Noisy Balloonist Blog this space now retired

Levi Leipheimer’s 2011 King Ridge GranFondo has been WordPressed to death (don’t overlook the cool video!) by a lot of clever people, foremost among them the Bike Monkey staff itself, who confabulate a wandering, Brobdingnagian myth around the ride via a collection of laugh-out-loud newsletters, and then proceed to make that myth reality on zero day, as if they knew all along they were going to smack it out of the park. So I won’t recount every mile, every leg-breaking climb, every waterlogged cow-pie, every rolling meditation or every pair of shelled, hypothermic eyes peering out E.T.-like from the folds of a space blanket. This Fondo was my first, and the following are moments that stand out.

You should know: I love a girl but she moved away. I would burn down the world ten thousand times over to bring her home. I would topple each and every one of Ueda-san’s Colossi, indifferent to their screams. I would murder legions of your elite Imperial Sardaukar! But none of this is especially practical, and most of it is imaginary. So I biked 103 miles from Santa Rosa to the sea and back instead. I didn’t think I could.

I set everyone’s expectations, including my own, very low. I was severely under-trained. I couldn’t concentrate on a damn thing. My spirit was broken. I couldn’t eat or sleep, much less prep for the ride’s threatened 8500 feet of elevation gain, which was more than double anything I’d attempted before. I had decent form, but GranFondo form? I doubted I could finish. I figured the best I could do was ride away from one sort of pain and into another.

I broke a rear spoke around mile 37 on a windswept hollow atop King Ridge. A half hour later the SRAM man appeared, like Santa if Santa drove a decal-ed Volvo hatchback, and replaced my blown budget hoop with a $1200 dimpled carbon Zipp 404. What other ride does this? If you’re ever walking down a wooded Sonoma lane tripping on the local produce and it sounds like you’re being pursued by a swarm of clattering robot wasps, maybe you are. Or maybe someone’s passing on the left wearing Zipps. That hub is fabulously, arrogantly loud—the bicycle that announces its lusty provenance wherever it goes. The SRAM support car caught up to me later and the mechanic—I think his name was Chad—asked me how I was doing. I gripped the passenger side mirror and we chatted briefly. My peloton moment.

Describing the dizzying plunge down to the metal-bottomed Hauser Bridge, suspended like a giant cheese grater over the Gualala River, as a descent is a baldfaced lie. It’s more like falling down a well. It’s a sketchy ride under the best conditions; on wet asphalt, with 20% declines and a corked hairpin turn at the bottom, that shit gets dumb. Three riders lost control, missed the final bend and sailed into the rocky creek bed about 12 feet below the road. It was a grim sight. They were airlifted to hospital. They’re all going to be ok.

I have a strange selective amnesia about the course, perhaps because King Ridge was so fogged in it was like biking in a cold glass of milk. Everything looked the same, namely white, and there were a lot of cows. However, I remember the swooping descent down Highway 1 like it was yesterday, and god I wish it could be tomorrow too. The universe always rewards a properly executed technical turn. Feather your brakes on the approach just barely enough, then counter-steer a tick so your entire body can dive into the turn, like a motorcyclist leaning on that inside knee. Cut the apex as best you can (unless you’re willing to chance opposing traffic you won’t be able to take the perfect line) and lean deeper than you think you should. It’s the opposite of crashing. You sense extra Gs as centripetal force squashes your tires into the asphalt. Your traction increases. You accelerate. You’ve found the slot. The curve seems to coil around you, banking your energy before launching you out the far side like a pinball shooting a ramp. Then you mash the pedals, bomb into the next bend and do it again. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

It was spitting rain along the beach by the time the marshal waved me on to Coleman Valley Road. He gave me a wan, fatalistic good luck and I was committed to the ride’s last significant climb, which begins after your legs have already recorded about 76 miles. It’s not the highest rated climb, or the longest, but combine its 12% pitches—with kickers that max at an oxygen-thieving 18%—and its appearance so late in the ride and you’re dabbling in S&M. There’s little room for ego. I stopped to rest four or five times, whenever my heart rate spiraled above 190BPM, but I refused to walk. And even as I wobbled upward at 4MPH (just tap it out man, tap out that rhythm, dance on those pedals—you know how Contador climbs out of the saddle like he stepped on a tack, do that!), I passed those who did.

