100 at 100

If anyone out in my little corner of the electronic world was watching yesterday, you might have caught my latest adventure in bicycle lunacy...I put on a little experiment in heat exhaustion and sweat production which will go down semi-officially as "The Hot 100". With a nod to the famous Billboard chart, this actually had nothing at all to do with the pop countdown. Although now that I think about it, my iPod did die about 40 miles out for lack of charging so I guess there's a tenuous music connection there somewhere.

The festivities began when I decided I was due for another Century while I was still on vacation. I'd been wanting to go when I didn't really have to worry much about how long it took or when I had to be back but scheduling conflicts meant that Thursday was the only chunk of time available for such an undertaking. I know my long-distance pace is pretty low so it's likely to be an all day thing once I leave the driveway.  I can't get underway at noon and have any hope of returning before dark at my less-than-impressive average speed. These things take time.

So to planning...something I do very little of except in the most vague and general way.  But having done this distance thing a few times now, I peeked at the National Weather Service site with a wary eye. Mostly this exercise is to check on whether I should figure on getting wet or not, which then determines if I need to pack extra zip-locks to keep electronics dry but this time it was not rain on the radar. The weather guys made it pretty clear it was going to be unabashedly, miserably, viciously and maybe dangerously hot. Yeah, yeah...it's July people, so noted. In my typically cavalier fashion, I was mostly undeterred by the big red EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING headline at the top of the page. It's going to be warm? Surprise, surprise.  Pack an ice bag baby...I'm going.

I was actually more interested in the fact that the wind was predicted to be out of the south at first and then swing to the west with gusts up to 25 mph. 25 mph in the face of a 15 mph rider means you're going backwards so there was some changes forthcoming in my planned general direction of travel. I figured if I headed west at the outset, I might be able to make the turn for home with following seas and a boost from the wind instead of a kick in the teeth when I can least afford it. Score one for the Gipper, that part actually worked out but more on it later.

I got up with Chris and the sun, loaded the frames and pockets with liquids, saddled up and was gone while the shadows were still long and deep in the valley. As predicted, the wind was at my tail at first and miles rolled away easily on fresh legs and cool temps. My semi-planned route was to go almost due west to Hammondsport and then up the west shore of Keuka Lake. From there it was a crapshoot depending on how hot it actually got and how much leg I had left. The one detail I forgot was that to get to Hammondsport from home requires a Cat 2 climb over the ridge between the lakes. With the wind on the bow and a hill under the tires, my speed dropped to about zip.



Eventually though I headed down out of the hills, picked up some speed and only had to dodge one idiot passing across the double line into my lane on the way to a rest stop in a park.



I noticed the temperature was getting a little above the comfort zone when a sip of Gatorade went down hot and a Clif bar came out of the wrapper like melted butter.  The world was getting hazy and everything looked like it was dancing.



There goes the alarm bells again.

I looped Keuka Lake and started fantasizing almost continuously about a cold vanilla shake.  20 more miles went behind and out of the heat shimmered a mirage-like vision...an ice cream stand!  I pulled in and suddenly realized I was probably in over my head again when I almost couldn't unclip before I fell over.  I wobbled into the air-conditioned interior and customers parted like the Red Sea.  I probably smelled like my junior high gym locker but didn't care.  My goal was something cold and no glares from cool, freshly washed vacationers was going to stop me.  A uniformed EMT passing me at the door made a comment about her desire to not meet me professionally along the road later in the day.  I agreed wholeheartedly and retired to a corner stool to nurse my core temperature back down within human limits.

Things get a little loopy from there on out.  I know I hit a mini-mart and reloaded all my bottles before the climb back over the ridge.  The ascent was lengthy but I did catch the wind as I'd originally hoped when I left home.  The breeze astern helped push me up the hill but unfortunately, it also created a stationary bubble of super-heated air that surrounded me all the way.  I put my leg against the top tube once and damn near got a burn.  This cannot be good.  My hot Gatorade was disappearing to no avail so I finally took a break and stretched out in the shade of an oak tree by an old cemetery.  The symbolism seemed fitting.

Barely 15 miles later, I put in again at an Amish roadside farm stand and begged to use the garden hose I'd spotted coiled next to the building.  I let it run till it got icy and then just poured it over my head until I stopped steaming.  It felt wonderful.  Much refreshed, I pushed another 20 or so.  The computer was reading about 80 miles gone at 4 pm and even with the sun now past the zenith, the air was still sizzling.  The breeze felt like the exhaust of a blast furnace and smelled like hot metal, burning grass and asphalt.   A guy out in his yard yelled something about how stupid I was to be out riding as I passed.  Yeah well, thanks for the insight buddy but how about handing me a beer instead?

