I like the reflective stickers on your bike and wheels. I imagine the spinning reflector dots on your wheels would get most drivers attention. My vanity seems to be holding me back from doing the same. But if Vireo does it, it must be cool.
What good is vanity when you are laid-up? I've had motorists pull over, or talk to me at Starbucks and mention that my reflective gear really works see one post here.
Legend yeah me to . I was thinking maybe bring my posts from my blog over to here- heck they would be easier to read than in the blog format.
I think we are living in parallel universes. Someone suggested I put all these posts in a single blog, so Sunday, I created a blog for that purpose. The protocols are different, so I haven't anything on it yet.
There isn’t much in Kelso … some railroad tracks and a restored train station. It was dusk when we arrived, but here is a look at the train station during daylight hours.
I pulled over out of the way, and waited for my crew to park. At once, I noticed they did a little modification of my token signage.
It seemed appropriate after my little baptism in Badwater.
I had to eat. By now, I was tired of eating seasoned potatoes. The pizza was gone. I got tired of the PBJ after the first one I had back in California City. So what do I eat?
I knew I would lose my appetite on the 508. But I was prepared.
People eat all kind of strange things on the 508. I even heard that several years ago, a rider brought nothing but Snickers bars and Coca-Cola. That’s probably not a good strategy, but it emphasizes one important point:
It doesn’t matter how nutritious the food is if you don’t eat it.
I knew that near the end of the ride, nothing would sound appetizing. I had planned for that too. How? By stocking up on the tastiest calories I could think of, nutrition be damned.
Think about it. When is the last time you had a Hostess Fruit Pie? It was the last time you looked at the label and saw the calorie and saturated fat content, right? Well, at this point in the race, I needed calories, and didn’t give a rip about the saturated fat. I reasoned that if I had any appetite at all, I could surely snarf down a fruit pie.
I was right. From your childhood, you might remember that they came in those little funny wax paper bags. They still do. Saralie handed me the pie. Ripping open the package, I discovered that the pie was smashed to pieces.
Irrelevant, of course. I pressed the paper to my maw and literally sucked that puppy down. Yum.
I knew I had managed to eat a boatload of calories. Rick's fruit pie suggestion was genius.
To wrap things up, Rick handed me a 5 hour energy bottle. I dunno what they put in those puppies, but they do work. I experimented with them on that 300+100 mile training ride, and I concluded that they were effective. I washed it down with a Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew … looks and tastes like antifreeze. But it’s caffeinated, and the bubbly effervescence was just what I needed.
I took the opportunity to slather a bit more of the anti-incontinence formula on my arse. The stuff was odd … it had the consistency of bathroom caulking. At least it wasn’t painful to apply.
Oh, and something else. Music.
Some of the riders had equipped their support vans with external speakers, so they could communicate with the rider and play music to encourage them along. I had no time for this, so I decided to use my MP3 player instead.
I think it dangerous to ride with headphones in your ears. It’s important, from a safety perspective, to hear approaching traffic and other riders, so I don’t usually ride with them. But I don’t ordinarily have a van following me, shielding me from traffic either.
I wound the headphones around my ears, plugged the puppy in, and took off.
The crew had to pee, and we didn’t want to hoof it all the way over to the train station at Kelso. So, we opted for a break by the side of the road a few miles away from the time station.
That accomplished, I hopped back on the bike and started riding up the hill to Granite Pass. This stage was a short one … only 34 miles. But the climb was significant.
I had done this climb before in 2006. It’s not a difficult or steep climb, but it is long. As I pushed off, I began to follow another rider … again, pacing myself. Then it occurred to me … why am I pacing myself? I was about 420 miles into a 500 mile ride. I felt fine. All I had to do was two more stages, and the ride would be over.
The guy in front of me was going slower than I wanted. I had music in my ears. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t sore. The sun was setting on the horizon. It was a beautiful day. And most of all, it wasn’t windy.
Screw the pacing.
I stood up on the pedals and passed the rider in front of me. It felt great! Soon enough, I approached another rider, and I passed him as well. And I did this again and again until there was no one in sight in front of me.
In cyclist parlance, I was smelling the barn. All I had to do was finish this stage, then another. And I’d be at the finish line. There was no point in saving energy at this point … I had more than enough to make it to the finish line. This was a world away from the depths of despair in Death Valley.
And I had paid for it ... the payments made in the form of weekend after weekend, riding 200 miles or more. This was the payoff … nearing the end of a 500 mile race, and I still felt energized.