Physical pain is nothing. Physical pain is easy, transitory—in the heartbroken days preceding the ride I’d endured much worse. I kept telling myself this. Shut the fuck up body, and climb. Your mind perseveres when your legs beg you to stop and it’s ultimately willpower, not your quads, that push you over walls like Coleman. This mysterious place where athletes go to retreat from their bodies, this interior domain that mutes the physical world, the proverbial zone where your second pair of legs are hidden and pain is converted into just go, lies beyond the reach of conventional adjectives. It’s an altered state, trance-like, meditative. It’s a drug. It is, paradoxically, serene. I know no other way to achieve it than to turn myself inside out. It’s beautiful and I miss it. When I was off Coleman Valley Road and rolling back into town through Occidental’s picked-over vineyards, when adrenalin pushed my chain back on the big ring and my average speed up to 26MPH—when I realized to my overwhelming delight and relief that I was actually going to finish—I started to cry.

As for the beautiful girl who moved away, I hope dearly that she’s proud of me. But I didn’t ride the Fondo for her. She was lurking, to be sure, sort of an engine redlining in the back of my brain, then as now. Anger and desire can push a man far up the road, but I still did the work. I rode the Fondo to shed my skin. Endurance tests like these are negotiations with suffering. If you’re lucky, the prize for transcending pain is something like exhilaration, and clarity. After nearly 8 hours in the saddle (10 hours total trip time), 103 miles, 8200 feet of climbing, hydroplaning descents, a wrecked wheel, failing cockpit electronics, fog, icy rain and wind, and no cold weather gear other than arm-warmers, I crossed the finish line. And just this once, fuck modesty—I am super fucking proud. My buddy Ken finished too. We were elated. I think we still are.

Thanks, Levi’s GranFondo. It’s an honor and a thrill to be part of such a grand and well orchestrated moving circus: 7500 riders, countless on-course staff and volunteers, gallons of too-salty electrolyte (kept the cramps at bay; I’ll give you that), roving SAG and medical teams, a small army of official motos and cars, CHP support at every intersection and people standing in their yards in the rain to cheer on a pack of Lycra-clad strangers. You don’t need Chris Walken to wish for more cowbell.

I rolled home too late for the free post-ride beer. Now I got my goal for 2012.

This one is mine. Click the image for a Facebook photo gallery.

• BMC SLX01 Race Master carbon-aluminum frameset
• Torelli Bormio Ultra-Lite wheels with ceramic bearings
• Full SRAM Force  gruppo: 50-34 compact crank mated to an 11-25 cassette
• 3T stem and Ergonova Pro handlebars
• BMC carbon “Streampost” under a Selle Italia Prolink Light Gel Flow saddle
• Vittoria Diamante Pro tires
• Speedplay Zero pedals
• Garmin Edge 500 ANT+ compatible GPS cycle computer

I was a little hasty when I referred to the Race Master as BMC’s merciless dominatrix. There is love and fury here, to be sure, but this is about commitment rather than subjugation. A full ride report is forthcoming and there’s still some build work to be completed—note the uncut steerer tube. My bars were dropped at the suggestion of ex-pro (Paris-Roubaix!) BMC rep Soren. More on him later, and thanks for bib shorts!

After much deliberation, she is called Nahual.

Bikini season looms in El Segundo, CA.

I stitched together a 36-mile best-of ride on my demo Swiss Miss, the stunning 2009 BMC naked carbon gloss+white SLC01 Pro Machine. 2010s are identical save for new paint. After two false starts, doubling back to my apartment twice because I couldn’t get my position dialed in, and butterflies because the BMC is quite literally a pro peloton machine and more bike than I’d ever handled before, I departed for the Sepulveda pass, still a little out of joint but too impatient to futz with a hex tool any longer. Click below to open a Facebook image gallery.

The SLC is half the weight of my current bike, 15 flyweight pounds to the GT’s 29.5, a change I’m struggling to adequately quantify. The frame alone weighs 950 grams—if you had a seal, he could balance it on his nose. The demo came equipped with the 2010 Ultegra group, Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels, Conti tires and a Fizik Aliante Gamma saddle. Transitioning overnight from a 44-32-22 MTB triple crank to a 53-39 standard double is bewildering to say the least. The math refuses to line up, and I found myself glancing past my thigh at the cassette to figure out what gear I was in, or what gear I should be in. The big ring can be a bitch to turn over. Getting caught unawares in high gear at a green light would delight the Marquis de Sade, and despite my fitness—and fastidiously avoiding the granny gear on my GT—I nearly ran out of gears on the climbs.