The descent into Watkins Glen should have felt pretty good but knowing I had one more climb to do sort of took the fun out of it.  I stopped in the park at the foot of Seneca Lake and stretched out on a shaded picnic table bench to recharge for the last push.  I seriously wondered if I'd be able to get off that bench at all.  The climb was all I expected it to be...toasty and steep with the end hidden in the haze and heat wiggles.  The mileage turned over 100 about three quarters of the way up and the wind went out of my sails just like that.  I trudged on up to the top and sort of fell into the lot of another mini-mart to reload the bottles one more time.  I know I looked like the wrath of God.  I got some really strange looks as I downed a whole bottle of water in three swallows but couldn't have cared less.  The worst was over.

I eventually saddled back up and headed east but knew there wasn't much left.  Chris had by now announced her intention to come and get me and to be honest, I was glad of it.  I probably could have made it the last few miles if push came to shove but I was about out of heroics for one day.  I loaded the Trek in the van and collapsed in the seat with the A/C knob turned all the way around.  Another one bites the dust.
I'll never learn.

Score for the day:
101.7 miles
108 honest-to-Fahrenheit degrees (at Watkins Glen)
8 or 10 bottles of Gatorade (I lost count)
1 vanilla shake
1 jumbo iced tea
1 orange juice
1 humongous water
1 near-miss
2 hecklings
And 5 lbs. off my body weight.



I promise I'll make the next one about the Tour de Cure.  Really.  There's even a connection to this post in it.  I'm still on vacation you know. 
One thing at a time.

Time Off Continues...

Vacation is rolling along nicely.  It's hot, muggy and summer so I'm mostly content.  The RR is a distant memory for now and tomorrow I'm planning another long jaunt on the Trek regardless of the predicted heat index above 100.  No fear.

Hey, I ride a triple ring anyway so triple digits seem only appropriate.  I'll load up the bottle cages and jersey pockets with water and Gatorade and have at it.  I've been out in real hot before and have learned to take it in stride.  You just have to be aware of the signs you're burning out and not push quite so hard.  The Great Dismal Swamp adventure taught me a healthy respect for heat and humidity so I won't be easily caught off-guard again.  Besides, not much can scare me after the mountains in Virginia where Doc and I were playing earlier this week...

 

We only did about 15 miles on top of  Skyline Drive but it sure went uphill for an awful long way, in percentages us sea-level riders aren't used to all in one shot.  Creeper-low was the order of the day.  The reward was going back down.  I admit it, I cheated and rode ALL the way down the hill and back to Doc's place from our parking spot after he blew a spoke up on Skyline Drive.  I know, it's against The Rules to descend a hill unless you've climbed it first but this was a special case and I'm not sure when I'll ever get the chance again.  So sue me, I'm not shaving my legs either.

Ten-plus miles of twisty, fast descent was just too much to resist when the opportunity presented itself.  The 2.1 got pretty twitchy and my neck cramped up but I was going fast enough coming down that I couldn't bring myself to stop and load the bike on the rack so I just got low in the drops and sprinted until I hit the driveway.  It was like icing on the cake.

Riding in VA was certainly an eye-opener in more ways than one for the old guy...the terrain was much different than my accustomed upstate NY haunts and I learned a thing or two about attacking the climbs but more than that, as you might have noticed from my new cover shot, the view from the top was spectacular.

I won't go all Zen on you so let's just say it was worth the admission price in leg-burn and leave it go at that.

We might have been able to go further up the mountains if we hadn't ridden 40 miles of continuous rollers the day before and if somebody would design a spoke that can absorb Docs pedal stroke without snapping.  I think we've ridden a couple times without his rear wheel going out of true for lack of spokes but I'm having a hard time remembering when.  He popped one on each of our road days so we were left with only his mountain bike still rideable after Skyline.

Never ones to quit while we're ahead, we loaded up the off-roaders again and took in some nice single track until the sun went down.  Dark-thirty found us grimy, whipped, sweaty and unfit for human companionship at a KFC trying to buy extra-crispy through exhaustion and hoping we wouldn't get arrested as vagrants.  We looked like we'd just parked our shopping carts out by the dumpster.  The counter help was happy to see us pack our bird and go.

So at the end of a three day excursion south of the Mason-Dixon, the total was about 30 miles on the mountain bike between a mid-journey detour on the C&O Canal Trail and the dirt adventure somewhere near Ruckersville with maybe 60 horizontal and a couple of vertical miles on the roadie.  Not a lot as these things go but it was enough.  We got out with no bloodshed or even poison ivy, just some broken parts and blown tires so it was all good.  Photos taken, mission accomplished.