Or maybe it was Alice Cooper’s “Raped and Freezing” on my headphones, I dunno. I had the MP3 player to pick songs randomly, but here in the now chilly desert, the choice seemed appropos.
The summit of Granite Pass turns to the right and flattens out. I took the opportunity to stop and ask the crew for my bright headlight.
The descent is a hoot … fourteen miles long, and straight as an arrow. But I’ve already alluded to my naturalized citizenship in the kingdom of cowards … I checked my speed accordingly.
There … in the dark, I could see the distant headlights of I-40. In minutes, I passed below them and into the dark desert below.
The descent from Granite Pass is so long, I tired of it, even at 40 MPH. I recalled that this is where Rick fell asleep on the 2007 Furnace Creek 508. Falling asleep on a bicycle going 40 MPH … I cannot imagine it. But then again, before this weekend, I could not imagine riding into a gusting gale, or getting baptized by a pit toilet at more than 200 feet below sea level. Yet, that’s what happened.
I wondered if Rick, inside the van, was recalling his brush with disaster.
I rolled into the “Almost Amboy” time station, still feeling energized. The timekeeper asked me for my totem.
“SKINK”
Here was the place I envisioned less than 24 hours ago … the place with the tombstones marking the DNFs of previous years. Even in the dark, I could tell there were no tombstones here tonight. But there would be plenty more tombstones in the future. The year 2009 was not kind.
My support crew pulled in behind me as I came to a stop.
“How am I doing on time?”
“You’re doing great.”
“Do I have enough time to finish?”
“You’re kidding, right? It’s 9 o’clock.”
It took a while for that to sink in. Let’s see … 9 o’clock. That means that I have about 10 hours to go only about 50 miles. Holy crap! Unless something went seriously wrong, I would certainly finish. Sheephole Pass was a nasty little climb, and from the bottom of Sheephole, I had a long, gradual uphill to the finish line, but I could certainly average 5MPH. Could it be that I’d actually finish this thing?
You are killing me with the suspence. This is worse than the last mexican soap opera I watched.
Arguing with ignorant people is an exercise in futility. They will bring you down to their level and once there they will beat you with their overwhelming experience.
Also, I hope you're saving these descriptions somewhere else so you can keep them and read them again in ten years. BF may be forever, but it may not, and you'd hate to lose this diary of your event!
“Almost Amboy” is called “almost Amboy” because it is literally in the middle of nowhere. As a matter of fact, for most people, Amboy itself is nowhere. Amboy lies on historic Route 66 … the same road taken by Oakies escaping the dust bowl in the 1930s … and the same road taken by my family when we moved to California more than half a century ago.
In its day, Route 66 handled a significant amount of traffic, but no longer. The road is dotted with the remains of roadside diners and abandoned motels, and some of them in Amboy. But what were once welcome mirages are now strange curiosities.
“You should eat.”
I looked at Saralie. I kinda didn’t feel like it.
“How about another fruit pie?”
We now regressed to conversation I’m sure I had with my mother countless times.
“Only if you have something else first. How about some chicken and stars soup?”
I had become quite enamored with the Cup-O-Noodles served on most double centuries. So much so, that I purchased a 12 volt, plug in thermos that would warm water to boiling in a matter of 5 or ten minutes … just so I could have Cup-O-Noodles if I wanted to.
Saralie had warned me she wasn’t going to be little miss chef out there in the Mojave desert … even if that meant simply boiling water. I brought the thermos anyway. But out there in “Almost Amboy” I came to see the wisdom of eating lukewarm Chicken and Stars soup. Poured into a water bottle, it can be downed like a thick milkshake, and takes no time to prepare.
“Ok, I’ll have some soup first.”
In truth, I was in no hurry. I spent damn little time sitting down inside the van on the entire 508 … pretty much only to change shorts. But there was a chill in the air, and I wasn’t eager to wait for my repast outside.
While I was waiting, I downed another Mountain Dew. Yum.
Before me was the last stage. Although I had done the 508 in 2006, I had watched Saralie climb it and new what to expect. Once the turn is made at Amboy, the road climbs pretty much straight up a long alluvial fan and over Sheephole pass.
Since this road appears to go from nowhere to nowhere, you might guess that it is lightly trafficked. You would be wrong. While inching her way up this grade in 2006, Saralie was passed by countless roaring trucks, most of which were towing large boats. Apparently, the road from Amboy to Twentynine Palms is a major arterial for people going to and from the Colorado River.
