Where Are The Shifters?

This might be funny or just plain pathetic depending on your point of view. For me I thought it was comical. This morning I decided to go on a club ride. I have not been on a club ride in months. While training for the GDMBR I rode my mountain bike everywhere almost exclusively. As with many cycling clubs, if you are slow than you get dumped in a hurry. The club I belong to has that characteristic too.

So I decided to pull my lightweight aluminum/carbon bike with the lightweight wheels down out of the rafters where it has been hanging for nearly a year. Although I got up at 6 am and the ride does not start until 8 am I found myself in chase mode and without having eaten any breakfast. It is about a 2.5 mile mildly uphill ride to the starting point so I jumped on this lightweight wonder bike and started tearing up the pavement.

Before too many revolutions of the cranks I was ready to shift. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no recollection of where the shifters where located so I started looking around for the shifters. It had been so long since I was on this bike I did not remember that I had STI shifters. After a few seconds of dismay and disbelief I remembered that they where integrated with the brake levers. So now the question was: how the heck to do they work? After a couple of quick experiments I was shifting through the gears like old times.

With hardly any effort I cruised uphill at 18 mph. I essentially did the ride to the starting point in half the usual time and I clearly set a new personal record. After riding over 700 miles on the GDMBR, the inclines that I use to think were significant were not even worth the effort to shift down for. After hauling over a hundred pounds of bike, trailer, and gear up and down 15% rocky, sandy, muddy, rutted grades for three weeks I don't think my heart rate rose much above resting throughout the entire ride today.

As I buzzed down the pavement on a several mile 5% downhill at 34 mph I thought about riding down Forest Service roads that had been converted to running creek beds by the melting snow in northern New Mexico. Today it felt like I was doing nothing strenuous. In fact, it would not even have been a good warm up on the GDMBR. All the training that I did to prepare for my GDMBR trip had not even come close to preparing me for the realities of the route. The dreaded Black and Rocky Canyons in the Gila National Forest were now distant sweet memories.

As I had hoped, my friend Rick was waiting for the group on Guadalupe Trail. Since he injured his back on one of our infamous training rides last summer, we have not ridden together very much since. Actually, that is not quite correct, because I did ride with him for 10-15 miles last September when I was on my El Malpais shakedown. The club happened to also be doing a 60 mile out and back ride on NM 117 that day.

There was so much to share and new adventures to plan. He wants to ride the Santa Fe Trail and had collected all the information to do it, but everyone who expressed an interest had decided against a self-supported tour. I believe that it takes a different breed of cat to be interested in self-supported bicycle touring.

After a foot long chicken breast sub with the works at Subway for brunch we ended up at his house pouring over the maps and information that he had collected. Some parts of the route I liked and other parts I expressed concern about the amount of truck traffic on those roads. I shared my experiences about cycling across Kansas and listened to his ideas and plans. I have all the equipment, I am trained up, and I have another 5 weeks before I have to report back to work.

At the same time, my mother-in-law is dying. She is at the point where she is refusing to eat, and my wife needs my support. My choice is clear - family over fun. If she passes soon and my wife is doing well, then maybe something a little less lengthy is possible this summer. I will keep training, because I enjoy the level of fitness I reached on the GDMBR. I will keep planning, because I enjoy (some say too much) that process too. In any case, I may not remember where the shifters are located, but I clearly remember my duty to my family. It is all good.