Mad River Century - 2010

Photo: Team Tammy at the Start in Waitsfield

TCC was proudly represented at the Mad River Century on August 28th by over 20 people with a tie to the club. The event, now in its 20th year, is an annual tradition for many of us. Alan Chasse has done the event something like 19 times, and many of the rest of us are now pushing double digits. The Century is put on by "The Hideaway", a local restaurant that figured out a few years back that people would be willing to pay for an organized ride sprinkled with good food before, during, and after the event.

The weekend starts out on Friday night with a pasta fest at the restaurant. Most of us rolled in between 6:00 and 7:00 and spent an hour or two carbo loading before finding our way to local hotels to sleep off the gluttony. We assembed as a group at 7:45 for a few photos and by 8:00 we were ready to head out in two groups. Team Tammy consisted of its namesake, Tammy Walesczczyk, as well as Beth Hankins, John Jackman, Dave Burdete, Rob Yost, and Bill Penn. Their mission was to ride a steady solid pace line and work as a team to lay down the fastest average they could.

Our second team, which I dubbed the Ontario Express, consisted of my high school buddy Adrian Zahl (now from Ottawa), Barry (another Canadian), and a cadre of people that ride our A-Group including yours truly, Eric Anderson, Alan Chasse, Dave Jacobowski, Chris Stoltze, Phil Forzley, and Marty Spallone. Our goal was to demonstrate to the world that even fat people over the age of 50 can average 21 mph at Mad River.

The ride starts in Waitsfield, VT and heads north on Route 100 toward Montpelier. The first 25 miles to Montpelier are gently rolling but more down than up. The Ontario Express got to work quickly, and picked up a couple of racers from the Green Mountain Bicycle Club along the way. We realized the pace was quick, but were a little suprised when we arrived at the first rest stop at the State Capitol lawn in Montpelier with a 24.0 mph average. A few minutes later Team Tammy rolled in, with smiles on their faces and 20.5 on the odometers.

After peeing in the same urinal as the Governor of the Green Mountain State, we were back on our bikes for a 35 mile ride down Route 12A to Bethel. Speeds dropped somewhat as we realized that none of us had the legs to continue our initial sprint. Beth and Team Tammy limped in a little while later. Beth had broken her rear shifter cable and had been riding in her 12-tooth cog in the back for 15 miles. Dave Burdette had broken one of the 16 spokes on his rear Rolf Wheel and his brake was rubbing badly - he hadn't really noticed this, because he is Dave Burdette. Alan and John Jackman completed some speedy repairs and all hands (and legs) were back in business.

Photo 1: Phil Forzley at the State Capitol

Photo 2: Alan fixing Dave's busted spoke

The third leg of the ride cuts back west and heads up a river valley on Rte. 104. This section leads back to Rte. 100, where the ride turns back north toward the point of its origin. Route 100, which takes you from about the 70 mile mark to the finish line, has been deteriorating for several years and has become a difficult road to ride with potholes, crevasses, and all manner of busted up pavement. We soldiered northward - slightly uphill and watching the average speeds drop steadily. At the rest stop at the 75 mile mark we ran into Steve Yau, who had originally been caught in no-man's land between the two groups but had missed the second rest stop and ridden about 50 miles without a break (ouch). We also ran into club members Todd O'Keefe and Lou Blanchette, who were riding together and looking forward to the only large hill of the ride - Granville Gap.

Granville Gap comes at about the 85-mile mark of the ride and consists of a 2.5 mile hill, which is gently sloping at the base and then kicks up a couple of times more sharply near the top. It is the official Big D___ climb of the ride, although Beth claims that TCC women do not participate in Big D___ contests. Teamwork rules are suspended and the slug-fest is on for the duration of the grade. About three-quarters of the way up the hill I decided it was looking like I'd be this year's champ. Seconds later, my 51-year old high school classmate Adrian sprinted by me like I was on a 45-pound Huffy and I limped the rest of the way to the top. We gathered the group at the top of the hill, saw that our average had dropped to 21 mph, and headed down the other side of the hill determined to keep it over 21. The last 10-miles of the ride are downhill or flat, and allow you to add a few tenths to the average. We pressed on to the finish in Waitsfield and recorded 21.6 mph as determined by Alan's official computer (he stops it whenever we're in a town going less than 10 mph). Team Tammy showed up at the finish a while later with a very respectable 19 mph average. They'd ridden as a team the entire way and in many stretches other groups pasted themselves onto the back of the group, realizing what a steady and strong pace Tammy and her crew were setting.







Photo 3: Chris, John, and Eric at the top of Appalachian Gap

To put an exclamation point on the day, five of us continued up Appalachian Gap - a 7-mile 1500-foot climb from Waitsfield to give ourselves 120 miles on the day. Why? We still don't know, but it hurt.

A barbecue under a big-top completed a perfect riding day. We all slept well, and woke up Sunday for another annual tradition - a short bike ride over some covered bridges before heading home to the Nutmeg state. Rumor has it that they will be paving Route 100 next year. We'll be going back regardless.