I still crested Sepulveda maybe 10 minutes faster than usual, and I haven’t done any climbing in months. The return was terrifying. Thirty pounds of bike is effectively ballast, helping you maintain your line, especially in a wind. Fifteen pounds of sylphlike carbon perched atop a few centimeters of rubber is a different story. There was a venomous slanting headwind pushing me all over the road on the descent, like you might flick a spinning top. Sepulveda is a wide boulevard with gentle curves and few lights—an amateur could sprint downhill to 50+ MPH with a few extra breaths. I could smell my brakes. I need to work on my bike handling skills.

The Ultegra group is snappy and fun to use. There’s a little play in the levers but shifting is crisp and clean, on par with SRAM Force and out-performing the 2009 Dura-Ace I’d tested elsewhere. Shimano, however, is dead last in ergonomics. The hoods feel cramped and thin. Despite the Hellraiser-inspired design of Campagnolo’s Ergopower levers (who molds grips that looks like exposed muscle?), they are vastly more comfortable. Braking is smooth but a little soft on the OEM Ultegra pads. That dinner plate of a crank is light and absolutely rigid—and one of the few Shimano styling cues I actually like. Fizik Aliante saddle? Next.

I got off the hill without dying and took the long way ’round to Marina Del Rey and the Ballona Creek bike path, where I knew I’d have a tailwind and prepared to open it up. Turned east onto the path and started dumping watts into the bike as hard as I could. Sprinted to 32 MPH in the flats, a fit of anaerobic pedal mashing in 53/12 (the highest gear, or “Cavendish ratio”) not unlike hammering the circle button to behead a cyclops in God of War. I passed beneath Lincoln Boulevard, assuming I’d be able to maintain a strong 23-25 MPH pace through to Culver City, when the route was blocked by caution tape and a police car. The cop informed me that a body had been found in the creek.

I responded in the stupidest manner possible, considering what I’d been told: Are you serious? What was the cop going to say? Nah man, we just string this crime scene tape up to fuck with cyclists. Now turn around.

The Pro Machine frameset itself is just fucking ice cream, 100% sculpted carbon art down to the dropouts, looking like something JPL might dream up to ferry terraformers around Europa. It’s fun to read the frame before you ride it. The decals said it features nanocarbon transmolecules or something, and integrated… skeletons. The net-net of all this beautiful architecture is a buoyant, responsive all-rounder of a frame that tracks fabulously and hums over LA’s wasted roads. By the end of my 2-hour training session I was rolling hands-free, tucking into the drops and leaning into turns far deeper than was ever possible on that anchor I’ve ridden off and on (lately, on) since 2005. Confidence restored! The Pro Machine is BMC’s magic carpet. I’ll be demoing the SLX01 Race Master, the merciless dominatrix of the BMC line, next weekend.

Hat tip to Banning’s Bikes in Fullerton for supplying the demo and being friendly, helpful and attitude-free.

The horizon was so gorgeous this morning as to be almost formal, composed and painted in descending shades of blue to jog Angelenos out of their urban torpor. I don’t recall ever looking at the ocean in Southern California and seeing a vista this flawless. The air was temperate and clean. Cirrus clouds fanned an icy brilliantine across the sky, shedding just enough light to glaze the water, where, pirate latitudes-style, the swells were visible long before breaking into pristine tubes, foam streaming backwards off the lip like a miniature Pe’ahi. Far west, Santa Catalina and even distant San Nicolas Island were illuminated in hazy silhouette.

The vista was beautiful to the point of distraction, and therefore hazardous. It’s unwise to gaze at the sea while biking along Pacific Coast Highway, especially when the shoulder is crowded with surfer-mobiles and surfboards and surfers jutting into traffic, and most of the drivers are just as distracted by the spectacle as you. I pulled off the road at Castellammare to absorb the view.

Further south I rode past a Korean surfer girl with long wet hair, head tossed back, climbing out of her wetsuit like a throwback to a 1980s Juicy Fruit commercial. Some women are so beautiful it would be profane to look away. I sucked in my gut and pedaled for another 25 miles and laughed out loud, so delighted was I by this waking dream.