Now it's back to my familiar stomping grounds and still I'll be riding.  I'm toying with another Century in the morning before the road gets too scorching.  We'll see how that goes.  And I know I said I was going to post more about the Tour de Cure too...just hang in and you'll see it pretty soon.  First things first...miles.

Who said I was crazy?

Vacation Days of Mine

It's official...I'm on vacation.  Hence, there's a ton of stuff happening around the NWH (New Wayward Home) that leaves but little window for blogging.  The first couple days of time off are always busy but gradually, the reality that the phone isn't going to ring sinks in and I can slow down.  Unwinding takes time.

To get the non-working party started, I parked my last 12"-to-the-foot-scale toy train for two weeks on Saturday morning and promptly dropped off the radar.  The railroad and I manage to get along pretty well on most occasions but at some point, I have to step back and completely break from operating trains or I'd probably become somebodies lab rat in a padded room somewhere.  I know a couple of actual lunatics who want to work through their vacations every year and I pray regularly for their eventual recovery or quiet removal from the property before they become a danger to themselves and others.

Old guys like me can only put up with the day to day madness for so long and then something has to give.  That something is me because the railroad, like the juggernaut that it is, will blunder it's way along without this particular minion and never even blink.  Vacations are really subtle reminders that the carrier can get by just fine without you cleverly camouflaged as a couple weeks of rest.  Be that as it may, the time off is mine to burn and burn it I shall.  God help them when I get old enough to have four weeks at a crack.  If I took all that at once, I'd have to go back to engine school when (if) I came back.  That's how seriously I take forgetting all things RR when I'm off. 

This go-round I do have to think about my ever-insistent employer to some extent though because I find myself spending a fair amount of time 'captaining' a bike team in their name.  Between a long-overdue hack-down of the lawn, assorted to-do list missions around the NWH and environs and some competition deck-lounging, I've been chewing away at a checklist of backlogged priorities on that project.  It's turned into something of a monster.

But first, a little background.  Anyone who's been around me for more than about two minutes knows that I ride bicycles a lot these days.  I took it up a few years ago when I realized that my sit-down profession was turning me into something about the shape of a turnip.  My sudden change from outdoor calorie burning activity to sedentary, almost motionless lump with the same appetite cost me about four waist sizes.  Photos from those days are most depressing.  A change was in order.

A worn out big-box women's hybrid that was laying in disrepair around my shed suddenly found itself being oiled and prepped for abuse by a fat guy.  It was the most incredibly ugly greenish-blue ever created, didn't fit, barely shifted and the brakes were pretty iffy but the tires held air and we were off.  Breathless, gasping circuits of a block or two soon turned into loops measured in a couple of miles.  Combined with a crew hotel that was equipped with a treadmill and a determination to back away from the buffet without taking prisoners to eat later, I started to find my old self beneath the pudge.  I discovered off-road riding at some point and thereafter treated my beater like the mountain bike it most certainly was not which only hastened it's demise.  I rode in snow, mud, dirt and even back out on the blacktop when I could overcome the embarrasment of being seen on the most hideous, gender confused bicycle in four counties.  I figured out that I was pretty much hooked.

The hybrid finally succumbed to an overdose of broken cables, bent rims and a bottom bracket that digested itself into steel filings and square ball bearings.  I began searching Craigslist for a suitably cheap replacement but my wife came to the rescue before I could make a move.  That Christmas brought a shiny-new Mongoose with suspension and fat tires and suddenly the Murrey was history.  The 'goose was real steel and weighed as much as a small car but everything worked and I was rolling again.  I rode the thing to destruction in about a year.  Talk about loving something to death.  I went everywhere my strengthening legs would take me until the New York road salt dissolved the freewheel and deraileurs into rust powder.  I found trails and roads just out of sight around the next corner and saw more countryside in my own backyard than I ever knew existed.  My weight and blood pressure continued to decline and there was no turning back.

Things progressed from there as things seem to do and I found myself aboard a much-used but much-loved 80's vintage Trek road bike.  I found out what it meant to go really fast with those little tiny rear cogs and skinny tires surrounded by aluminum frame.  It felt like flying.  Somewhere in there, I turned 50 which was duly reported in this post and a new hardtail mountain bike came to my house to live.  I was almost back down to my fighting weight and the miles under pedal-power were starting to scare me.

