steve for this shot, looking back to the north over Mooselookmeguntic Lake (yes, that is the name of the lake.)
Here we are at the first rest stop, about 35 miles into the ride. The rest stop was right beside this stream (below)
Nice spot for a rest stop.
Here is the last shot of the ride, crossing the Swift River just north of Rumford, Maine
With my energy restored from the easy day going into Rangeley and some good food over the last day, I rode hard and fast, particularly on the flats in the last twenty miles. And, as planned, I pulled into the Bethel Outdoor Adventure location just at the start of the second half and in time to see my World Cup team, Brazil, go down in flames as they lost all discipline against a great looking Dutch squad.
After the game, Maggie at the bike shop took my bike off my hands and will pack it up and send it back to New York in the next few days. There is no rush to get it to Manhattan since I’m taking off on Tuesday morning for Australia and South Africa and won’t be back home for two weeks.
One last unsolicited plug for a restaurant. Next to Bethel Outdoor Adventures is the Rooster’s Roadhouse. I wandered in totally unprepared for the great atmosphere and wonderful food. This is definitely a place I’d like to go back to for an evening someday.
Steve drove the van, as he had done a week before when he picked me up from the airport. We were joined by Way, a United Airlines mechanic who had also ridden the ride and who was flying out at 7:00 pm. We left Bethel at 4:00 pm and cruised into the airport in time and I caught my flight to New Jersey, grabbed the bus from EWR to Grand Central and was home by 9:45 pm.
Great trip! There is nothing better than having little more to do each day but ride and eat, two of my favorite things. InMotion has the formula down for offering a really wonderful, low cost cycling adventure through some outstanding parts of the world. And, it is only three weeks until I’m off again for another week of riding with the Bonton Roulet Tour from 24 July through 1 August. Can’t wait!!