Ah, the soup is on.
Ugh. Cold. But pleasantly salty. And that is one of the reasons to drink it. I downed it in a few gulps, and moved on to the fruit pie feast.
It was time to go. The last stage.
The first step was to get to Amboy itself, a mere 5 miles away. The road was dark, and it was empty save for a few riders within my view.
I got to Amboy in pretty short order. I was hoping to get a glimpse of “Roys Motel and Cafe” even in the dark, but I didn’t see it. Maybe I was just tired.
I crossed several railroad tracks, made a sweeping turn and started across the whitewashed playa of Bristol Dry Lake. I was making a pretty good speed … keeping pace with those behind and in front of me. But little by little, the road steepened, and little by little I caught and passed the riders in front of me.
The road wasn’t busy, but it was busy enough so that I didn’t dare linger next to the other riders to chat. And that is a pity … we had so much to talk about. I wanted to hear all about what the others thought of our windy night in the hell of Death Valley.
I was nearly to the top of the climb, when the van pulled along side of me.
“We need to take a pee break.”
Fine with me. I thought it a good idea to put on my brighter headlight again anyway. The summit was coming up, and the last thing I wanted to do was crash on the last descent of the race.
The motion to stop for a pee met with such general approval that we turned it into a regular pee party out there on Sheephole Summit. Some of the people that I passed on the way up the grade were catching up, but frankly, I didn’t care. At this point, my mind was on finishing.
I noted that my headlight holder was loose. Rick obligingly tightened it.
While we were waiting Rick told me that the top of Sheephole had a few false summits. The actual summit was further away than it looked. I’m glad he told me that, because he was right. But the grade was not long or severe, so I just settled down into the climb.
And there it was … the summit. I had completed the last big climb of the 508. Zipping up my jacket, I hunkered down for the descent. One concern with fast descents in the desert is the possibility of striking some kind of wildlife. Even something as small as a rabbit could cause a crash. With that in mind, I had no intention whatever of bombing down this thing … I wanted to safely get to the bottom so I could finish the ride. I kept my speed down.
About halfway down the grade, I beheld a horrible sight. A jackrabbit, it’s hindquarters crushed and motionless, its front quarters sitting up, and it’s ears up. The hapless creature was sitting right on the center line, staring at approaching traffic, but unable to get out of the way. Doubtless, it was also in a great deal of pain. Literally only half alive.
I flew by him at perhaps 35 MPH, so the image passed quickly … it was there and it was gone. But it stuck in my mind. It still does.
The descent was over fairly quickly, which left only a straight shot into the finish in Twentynine Palms. In my mind, the race was pretty much over … there was just the little matter of this short jaunt into town.
Saralie had done the 2008 Furnace Creek 508 solo, and I drove out to Twentynine Palms see her finish. She made great time … much faster than she or anyone else expected and by the time I arrived in Twentynine Palms, she had already descended down Sheephole and was making the milk run to the finish.
I drove out to see how she was doing, and in what seemed to be no time at all, found her and her support crew, making the ride to the finish. The distance from where I found her to the finish seemed to pass in a matter of moments. So at this point, I expected the ride to Twentynine Palms to be quick.
I was wrong.
In fact, in making the last 20 or so miles to Twentynine Palms, was gradually uphill. In fact, by the time we got to the finish, we would have climbed just 150 feet shy of the top of Sheephole Summit. To make matters worse, we were now heading into a light headwind. No, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to scrub a couple MPH off of my speed.
And there was more. Those that ride regularly in the desert know that apparent distances can be very deceiving. It is common to see lights enough for you to conclude that you are a mere mile or two out of town … when you are, in fact, 20 miles or more away. Even so, the distant lights are something to aim at, and something that tells you that you are nearing your destination.
Not so with the 508. The lights of Twentynine Palms did not appear at the base of Sheephole Summit. They didn’t appear after an hour of riding uphill either. All there was was mile after mile of dark road in front of me.
Now and again, I’d have a steep whoopdedoo to ascend, and I would do so … expecting to finally see some lights at the top. But there were none. This patter was repeated again and again. To be frank, it became annoying. Where the heck was Twentynine Palms?
Inexplicably, I felt a sharp pain on the outside of my right foot. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t. I stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“The outside of my foot hurts. I have no idea what that would be happening now.”