Then came the new blue and black Trek.  That Father's Day gift changed a lot of things again and the road stretched out much further.  Our first Tour de Cure went under the tires as a result of all the prior leg work and Century Rides became something other than fantasy.  People around me got used to hearing about 3 digit mileage and some even stopped looking at me like I'd lost my mind...at least sometimes.  A few even bought bikes, tagged along and fell into the same trap that caught me so unawares.  Frames, clipless pedals, drop bars and gear ratios became common subjects of conversation among us in the peasantry rather than an arcane language spoken only by people with French names and silly looking, short-brimmed caps.

But back to today.  As usual, I've wandered off my subject and now there's things to do, people to meet, rides to take.  The Team Captain story will have to be part II of this post so stand by and if the stars line up right, I'll hit the keys again before too long.

Or not...that's what a vacation's all about.

The Blog Slacker

I've been busy.  That answers the question about where I've been lately.  Talk about nipping things in the bud.  Let me see...where to start?

I guess sometime around Sunday the 3rd would be as good as any.  In true railroad fashion, there would be no recognition of Independence Day in the form of a shutdown or even a slowdown.  On the most picnic-prone, family reunion attending, fireworks shooting, beer drinking and pool diving day of the year, the carriers dig in and want everybody to work.  They'll never learn.  The layoff list was an epic as everyone jockeyed to get time off for the Fourth.  This in spite of an endless and sometimes pathetic barrage of phone calls from Crew Management searching desperately for warm bodies to fill vacant slots on trains.  The Fourth of July weekend is one of those times when they might be better off to ask who WILL work rather than who won't and just take it from there.

Me, I'm going on vacation soon anyway so I answered the mechanical voice and went to work Sunday in the wee hours.  Turns out it was an EP (extra pay) day for us engineer types so I made some extra cash but I have a hard time figuring out how the carrier thinks that's an incentive when they don't tell anybody about it until the actual day.  As I've been told repeatedly, I don't see the BIG PICTURE but in my small picture, it seems it would work out a lot better if everybody knew what was going on a little in further in advance.  Oh well...

So a train awaited and off I went through considerably more than the usual tribulations.  The whole affair seemed doomed from the start as it took almost six hours just to depart the terminal.  I won't go into all the sad details but let's just say it was an exercise in futility that led to our time expiring at a fairly significant distance from our destination.  A further lengthy wait for a crew van and the round-about route out of our parking space kept us on duty for close to 16 hours.  By the time we made it to the crew warehouse to be stacked and racked until needed, there wasn't much left of the old guy.  I think my collision with the pillow was noted on Richter scales in 5 counties.  I was pretty much non-functional when I finally peeled back the sheets, turned off the phone and collapsed.

I guess there is such a thing as miracles because for all the insanity of the outbound trip, the return was remarkably uneventful.  It still took about three hours of gyrations to get out of the yard as is fairly common but once we got out and running, we sailed.  It helped that not much else was out there as most of the usual traffic was sitting somewhere hooked for a crew.

The only fly in the ointment was a stretch through a Pennsylvania town where the tracks looked like a pedestrian mall.  The local municipality was putting on their fireworks show and about half the city was using the right-of-way and bridges as a shortcut to the field or just setting up lawn chairs on the banks.  We were forewarned by the dispatcher and it's a good thing or we'd have smoked into that mess at a considerably higher rate of speed than we did.  We arrived right at prime-time for the event.  It was just about dusk and the warm-up shells were going off overhead.  People were everywhere and no amount of horn-blowing or bell-ringing seemed to make much of an impression on the populace.  They just ambled along like the zillion-ton monster bearing down on them was of no concern.  Some were even pretty annoyed that they had to detour out of the gauge to let us pass.  I'm always amazed by the capacity of Joe Public to look stunned and angry by the fact that there's a train on train tracks.  What were they expecting?

Normally sane citizens seem to just lose their minds around tracks.  Not too many cognizant people would stroll casually down an airport runway under normal circumstances because they could reasonably expect a large, heavy, fast moving vehicle with the potential to kill them to arrive unannounced.  The fact that railroad tracks are pretty much like that is lost on a sizeable portion of the world.  I also don't know too many people still living who would jump out on the interstate and put junk in the road in front of a tractor-trailer "just to see what happens" but they were lined up to put coins and rocks on the rail in front of us.  "Hold my beer and watch this" was in full effect.  I hope nobody got zinged by the shrapnel.

It took a while but we got by the madness eventually.  I dragged the train through with the brakes on both so I could stop quicker and to keep some yo-yo from pulling a cut lever back there and putting us in emergency.  It was one of those times where if you slow down too much, the half-drunk idiots will try to climb on but if you go too fast, you risk running down some bonehead who believes with all his heart that you can steer around him.  You just have to find an unhappy medium and go with it.  My buddy Stosh is fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid" and I agree but I'd rather not kill anyone to prove it.

