As we headed up Main Street, just before the steep corner, a guy called out “She’s not peddling.” Maybe Daysi waved but I was in no mood to engage. Yes, I was on a significant climb at the end of a long ride, but mostly I was sick of the damn joke. We had heard this comment dozens of times. There were even people who felt compelled to yell it out from passing cars. At first, I dismissed the joke as a misguided attempt to be friendly, but the more it happened the more annoyed I became. I have never encountered an equivalent attempt to ‘be friendly’ when riding alone. Yes, on a major pass I sometimes get shouts of encouragement, honking horns, or fist pumps out a window. Closer inspection usually reveals bike racks, cycling bumper stickers, or a 26.2 decal on the trunk.
I’ve learned that my annoyance points me at issues worthy of more reflection. Why did this bother me so much? Most of the time it happened on climbs. Perhaps I could attribute a percentage of the incidents to our moving slowly enough for people to think they could interact, but that did not work as a full explanation. We were often passed by cyclists, especially on hills, but I don’t recall a single one commenting on my wife’s cadence. If they acknowledged us at all, it was usually a quick thumbs up or one of the short phrases encoded in cycling culture: “Send it.” “Yeah man.” “Looking good.”
I no longer believe it was a coincidence that their comments came at us exactly in the moments of peak physical struggle. Clearly these people had no idea about the profound physical collaboration and trust required. No, I had that wrong. The fluidity of our synchronization and the physicality of our union was most obvious in just these moments. There is a subtle threat in the power of people so united. Envy is ugly. Yes, I judge harshly.
I can’t recall ever hearing a woman call out to us this way. Try as I might, I find it impossible to imagine this comment coming at us if she was in front and I was on the stoker seat. “She’s not peddling,” –– a statement clearly not intended to flatter my wife. This was yet another one of those tiresome nudge, nudge, wink, wink invitations into the brotherhood of oppressed penis bearers –– we who must carry the burden of these free-loading women through our dreary lives. It’s hard not to gag.
I was surprised by how this kind of commentary blended into the misconceptions of fellow riders. “Tandems are so slow,” was such a common opening line that my reflex became, “Ever tried drafting?” At that point we could at least have a conversation rooted in the realities of Newtonian physics. I don’t recall winning any converts. Neither did I need them.
Of course, most every couple that learned about our hobby felt obliged to comment. “So many hours, just staring at his back?” wondered the women. “She trusts you to drive?” asked the men. “I can’t imagine,” was the unisex chorus –– usually a good indication that it was time for me to go see if the host needed help in the kitchen. These comments, just like those of the ‘friendly’ pedestrians, said much more about the speakers than either of us.
I had not intended to ride straight into the headwinds of conventional wisdom. How does flying down dirt roads of uncertain quality, strapped to another human and some aluminum tubing, become such sacred space? How did we come to be excited by the promise of six hours of hard labor in the summer sun? These were much more relevant questions.
When we started to mix 40-50 mile rides into our training, one of our favorites crossed through downtown Montpelier and headed up Route 12 towards Northfield. The climb out of Montpelier was a respectable undertaking all on its own, but once we were out of the Winooski river valley the road meandered and rolled for another 5 miles before finding the covered bridge on the right where Cox Brook Road came out of the mountains. Here, we began another four miles of climbing over Moretown Mountain on our way into the town center. The road cut through a broad, shallow valley alternating between fields and forests. Cox Brook dwindled beside us as we climbed, and a spectacular lupine garden on the left of the road about half way into the climb made taking the route a special priority through the middle of June.
On a particularly warm day at the end of June we paused for a butt break on one of the steeper sections near the top. I misjudged some combination of the incline and our strength and left HAHA angled straight up the grade. “Ready? 1,2,3” we’re off, but not quite. We didn’t get enough speed to sustain movement; neither did we get our feet down in time to prevent the fall. Instinctively, I curled up like a pill bug, rolled off the edge of the road, and somehow came to stop crouched on my feet at the bottom of the drainage ditch. I looked up to see Daysi seated halfway down the bank. We needed a minute to recover from the surprise. Dust bonded to the sweat across her right side but I saw no blood.
I couldn’t help chuckling at my wife’s new uniform, “You should see yourself.”
She scratched at the coating on her right arm. “You looked like an armadillo. I thought you were going to roll right off the mountain.”
“Don’t armadillos do dust baths?” I winked at her. That was enough for both of us to start laughing. After recovering as much dignity as the dust uniforms would allow, I set the bike across the grade in a patch with less gravel, and we really did get rolling.
The moment highlighted how our time on HAHA had evolved. A year earlier I am certain this incident would have spooked us both.
On a purely physical level the HAHA partnership was straightforward. Gearing and cadence decisions, by default, were mine. I had the strongest legs and my hands were on the shifters, but I received a lot of information through the frame and drive chain. I added this to the intuitive understanding of my partner that accumulated with the miles. These choices were rarely discussed but every once in a while my judgment was off and Daysi chimed in to request more or less cadence. I also provided verbal warnings when I was about to do something unusual, like dropping into easier gears before a turn, or when a shift was likely to be crunchy because of tension in the chain or overdue maintenance. Overall, we spent very little time discussing the mechanics of our ride.