Now knowing what else to do, I took my shoe off and put it back on again. That seemed to cure the problem. Perhaps it was all psychosomatic … the result of my frustration.
“Where the hell is the end, anyway?”
“Utah Trail Road. Don’t worry … we won’t let you miss it.”
I knew that. But what I wanted to know was …
“How far is it?”
Yes, I was violating the sacred rule of endurance cycling … counting the miles until the end.
“I dunno. Five or ten miles.”
Sheesh. Well, I knew I was getting crabby and decided not to ask whether it was five miles or ten. Whatever it was, it was. I resumed pedaling.
More whoopdedoos. More blackness greeted me at the top of each one. In some ways, I think this last section of the 508 is the toughest.
Finally, it was there … Utah Trail. A left, a few miles, and a right on Twentynine Palms Highway … the road that would lead right to the finish. I passed through the stoplights of town, for the most part, shut down for the night.
Glancing ahead, I noticed a light was about to change. I was in no mood to wait for a red light at this point, so I stood up and honked through the intersection as the light began to change. Trouble was, in doing so, I left my support van waiting for me at the light. It made no sense to go this far only to be DQed for a technical violation, so I pulled over and waited for the light to turn green.
A car with a couple of teenagers passed. They yelled some obscenity out of their window, calling my sexual preferences into question. Small potatoes next to a crotch rocket passing within inches of you, but still annoying.
But I got a nice little present out there in Twentynine Palms. A present in the form of the local constable, roaring off after the miscreants shortly after they passed. With any luck, the constable was gay and did a specially thorough job rousting them. It isn’t often that justice is done at all, let alone so swiftly.
Oh, and here is a nice little quiz for you. What is the steepest pitch on the Furnace Creek 508? Well, my vote goes for the little hill just short of the finish line. My guess is that it is at least 13% or so. I’m sure there are a lot of cuss words uttered here. I shrugged it off and honked up the hill.
And there it was. The finish line. While training for this ride, I speculated often how I would feel rolling across that line. For the most part, I expected to arrive exhausted and overjoyed to cross it.
For much of the race itself, I didn’t expect to see it at all. I had resigned myself to defeat at Mormon Point and thought I had an outside chance of finishing at best until I arrived in Baker.
But here I was, arriving at the finish line. Finishing after all. And I wasn’t exhausted. I wasn’t overjoyed.
I suppose it is like many moments in life that seem to pass by like any other … their significance only cognizable after the passage of time. Graduation. The birth of a child. It happens. You’re there to witness it, but it’s apparent significance in your life is small in the now and long in the later.
A final push, and I was across. The time was about 1:30. I had finished about six and a half hours before the cutoff.
What did I have to say after riding 508 miles? All I could think of was this:
“Those winds in Death Valley were absurd!”
I’m sure I wasn’t the first.
Mr. 508, Chris Kostman, greets you at the finish, and there is a small ceremony. You’re handed a Furnace Creek 508 jersey (something only 508 finishers can buy), and given an official finisher’s medal.
“Look up at the camera.”
A camera poked itself in our faces.
“Geez” I thought. “He’s awful close.”
The photographer in me never really quite shuts off. I knew that at the distance he was taking the pictures, the lens was set to a wide angle focal length, and that would make us look like hell. I even thought about mentioning it, but I was too tired to care. Maybe you’re supposed to look like crap after a ride like that. In any case, here is the result.
And the result with Team Skink.
Just then, I noticed Vireo. I hadn’t seen him since the Trona bump, and had no idea he was just ahead of me. He must have passed us while we slept in the Death Valley hurricane.
Both in 2006 and in 2008, we finished off the 508 with a triumphant meal. Well, it was at a Denny’s, but that’s about all that is open that time of night.
But this year, I wasn’t hungry, and the crew was more sleepy than hungry, so we headed out to our hotel to get some well-deserved rest. Now that I was off the bike and not pedaling. I felt just as tired as you’d expect I’d be after going 508 miles on an hour and a half of sleep.
Being who I am, I naturally treated the crew to the best accommodations available in Twentynine Palms … the Mo6.
The first order of business was to take a shower. How does a shower feel after 42 hours and 508 miles? Well, it felt like heaven on most of my body. But if felt like burning hell in a couple of places. That’s right … on the stern, both port and starboard. Those saddle sores didn’t really hurt once I sat down on the seat and started pedaling, but the last 200 miles of pedaling and chafing did some awful things.
OMG, but that hot water stung. This was gonna hurt for a while.
