A Slice of Mortality

After the ride last week, one of my teammates said, “I hadn't done Tam before. Another place to put on my Memorial Ride.” It gave me pause: someone thinks that far ahead (I never thought about a ride – I'm too busy figuring out where my ashes should be scattered and that changes daily because I have a short attention—what?).

Death Ride training is truly different from any other cycling training programs I've done. Our training rides are rides other people's end-games. The rides take us to the far reaches of the Bay Area. Countryside you just don't get to on a regular basis. Sure, we get up at 5AM (on Saturday!!) to drive for up to 2 hours to reach our starting point, but we are always rewarded by incredible scenery.

Our rides are long. They are difficult. Since February 1, I've climbed over 105,000 feet. Doing a little math, that's 9 times from Base Camp to the top of Everest. I've ridden 1298 miles: longer than from Seattle to San Diego or from San Francisco to Denver (and nearly twice the elevation. Including the Rockies). Only 9 miles shorter than from New York to New Orleans. And by this weekend, I'll have ridden from Chicago to Miami.

Anyway... enough about me.

Riding gives a lot of time to think. There's so much time spent on the road. Personally, I can't sustain an 8 hour conversation with anyone. So, besides grunting up hills and saying wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! all the way down hills... there's a lot of void to fill. We comment on the scenery. Political topics. Current events. Body functions. Popping new muscles. Listen to our own breathing. Heartbeats pounding in our ears.

This past week's conversations centered around a graphic video that made the news late in the week: a car hitting two cyclists on a popular cycling route in the Berkeley Hills. Different emotions and reactions were expressed, but my underlying reaction was a feeling of vulnerability.

We are out here, our vital organs protected by a thin sheath of skin, musculature and bones, sitting atop a vehicle that weighs a fraction of our body weight and offers no external protection. Our very important brains are protected by highly engineered styrofoam covered by brightly colored plastic. We take precautions. We wear bright, even garish, colors. We call out road hazards: holes, bumps, gravel, rocks, glass, twigs. We call out cars behind us, ahead of us, cars coming at us from the right and left. We stop when we should, we roll when it's safe.

While we are highly lithe and maneuverable, we can't avoid what we don't see coming at us from behind. We are at the mercy of every driver on the road. Motorcycle, crappy old beater, minivan, shiny new Lexus or sleek and sexy Maserati, distracted, drunk or sober. We depend on each driver to give us a wide berth, or wait until it is safe to do so, for our lives are in their hands. We ride to save lives and, in doing so, put our lives at risk every time we do. On narrow roads, we are doubly at risk from oncoming cars and cars from behind. We are the pinch point and we are the ones that will lose. In car vs. cyclist, we cyclists will always lose.

So I ask, if you are a cyclist, you understand. If you are not a cyclist, as a driver, please treat each cyclist you encounter as if he or she were your partner or your child. Give us room, be patient. And if you have just driven up a long hill, so has that cyclist – what took you 10 minutes may have taken him an hour. Give us the down hill. We may go as fast (or faster) than you in a car on the way down, but give us the space. We worked hard for it.