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Authors: Brian Benson
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undressing the bike. As I pulled the uke and sleeping pad from the rack, detached the panniers, and flipped the bike over, I thought about Jeff and how he had worked with the wheel. My mind started to travel to an awfully ungracious place, and I shooed away the thought. Jeff had done all he could to help, for free, and this wasn’t his fault.
I followed the steps he had taken: removed the wheel, pried away the rim liner, and extracted the broken spoke. Once I got the replacement situated, I slid the wheel back into the dropouts, prayed a godless prayer, and, using the brake pads as a guide, set to straightening it. I remembered Jeff saying that if I made tiny adjustments on the spokes, using quarter turns, loosening and tightening, all would go well. And, miraculously, it did. After ten minutes, the wheel was clearing the pads. After twenty, it almost spun true. It appeared I had fixed something.
Soon enough I was back on the road, riding hard, Rachel hugging my back tire, the forest filling my vision, the wheel doing precisely what a wheel was supposed to do, and even though I couldn’t quite pin who I was competing against, I knew I was totally winning.
• • •
M y sense of triumph lasted about a half hour. As we rode north toward Ashland, I began to feel sluggish, and I kept hearing these disconcerting clicks and clacks from below, and so every five minutes I found myself pulling over, kneeling and searching for blown spokes. But I found no blown spokes, no flat tires, nothing worse than a stray pannier strap smacking against the tent poles. Eventually, begrudgingly, I accepted that this had nothing to do with the bike. I was just plain beat. My legs were saturated with lactic acid, my back and neck knifed by the slightest of movements. My temples were claustrophobic in my stupid fucking helmet, and I felt like a county road crew had spent all day jackhammering my crotch. I’d heard somewhere that male cyclists not seeking a DIY vasectomy should stand from the saddle every thirty minutes, for thirty seconds, and I was doing so, but still I was aching, and soon enough I was numb.
I asked Rachel if we could take a break. She said, “Oh my God, yes.” As we dined on candy in the driveway of an abandoned lumber mill/steampunk playground, she complained of aching knees and pain in both wrists. I mumbled something about changing hand position, but she interrupted. She’d been doing that all day. I didn’t know what else to tell her. This didn’t seem like something that would fade over time. I imagined it would only get worse. But it was just beginning, and neither of us knew what to do about it, short of taking breaks before it got to be too much.
• • •
I t was late afternoon by the time we rolled up to Ashland, a small college town on the Superior shore. Well before the water came into view, I felt its breath curling through city streets, up my arms, into my helmet. And that scent. So subtle and singular, the no-salt-please alternative to your standard ocean breeze. Superior, as ever, smelled just how it felt. Cold.
We pulled up to a shoreline park, and I called Donn and Ann Christensen, some friends of the Simeones who had invited us to camp on their lawn. Donn answered, his voice sweet and mellow, saying things like “welcome” and “take your time” and “spaghetti.”
I liked him already.
It was eleven more miles to Washburn. Eleven
windy
miles. Though the lake was now out of sight, hidden behind a finger of forest, its icy breath wound around tree trunks, up over undergrowth, and into our faces. The wind was low, maybe ten miles an hour, but that was enough to make us fight for every foot, and by the halfway point I was tanking hard. Unreasonably hard, come to think of it. All day I’d blamed my aching muscles and raspy throat on the climbs and smoke-belching semis, but the present aches and rasps felt, well, different. I released the bars and raised my fingers to my neck. The
I followed the steps he had taken: removed the wheel, pried away the rim liner, and extracted the broken spoke. Once I got the replacement situated, I slid the wheel back into the dropouts, prayed a godless prayer, and, using the brake pads as a guide, set to straightening it. I remembered Jeff saying that if I made tiny adjustments on the spokes, using quarter turns, loosening and tightening, all would go well. And, miraculously, it did. After ten minutes, the wheel was clearing the pads. After twenty, it almost spun true. It appeared I had fixed something.
Soon enough I was back on the road, riding hard, Rachel hugging my back tire, the forest filling my vision, the wheel doing precisely what a wheel was supposed to do, and even though I couldn’t quite pin who I was competing against, I knew I was totally winning.
• • •
M y sense of triumph lasted about a half hour. As we rode north toward Ashland, I began to feel sluggish, and I kept hearing these disconcerting clicks and clacks from below, and so every five minutes I found myself pulling over, kneeling and searching for blown spokes. But I found no blown spokes, no flat tires, nothing worse than a stray pannier strap smacking against the tent poles. Eventually, begrudgingly, I accepted that this had nothing to do with the bike. I was just plain beat. My legs were saturated with lactic acid, my back and neck knifed by the slightest of movements. My temples were claustrophobic in my stupid fucking helmet, and I felt like a county road crew had spent all day jackhammering my crotch. I’d heard somewhere that male cyclists not seeking a DIY vasectomy should stand from the saddle every thirty minutes, for thirty seconds, and I was doing so, but still I was aching, and soon enough I was numb.
I asked Rachel if we could take a break. She said, “Oh my God, yes.” As we dined on candy in the driveway of an abandoned lumber mill/steampunk playground, she complained of aching knees and pain in both wrists. I mumbled something about changing hand position, but she interrupted. She’d been doing that all day. I didn’t know what else to tell her. This didn’t seem like something that would fade over time. I imagined it would only get worse. But it was just beginning, and neither of us knew what to do about it, short of taking breaks before it got to be too much.
• • •
I t was late afternoon by the time we rolled up to Ashland, a small college town on the Superior shore. Well before the water came into view, I felt its breath curling through city streets, up my arms, into my helmet. And that scent. So subtle and singular, the no-salt-please alternative to your standard ocean breeze. Superior, as ever, smelled just how it felt. Cold.
We pulled up to a shoreline park, and I called Donn and Ann Christensen, some friends of the Simeones who had invited us to camp on their lawn. Donn answered, his voice sweet and mellow, saying things like “welcome” and “take your time” and “spaghetti.”
I liked him already.
It was eleven more miles to Washburn. Eleven
windy
miles. Though the lake was now out of sight, hidden behind a finger of forest, its icy breath wound around tree trunks, up over undergrowth, and into our faces. The wind was low, maybe ten miles an hour, but that was enough to make us fight for every foot, and by the halfway point I was tanking hard. Unreasonably hard, come to think of it. All day I’d blamed my aching muscles and raspy throat on the climbs and smoke-belching semis, but the present aches and rasps felt, well, different. I released the bars and raised my fingers to my neck. The
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