And the news got worse.
There was no room for any crew luggage in the van, so before we left Santa Clarita, we had each packed a change of clothes in a small bag. I was so absorbed in all the tasks to prepare to ride the 508, putting a change of clothes was regarded as a pesky detail to be given little attention. And that lack of attention manifested itself when I opened my little care package and looked inside.
Uh … underwear? Crap. I forgot my boxers! That’s a fine kettle fish to be in when you have weepy sores on your arse. Oh, and it gets better. The short pants? Off-white.
Peachy.
I didn’t know what else to do, so after slathering the sores with Neosporin, I put the short pants on and shoved a lot of toilet paper in to boot. At least if toilet paper stuck to the wounds, at least it would dissolve easily.
I resolved to figure it out in the morning, and went to bed wearing a strange combination of street clothes and a rube goldberged diaper. Ugh.
The next morning dawned early. Astoundingly, I woke up at about 6AM, without an alarm. I wanted to sleep until later in the day, but waking according to an established schedule is one of the curses of the nouveau elderly. No such luck.
At least it meant we would have plenty of time to attend the awards breakfast at 7AM. I was eager for a chance to chat with the other riders about those winds in Death Valley … a debriefing of sorts.
We loaded up the car and set off. The sores on my arse seemed to be behaving themselves … sitting on the car seat wasn’t all that painful. But the real surprise was when we arrived at breakfast and I set about to deplane from the van. My shorts had stuck to my wounds like a Chinese Band-Aid.
Peeling them loose was not pleasant. And as I would find out … practice … lots of it … would not make it any more pleasant. And this would be the pattern for the next day … no … the next week or two. Gently settling in to a seat like a mother hen spreading her feathers over her eggs … then rising and peeling my shorts away from my arse.
Yes, there were probably chic little elliptical stains on my shorts in strategic locations, but I was too tired and hungry to care. We arrived just as everyone moved into another room to watch the video. All the better. We chose food over entertainment.
Our totem signage was still on the van when we drove home. A Honda sedan pulled beside us on the Interstate, and one if it’s passengers held a sheet of paper to the window. It read:
“The Horned Lizard says hi!”
Ah, my companion on the Kelso climb. And at 19, the youngest person ever to complete the Death Valley Cup by completing the Badwater Ultramarathon and the Furnace Creek 508 in the same year. The Lizard rocks.
The saddle sores were not without their advantages. When I got home and walked through the front door, my wife was reading on the couch.
"So how was it?" she asks.
How do you summarize an adventure like that in a few words? I could think of nothing, so I said nothing. I turned around and bent over.
"Oh, I see."
The next several days saw some pretty comical scenes. After using the restroom at work, I somehow got the brilliant idea that a folded up toilet seat cover would be a good barrier to keep my shorts from sticking to the wounds. The only way to find out is to try, so I had at it … I folded one up and shoved it in my pants.
I had to keep it there while walking through our office lobby. That meant walking through with one hand holding my rear end and the other a Neosporin dispenser. Our receptionist is new. Nice guy. I wonder if he'll decide to stay after witnessing that.
That afternoon, I packed it in and went home for an Epsom salt bath. Ahhh. Buoyancy lifting the sores upward, taking a hot bath ... it doesn't get any better ....
... until I leaned forward to turn the water off and ground both sores into the salts collecting on the bottom of the tub. Holy crap, did that hurt.
Still later, I tried something new … panty liners and tidy-whities. Strange to say, I had the most success with this experiment.
For those that would attempt the 508 themselves, I do offer some advice.
First, train.
Second, train.
And third … train.
I believe that if you can ride a bike X miles comfortably, you can ride 2X miles if you push yourself. I trained all summer. I rode 6 double centuries. I rode a handful of 250 mile rides. I even rode 300 miles, got a few hours sleep, then rode another 100 miles. And on the weekend days I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was riding sufferfest centuries in hot weather and with 10,000 feet or more of climbing. If I was on a ride and there was an easy way home or a tough way home, I took the tough way.
All that training paid off. When? When I awoke in Death Valley, having rode 300 miles, the last 50 miles of which in a gale. If not for all the training, I would have been exhausted. But with all the training, I actually awoke refreshed and completely ready to attack the rest of the ride. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. In fact, I rode the 508 very conservatively, and if not for the saddle sores, I could have ridden another 200 miles, just for the asking.