From there on out, for the next 15 miles or so, it was a continuous fireworks display from all sides.  Unlike in grouchy New York, fireworks are legal in PA and the party people take full advantage of it.  I dare say I've never seen so much 'rockets red glare' from so many places all at once.  The cannons and star-shells shot up in that one hour probably would have made a dent in the national debt.  The whole valley reeked of flash powder.  At least nobody actually shot at the train this time (which happened to us a couple of years ago when we got peppered by rockets and cherry bombs all the way through town) but a few strategic shots went off just as we passed and rattled the windows.  It was all good fun after worrying about that herd on the tracks now far behind us.
Even as we were climbing up the hill out of town, the sky was flashing colors and an occcasional boom made it past engines in Run 8.

It was quite a display and I was duly impressed.  I'd rather have been home on the deck with a cool something listening to the neighbors blow up stuff but that's how it works out sometimes.  I'll get my time off later just like all the other birthdays, anniversaries and holidays I've missed.  The timing is usually wrong but the heart is in the right place.

That Son of Mine

Tomorrow my eldest (and tallest) son will take a walk up on a stage in a hot gymnasium, step up to the superintendent, take the diploma in his hand and at long last, graduate from high school.  I'm sure at least a zillion other parents all over the land are feeling the same wonderment and confusion as I am right about now.  I can hear myself asking the same questions as every other stunned and confused father...how did he get so big so fast?  How did he become such a fine young man all of a sudden?  What happened to the kid who played soccer all the time?  How did he end up being able to drive?  College?  Why are we filling out applications for college?  Who's this big lug who calls his mother 'Shamu' and his father 'Dirt' and lives through it?  Well, maybe not too many other parents have to wonder about that last part but then, none of them have anything like my ever-hungry offspring either.

Yeah...no one has kids like mine do they?  I guess all parents that care one whit about their kids think the same.  Everybody's kids are the best kids.  How could it be otherwise?  They're the be-all and end-all for so many years that you can't help but see them through lenses that filter out all but the best in them.  You pour your heart and soul into raising them from the day they're born and hope against hope that you're doing it right.  You probably aren't but you can only run with what you have.  In our case, that wasn't much.  As with all new parents, we didn't have a clue.

We found out early that with children, there never was and never will be an instruction manual, most advice is wrong, experts suck and nothing really matters except what you feel.  The only thing anybody ever said that was genuinely true was that it wouldn't be easy.  Wonderful yes, easy...no.  That should be imprinted in the genetics of our species by now but it isn't.  Nobody knows one damn thing when they start down the road.  You just rolls the dice and takes your chances that somehow, it'll all work out.  Sometimes it does...sometimes you end up in the ER.  That's just how it is.  You wing it daily and screw it up regularly but somehow at the end of it all, if you love those kids enough and believe in them enough, everything comes together with time.  With so much of your own life sewed up in those walking, talking hormonal imbalances that they become, you really have no choice but to believe.  How can your children not be just a little better than anyone elses? 

Of course, ours really are the BEST and I'll go down swinging if you want to argue.

Tomorrow is the day.  I guess it's supposed to be one of those so-called 'chapters' in life when things are suddenly vastly different.  Not so much, I think.  Big events rarely come with so much preparation and anticipation.  Except for your wedding and that 9 month joyride before the kids are born, you just don't see it sneaking up on you.  Turns in the road come unannounced and jump out at you when you aren't looking.  Like the fact that my boy isn't really a boy anymore.  Nope, never saw that one coming.

So After Friday night when the cap is gone and the gown returned, I'll still be goggle-eyed wondering how it all came about.  And after the shindig on Saturday to make it official with the rest of the inlaws and outlaws, the Graduate will still need gas money.  Life in general won't change very much or very fast but in a way...some things will be different.

He'll be one step closer to being his own man.  One step closer to heading out on his own way.  Those steps up onto the stage are only the next ones on his long walk.  The next steps on his way to being not just a tall man, but a good man.  Not a beginning or an end, but a change.  A change of the heart, a change for the good.

And I'll be one proud and happy father.  Proud that he can still call me 'Dirt' and happy that I still know what he means.

Sleepless in the Saddle

How does one operate on a near total lack of rest?  I'm doing semi-formal research into the possible outcomes of not actually sleeping for a couple of days in a row...not because it's a particularly smart thing to do but mostly because I've got too much going on to stuff it all into the waking 'real world'.  This entry is a product of that decidedly non-scientific study.

