Yesterday I returned from the five-stage Mt Hood Cycling Classic, centred out of Hood River, Oregon. Hood River is a small city located afront the majestic Columbia River upon which, in my imagination, floated the ghosts of paddle-wheelers on hot August afternoons; where on the decks stood women in their dresses, flowing in the humid breeze, much too warm for the weather and the afternoon sun; where men stood in overalls and long black slacks, their hats in hand, ignoring or enjoying the cooling spray of river water lifting and rolling off the tumbling, tumbling paddle wheel.
While those ghosts lingered and their true counterparts travelled the water 100 years ago or more maybe, just last week there, in Hood River, were teams of lean and hungry cyclists from across the western United States and British Columbia. All donned skin forming uniforms and futuristic helmets and rode atop their bicycles of carbon and titanium and precision engineering, all rode their machines far away from the water, discharging their energies in Herculean quantities from out pelotons that morphed in shape along roads that tangle like yarn around the mountains and countryside with Mount Hood at its core, ever looming, stately in its omnipresence, seen from every vantage point among the green rolling hills, the orchards and valleys around.
And there was I, among such a peloton on roads that spun the mighty Mount Hood far away from the waters of the Columbia where once the pleasant paddle-wheelers ran. Five stages: 250 miles and 25,000 feet of climbing, consisting of a prologue three miles long, two road stages of 85 and 92 miles, a time trial of 18.5 miles and a criterium 70 minutes long; and there was I but one component of a peloton system and its subgroups – teams like Bissell Pro, California Giant, Ouch-Maxxis, Red Truck Ale, Lombardi Sports. All comprised a peloton that found life 116 riders strong, an organic system that died just a little each day as riders sloughed off like detritus from the back, victims of the furious struggle for survival and triumph at the front; that in its final throes at the criterium finish Sunday afternoon, downtown Hood River, on a viscious loop with ups and downs and twists and turns, ended its life eighty-eight strong, of which I was 79th in the final general classification.
A peloton is a dynamic organic system, it is true, but among it are individuals, and ultimately it is a race, a race for victory and survival. It is as if one could narrow the scope a little to view the dramatic struggles within the super-organism; as if one could hone right down to follow the life of particular single ants in a colony-wide assault on a writhing snake lurching and twisting to escape, where the snake might be the road on which the cyclists travel, its death the final triumph for the first to experience the cessation of motion, and for every cyclist or ant that follows, each upon their respective winding surface. There are the individual riders with each their stories of drama and triumph, such as for the overall winner Paul Mach of Bissel Pro, or the individual stage winners like Rob Britten from British Columbia on the longest and hilliest stage and Jamie Sparling also of BC in the criterium, both of Red Truck Ale; tales of desolation and dissatisfaction, like for Ryan Olson from White Rock on Stage one who lost over an hour after riding most of the stage on his own – or like me, whose front wheel nearly disintegrated soon off the start on the descent at 85km/hr, forcing me to slow and to be sloughed from the pack and to ride the day partly on my own and partly among a small groupetto, ending the longest stage a half hour back.
And for every rider are a thousand stories, and for every story combined was a peloton borne last Wednesday afternoon, that rested each night and revitalized each day for five days, and finally died on Sunday. To be part of the peloton, the living system, is the objective of every racing cyclist, whether they see it that way or not. To be both an individual and a member of a broader whole: there is no truer microcosm of life than the peloton. For every living peloton whose transient trajectory I am part, whether I win or lose, if I have been part of its birth and death, then ghosts linger in me of every rolling, rolling one, accompanied by all the admiration for the individuals within them that one person could have.
(Full results at www.mthoodcyclingclassic.com)
Entries (RSS)
June 28th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Fantastic read Hugh. I really enjoyed that. Thanks. (Vicariously as well!)