What else? Ride the course. I had ridden all but two of the 508 stages, and had at least seen those stages by car. It helps tremendously to know what to expect in terms of climbs, road surface, and temperatures.
Finally, pick a good crew, and put your trust in them. My crew are all endurance athletes. Two of them had done the 508 solo in earlier years. At the start of the ride, they organized everything where they could find it, and were always there to shove some Endurolytes, a roasted potato, or a fruit pie in my face. They also made sure I drank enough. They shoved me out of the van when I needed a kick in the ass. My crew was the best. I could not have done it without them.
So what of the 508? Friends had me expecting all kinds of things. That I would emerge with a higher understanding. That I would learn a lot about myself. That I would bargain with divinity.
None of those things happened. Frankly, at the darkest hour, when I was struggling hopelessly in the dark gale of Death Valley, I was so hell-bent focused on staying upright I had little time for anything else. There just wasn’t the room for introspection or philosophy. But I did learn some things.
On a bike tour years ago, I was in the mood for a mai-tai by a swimming pool, and set about to find a hotel with a pool and a bar. I found a likely suspect, walked in, and asked if it was OK if my wife and I used the pool if we bought drinks at the bar.
“Of course! No problem.”
So I went back to the campsite, changed outta my bike clothes, and we rode back to the hotel. Upon entering, I saw all kinds of clues I had missed before. Clues that made it clear that this was no ordinary resort … it was a gay resort. The artwork on the walls … something I disregarded initially … featured men in provocative poses. The barkeep who introduced me to her partner … I thought she was referring to her business partner. And come to think of it, the free glass you were given with the drink of the day did bear a strange resemblance to male anatomy.
But we were there, the drinks looked good, and no body minded ... least of all me. Screw it.
“Two mai-tais, please.”
So there I was, sunning myself on a cot, listening to kvetchy 80s disco on the loudspeakers …reading the newspaper, and sipping a mai tai … a damn good mai tai, by the way. And it occurred to me … if someone had told me a week ago that I’d be sitting by the pool in a gay resort, listening to disco and sipping on a mai-tai, I would have told them they lost their mind.
But there I was.
Consider 4AM early Sunday morning. A satellite, looking down on Death Valley would spy a long line of lights, seemingly motionless, but in fact, making painfully slow progress across the desert floor, struggling against fierce winds in the company of scorpions and coyotes.
I was one of those distant lights. How did I end up there? Why the hell would anyone in their right mind be down there? The easiest answer is that they are not in their right minds, of course. But if you reject that possibility, you’re left to ask … why?
Well if you’ve read this entire paean, you’ve heard about meat lockers, near death experiences with crotch rockets, bottles in the face, broken keys, desert sunsets, scorpions, sandy sheets of wind, coyotes, flapping saltbrush, pit-toilet baptisms, flapping bicycles, drawing straws, clogged toilets, saddle sores, incontinence preparations, road canyons, pee parties, tombstones and flattened jackrabbits. You’ve heard of certain failure. Of acceptance. Of resurrection, and ultimately … triumph. And between all those things were miles and miles of expansive desert. Asphalt extending to infinity. Turning the pedals over 150,000 times.
And consider this … all that happened in less than 48 hours … two days.
Time. Relentless, inexorable, ruthless time. We have only so much. You can’t stop it. You can’t bargain with it. But you can cram as much living into it as you can. That is the curious thing about endurance events. A month worth of living … a month worth of memories … happen in only 48 hours. That’s why I do it. It’s because you don’t measure lives in years … you measure them in adventures.
Moderation in all things. For a lot of people and a lot of things, that is good advice … the moderate do well in their universe.
The problem is that their universe is too small. “The big fish run deep,” one of my professors once said. He understood the dangers of misplaced temperance.
The object of your passion matters not. The depth of your passion does. So whatever your passion, I encourage you … forswear moderation. Dive … and dive deep. That’s where the big fish are.
Very nice. I was already impressed with the distance. Then throw in the wind, solitude, lack of sleep, etc. To top it off, your nice writing skills, descriptions, candid recount of some events bordering on TMI, and very clear memory and this becomes alive! Loved it!!!
Arguing with ignorant people is an exercise in futility. They will bring you down to their level and once there they will beat you with their overwhelming experience.
I'm officially a Biker395 fan now, so I did what a fan was supposed to do: I saved all the bits and pieces of his FC 508 report together. With his generous permission, the complete report has been published here. We need him to go on some longer rides so we can have more great stories to read in the future.
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Originally Posted by cuattop