My latest experiment in sleep deprivation began last evening when I was departing my away-from-home-terminal (which by the way, the railroad abbreviates in the military/industrial fashion as the AFHT).  I can't decide if it should be spelled phonetically to be correct or maybe pronounced AFF-HAT, A-FAT or AH-F**K-THAT but the point is, it's a location where I spend a fair amount of time.  Sometimes an unfair amount of time as well but that's another story.  It's easiest to think of the one I stay at most frequently as a large, industrial storage shed where the carrier shelves the warm bodies it may use someday to crew a train.  It's a great place to see in the rear-view mirror.

Remember, I'm really tired so bear with me while I wander...

The usual pre-trip gyrations of a van ride to the office, assorted phone calls, computer and paperwork etc. eventually led us to a waiting train parked just outside the terminal sometime earlier that afternoon.  A relatively small and light piece of work as these things go, it idled quietly in the sun tempting me to think of other days when "run it like ya stole it" actually meant something.  The old and tattered lead engine got the evil eye of suspicion from both my conductor and myself but unfortunately you don't get to pick 'em, you just get to run 'em.  Nothing seemed obviously wrong except the crummy paint job and a strong scent of hot chemicals from the old toilet down in the nose.  It would be dark soon so the paint would look better and open windows at track speed would blow the reek of 'eau-de-blue-stuff' out in a mile or two.  Bad feelings aside, up go the grips and within minutes, off we go.

A short while later, a call from our seldom-heard but invariably-breathless dispatcher told of an opposing train out of the north with a crew on short-time in danger of running out of working hours at an inconvenient location.  He inquired as to our ability to make "a good run" of about 25 miles to a siding to allow the southbound to pass without slowing it down.  Do I hear opportunity knocking?  This bodes well for our trip because many dispatchers won't take the chance of letting you out in front of a short-timer.  It's easier and safer to just hold you were you sit and let the hot one come to you.  The bad side of that is that sitting a little too much can and often does lead to yet another crew (mine) running out of time somewhere ugly later on.  The fact that we might die on our hours is irrelevant for the moment however because by the time we do, the current button-pusher will be drinking beer on the deck and we'll be the next guy's problem.  C'est la vie.

But back to the story..."A good run" as I learned long ago is railroad vernacular for "haul ass" and the implication is that nobody will say much as long as you don't break anything expensive or do anything that involves lawyers.  This feat must be accomplished without speeding at any time of course lest much time be spent mowing the lawn and pestering a union rep. to get your job back.  It's really not about going fast anyway, it's more about not going slow.  Doing it right requires paying close attention to running 'on the numbers' and not spending any excess time taking in the scenery.  I allowed to the voice on the radio that if he lit the lights and lined us up, I'd give it the old college try.  Before he finished chatting on the radio, the throttle was all the way back and the amp meter on the way up.  Let the good times roll.

When handed a rare chance to run hot, it's almost like a flashback to the way I was originally taught way back when.  Some of the old-head engineers from whom learned this craft were veterans of passenger service or mail trains and they wanted you on the dot or above all the time.  I learned to slide into speed restrictions on the air brakes and yank back out as the marker crossed the line lest I receive a hide-peeling for sloppy train handling.  That speedometer hand was always in the corner of my eye because if the man said 50, he meant 50, not 49 and not 51.  It was good training.

I also learned a thing or two about stopping as well as going.  I found that a planned stop more than half a car-length from a selected target was grounds for humiliation or outright abuse.  To make the conductor step sideways to reach the grab irons was characterized as being cruelly negligent to the offended ground-pounder.  One guy was embarrassed enough to actually apologize to the waiting outbound crew when I blew a 'station stop' and the handrails failed to come to rest directly in front of the engineer's shoes.  Times have changed but I still have nightmares of those days.

Remembering my upbringing, I got my eyes inside the cab and on the gauges to give it a run for the roses.  It was actually kind of fun.  The train handled like a string of coaches and we were eating up miles.  The fly in the ointment came when I kicked off the brakes and got the throttle all the way back coming out of a curve.  I saw the amp meter start climbing as it followed the throttle but suddenly it quivered to a stop at about 300.  This is bad.  It should be nearly 800 or more at this speed and we're not accelerating one bit.  Visions of those grouchy old Erie men flashed before my eyes.  A glance in the mirror was even less encouraging.  The train behind the first two cars was completely obscured by a wall of greasy looking black smoke drooling out of the exhaust stack where there should only be heat-ripples blasting straight up.  It's always something but the timing was exceedingly poor on this occasion.