Braking was entirely under my control, and I marveled at the trust Daysi had in my judgement. HAHA helped to make me look good. The bike had large discs that threw heat quickly and gave excellent grip. Tandem physics enabled me to take advantage of the front wheel’s maximum stopping power without ever worrying about pulling a face plant. There were many places on these roads where I was happy to exert as much grip as my hands could possibly squeeze. Dropping off of Moretown Mountain was just such a place. The descent into Moretown was considerably steeper than the climb out of Northfield, and therefore more likely to have washouts and gravel patches. Most critically, the road T’d off to Route 100b at a steep angle. The short stretch of pavement here was usually covered in sand and chunks of gravel washed down from above. My goal was to have as little momentum as possible by the time we hit the final 20 feet of pavement, and sometimes I felt like I was at the limit of my grip strength.
The sphere of trust related to the technical realities of HAHA was critical but still only a tiny fraction of what made the partnership work. Physically, there was no question that training together made each of us stronger cyclists, but that was not what mattered most. On HAHA the drivetrain fused our efforts – we became a single physical entity. If she was feeling weak or uncomfortable it was just a matter of time before my body started to absorb the pressure. Likewise, my fatigue would limit her range. The transfer might be subtle but it was also inevitable. It was rare that one of us asked for a break that the other wasn’t already hoping for.
As a unique physical entity the rules of endurance training applied to team HAHA the same as they would any single athlete. Just as I gained confidence in my strength when training for a marathon, so we gained strength on HAHA. We knew exactly where we stood with regards to our HAHA capabilities, and so we knew when we were testing them. Each time we did something a bit longer, a bit harder, or a bit faster we laid down another level of confidence. Inevitably, as physical capabilities grew so did the mental toughness needed to work through the periods of doubt and pain. As distance cyclists already know, a large part of training comes down to getting used to spending hours on the bike. This came naturally as our distances increased.
While the bike fused our physical capabilities, we remained independent emotional entities. There was no guarantee that our readiness to ride would be the same or that the shared fatigue on a ride would have the same impact on each of us. Either one of us could veto a ride at any point, either by formal declaration or just by a de facto lack of willpower, and yet across the thousands of miles we logged over those summers there was only one ride that we cut short, and that was by mutual agreement.
As hours accumulated, the importance of our sacred space became ever clearer. I found an implicit recognition of fragility in the way we cared for the partnership. Instinctively, we would ask about each other’s readiness to ride. Any level of coercion would have broken the bond. Work, parenting logistics, a bad mood, and lack of sleep were among the many factors that could chill or enhance our enthusiasm for any given ride. Because of our banter, readiness could be assessed in degrees, and those degrees could be translated into the distance and cadence for any ride.
Hitting Moretown, we had a decision to make. The most common option was a 10 mile extension that took us up one of Grampa’s good pulls and then dropped us into Waterbury. Most days, we came into Moretown with a plan, but we still had the conversation. The general store had chairs on a covered porch and a wide set of stairs leading up to the door, any of which made for great places to get our cheeks off of the seats, assess our fatigue levels and finalize the route back.
On this day, still decked out in the dust from our roll down the bank, we opted for the longer route. It would be our first 50+ miler of the season. We had dropped down into Waterbury and were heading out of town on Route 2 back to Middlesex when a guy passed us with a grim look on his face. He was strong and pushing hard. On his tail, another guy appeared. Something about them seemed uncharacteristically strained. Most riders on the back roads of Vermont did not obsess over segment personal records (and even less in these days before Strava). Still, it was not unusual to see a couple of younger guys pushing each other.
We were on the tail end of a long day with nothing to prove. There was no reason to fall in behind them until the young woman passed us some 10 yards behind the boys. Her cadence was liquid. I saw no strain in the flow of her power. Suddenly it all became clear to me. I called back to Daysi, “Uy, esto va ser interesante. Vamos a seguirla un rato.” [Oh, this going to be good. We’ve gotta watch this.] We upped our cadence and I loosened a gear to drop in behind her. It was not a pace we could sustain all the way back to Montpelier, but I knew we didn’t need to. I knew exactly what was going to happen and had a pretty good idea where. We rolled through a mile or two of turns beside the river and over a bridge before we hit a gentle rise. I heard the downshifting on her bike ahead of me and dropped a gear or two of our own. Halfway into the climb she stood up in her saddle and vanished. The dude in front made a valiant, but hopeless effort to catch her before it was too late. Now that the show was over we dropped back to enjoy the rest of our ride. We passed the guys sulking at the creemee stand, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.
We rolled into Montpelier completely cooked but cackling like a couple of old hens about the spectacle we had just seen and the overall lovely state of the summer afternoon. Some of the dust we had picked up on our roll down the bank had congealed into a salty paste that settled into the creases of our joints or formed sticky streaks down my back and across Daysi’s right side.
“I am sure we’re quite the billboard for the tandem lifestyle,” I called back.
At which point she broke out into chorus, “I’m too sexy for my bike. Too sexy for my bike..”
And there it was –– the simple joy of just being out in the world together. There could be no better reason.
buy me a coffee
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