I begin trying to think of what I'll say to the DS while I run through all the options of what-in-the-hell could be wrong now?  When everything runs on software, the options are pretty limited.  The rat-trap of a leader has betrayed me when I needed it most and was about to make a liar out of me.  My vocabulary across the cab degenerated into that of the legendary drunken sailor or worse, a henpecked trainmaster at his fourth derailment of the week.

Fortunately for the remainder of the trip, I had two units but the second was shut down to save fuel and to start it now would require a complete stop and lost time while I get it fired up.  Decisions, decisions.  Keep going at what now looks like a slow crawl at best or come to a standstill long enough to boot up the computer and light the fires in engine number two?  Either one will blow any currency I had with the Second Trick Dispatcher when his southbound outlaws because I stuck a cork in the bottle right in his face.  Bad things may come of this.

In the background, questions are racing.  Who's idea was it to build engines you have to go outside to start anyway?  Why can't I do this from all the gee-whiz computers these things have?  Do pilots climb out on the wing to crank up another engine or check the power output?  Nooo...they have switches and meters INSIDE for such things.  They don't even risk sending the co-pilot out on such a mission once wheels are turning and engines are burning.  But not us...we have to chance sending the left-seater on a wobbly dance down the walkway to the other cab to push the buttons.  That's if the guy knows how to set up all the breakers and switches in the first place.  Some do, some don't, some do but won't.  Or, you just hang out the anchor and stop long enough to crank it over yourself.  Like I said, it's always something.

By sheerest dumb luck, just as the last poke at the computer screen behind my seat yielded no results and the radio call that would ruin the afternoon for at least five guys and banish me to sidings for months was taking shape in my head, the choice was made for me.  The red-hot coal man got whacked by a defect detector, had to slow to 30 mph and that was all she wrote.  His fate now sealed no matter what I did or didn't do, the pressure was off.  The dispatcher gave me an atta-boy for the effort (without knowing how close it was to working out somewhat differently) and so all was well.  We stumbled to a stop as the loads of soon-to-be-outlawed coal passed into the siding next to us to wait for another crew and another try.  The second unit of our train dutifully lit off on my request and after a minor tussle with it's Windows Embedded operating system, announced itself ready for the rest of the evening's labors.  Sometimes I miss engines with controls that would respond to a tap with a vice-grip or reset with a little prodding from a flag-stick but then I suppose re-booting is really about the same thing.  Somehow though, it's less gratifying even when it occasionally works.

Let's leave this little adventure by saying the ride the rest of the way home was something less than a picnic but then, sometimes that's the way of things.  Trains are usually tiring even on a good day and this one was only more so.  I arrived at the new Wayward Home about daybreak and loaded the coffee machine.  This at least did not require a re-boot to accomplish.  I had plans for a Tour de Cure scouting expedition in the morning so what do I do?  Stay up and keep on pushing.

Thus my experiment is still in full swing.  It's now been a tad over 24 hours and my fingers are starting to have a hard time finding the keys on the laptop.  Luckily, I'm not on-call and have a couple of days to recover while I get Son the First graduated from high school.  That's the Next Big Thing and I'm looking forward to seeing the big lug do the walk.  I'll probably have slept by then and with any luck, will be able to function like a human again.  Hope so because my inlaws are coming over.

Until then, let the path of science go forward!  Nothing is gained without sacrifice!  Blah, blah, blah, etc.

The hell with sleeping...I'm going for a ride.

R&R

I'm in recovery mode.  I pulled another 30+ hr. day yesterday between work and home.  You'd think I'd learn not to do that...or at least do it less often.  Old dog, new tricks...isn't there a saying about that?

The whole thing started when I woke up at my away-from-home terminal Sunday at around 4 pm and packed to come home.  This was followed by a twelve hour train ride in the dark with all the normal frustrations and dilemmas of railroading.  After my usual hour-long commute, it was full daylight and the second or third wind was kicking in.  Also by that time, the real world was up and around so I decided to just roll with it and not bother going to sleep all.  I know I'm not on-call Monday night and I've got stuff to do.

It always goes the same way and I know it's going to hurt before it's over but I don't want to be asleep when I'm home all the time either.  All work and no play...
That one decision led to a bike ride, assorted comings and goings, my son's jazz concert and a dose of Red Cat.  Let's just say the lights went out really, really fast once I hit the sheets.

But anyway, speaking of riding...My faithful road bike is at the shop getting a once-over by people who actually know what they're doing (unlike me).  I'm at a loss to determine the cause of a nasty front-end shake that has made an appearance on my Trek a little too frequently of late.  I pretend that I have a small amount of bicycle knowledge and I can sometimes baloney my way around the average technical conversation if I'm lucky or if the other person is an idiot but I'm out of my league with this one.  I've done all I can (which isn't much) and so I must defer to the experts.

Here's the scenario:  For reasons unknown, my 2.1 has decided that somewhere around 38 mph is damn-all fast enough and to remind me of that arbitrary speed limit, it suddenly goes into that above-mentioned wobble.  Just as I pedal out and start letting gravity do the work, I can feel it coming now that I'm expecting it. The bars get twitchy, the road feels like greased marbles and my fingers sneak out toward the brake levers without conscious thought.

Then the fun starts.  There's a moment of small vibration and then instantly, I can't steer anymore.  A few too many instances of practice have taught me that the only way to break the shimmies is to snap on a little rear brake (a trick I learned from a Harley Sportster way back when) and drag off some speed until things settle down.  If I'm quick enough, the wheel starts tracking in a straight line just as the adrenaline rush hits but slightly before the full blown panic attack.  I might expect it but I'm never really ready for it.  The whole thing is more than a little disconcerting.

An uncontrollable shudder that threatens to toss me over the bars at high speed is a bit more thrill than I typically look for these days.  Half killing yourself for the fun of it is for younger men.  Flinging my fragile self through space toward the inevitable crash landing just doesn't do it for me anymore.  Especially when I'm usually clad in nothing but cheap bike shorts with all the padding in the wrong place for this event, a flimsy spandex jersey that will only melt itself into the abrasions from the friction, fingerless gloves that will likewise merely burn into my palms on touchdown and a plastic helmet that won't even save my ears.  When I ride the SuperGlide at highway speed, I wear leathers and heavy denim. What does that say about my intelligence while riding a bicycle? Hmmm....
I'm absolutely certain that my half-century-old hide is an extremely poor defence against asphalt zooming by at 40 mph and therefore I make every effort not to land my pink skin on that rapidly moving surface. 

Thinking about it, I came up with a formula to quickly deduce the outcome of contact between human and highway:

(Skin area / Highway surface) + (Impact force / Time-of-flight) = (Hours of recovery + Unfinished ride) X (Rehabilitation / Time + Speed).

This can be further abbreviated as

THIS:  (S/H)+(I/T)=(H+U)(R/T+S). 

Laymen and experts alike, if they've ever ventured off the porch and out on the blacktop, know the product of this equation by it's scientific name:
Road Rash.

Road Rash is an injury that by itself is bad enough since it normally requires scrubbing dirt out of the freshly shredded wound with a stiff brush and much gritting of teeth.  Tweezers are sometimes involved for the fine stuff.  Hydrogen Peroxide, alcohol or other (very necessary) disinfectants add to the entertainment value.  Infection is almost a given unless you take better care of skin leaks than I usually do.  Bouts of artistic profanity are the norm during treatment and again later when the bandages stick and the surgical tape rips any remaining body hair out by the roots.

These unpleasant circumstances can be and often are accompanied by concussions, fractures, sutures, a tetanus booster, sizable investments in bike repairs and the occasional hospital stay.  It's even less attractive to me now that it takes twice as long to heal and hurts four times as much.  There's just never been much to recommend it as far as I can tell.

Even when I had dirt bikes that ran on fossil fuel instead of leg power and contracted the dreaded rash much more often, I never really got used to the raw nerve endings.  At one point I, was actually pretty good at removing the gravel, broken glass, dirt and ground-in clothing fibers from whatever was left of the skin but my interest in self-mutilation has faded some over the years.  Nope, don't want or need any new scars over the old ones and a wheel-wobble-of-death is a good way to collect some.  Hence, a visit to the guys with the fancy tools was in order.  I'll probably live longer.

In the interim, I took my mountain bike out for a little romp in the woods and back roads yesterday and quite frankly, got my ass handed to me.  Note to self:  quit being a roadie wannabe and go back out to play in the mud more often.  Everything hurts this morning from horsing around with the heavier bike but I've re-discovered that riding off-pavement is still a ball.  The mileage doesn't look like much but my shoulders are screaming discontent and my lungs are burning so it was a good day.  Without my old riding pal Doc around, I might bleed less but I still manage to have a good time.  Old dog...old tricks.

Which leads me back to recovery...I'm sort of taking it easy today while a line of drizzly showers pass through.  Letting the aches subside a little, catching up on the Wayward Home, odds and ends around the house, you know the drill.  The crummy weather is supposed to clear out tonight and leave near-perfect conditions tomorrow.  Could be a road day to test the 2.1 for shimmies.  I'm thinking it'll likely take at least 70 or 80 miles to do a complete evaluation.

You'd think I'd learn...