Adirondack Trip Report

The Riders - Anna Hankins, Beth Hudson-Hankins, Dave Waldburger, John Jackman, Eric Anderson, John Hankins, Tammy Walesczcyk

Way back when the snow was still flying, several of us began hatching a plan for a bike trip to the Adirondacks. Seven TCC'ers met the challenge and left on July 31st for an eight-day sojourn, accompanied by John Jackman's skilled and generous wife Ione, who agreed to provide baggag transportation and emotional support using their family's really big pickup truck.

We kicked the ride off in Niskayuna, NY, a suburb of Albany. After being told by the police that there was no legal place to leave a vehicle overnight in Niskayuna, John ditched his blue Dodge Caravan in a Walmart parking lot, subscribing to the theory that Walmart does not tow stray vehicles in their parking lots. As we were leaving we saw a tow truck hooking up to another blue Dodge Caravan about 50 feet away. We believed this to be a good omen, as the odds that Walmart would tow two identical cars in a week from the same parking lot seemed quite low.

We started the first day with a leisurly trek up the smooth pavement of the Erie Canal rail trail, dodging hikers, joggers, and wobbly Huffies. After leaving the trail we hit the highways north of Albany. This first day was our least Adirondacky, and much of the trip was on busy roads, including one clearly labled "no bicycles". We steered our way through the metropolis of Saratoga Springs, and wound up in Glenns Falls at about the 45-mile mark where we spent the night in our first of four different Motel 8's.

Day Two (August 1) was Eric's BIRTHDAY. For this fabled occasion we tricked out his bike and presented it to him during the continental breakfast at the Motel 8. The ballons and crepe paper did not survive on the road terribly well, but the sparkly gold frame wrap and the lacy helmet cover both made it through the entire day. Tammy wrote up a "want ad" of sorts announcing Eric's bachelerhood, eligibility, and birthday status and pinned sewed this missive on his back. The announcement included an invitation to single women that read "you may hug and kiss me if you want to". Although he got no kisses, he did get a hug from an impressed woman at a donut shop at the ten mile mark.

Day Two took us from Glenns Falls up to Ticonderoga. Our route out of town headed West and into the first of the hills recognizable as Adirondack terrain (hilly!). In the village of Lake Luzerne we crossed the Hudson River and then followed a nice set of lightly traveled and relatively flat County roads up the west side of the Hudson. We discovered on this day that John's copyright 1987 New York Road Atlas did not accurately reflect the current route numbers. This created a fair amount of confusion among the riders and our driver, but between Ione's innate navigational skill and Dave's GPS-map enabled Blackberry we were (mostly) able to stay on our route (unless you were with John Jackman, in which case you got lost). The end of the day took us along the west shore of Lake George, a smaller cousin of Lake Champlain located south and a little bit west. Ticonderoga, our destination for the day, sits at the exteme south end of Lake Champlain and the extreme north end of Lake George. We celebrated this geographical oddity by stuffing seven of us in the cab of the Jackman's truck and heading to the Town Beach for a swim. Mileage for the day was just north of 80 miles.

At the Ticonderoga Super 8 we met up with Stephen and Seth, two brothers from Fort Wayne, Indiana, who were pedaling from their home town to Bar Harbor, Maine, with full packs. Taking pity on these poor souls, we invited them to dinner. They wolfed down a sufficient volume of pasta primavera to power them over Middlebury Gap in Vermont, their destination for the next day. They shared their blog with us if you'd care to view it: www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/brosonpatrol.

Day three was a scheduled 55-mile run from Ticonderoga to Lake Placid. We headed north on Route 22 along the west shore of Lake Placid. This section of road refuses to stay flat, and we rolled through a series of relatively steep (but generally short) ups and downs. At Crown Point we saw a sign for a FREE ferry ride across Lake Champlain to the Vermont side. This is the location where a bridge had existed until earlier this Spring. When engineers did an inspection they decided it was about to fall down, so they accelerated the process by blowing it up. We took a 10-mile detour from our route to catch the ferry over to Vermont and back. John Jackman headed to the bow of the boat at mid-lake to claim the State Line, his first of many cheap victories for the trip. A few miles north of Crown Point we came to Fort Henry, where we turned west away from the lake and into the heart of the Adirondacks. The grades out of the Champlain Valley tested all of us, with Eric's tilt-meter reading over 12 percent on some of the up-grades. The elevation of Lake Champlain is 95 feet. The elevation of Lake Placid is 1900 feet. Had we done the math before the ride we would have realized that our two-dimensional map failed to tell the whole story. Mileage for this day was about 65 miles, including the side trip to the ferry.

We stayed in Lake Placid for three nights to "rest" and see the sights. Our lodging in Lake Placid was a 1907-era hotel called "The Pines", with a big covered porch that we made into our home base for breakfast and general hanging out. On our first full day in Lake Placid, Eric, Anna, Dave, and I elected to celebrate our rest day by hiking up Mount Marcy, which at 5344 feet is New York's highest peak. It was a 15-mile slog, and we were greeted at the summit with visibility of about five feet. We did get to meet Julia the savvy summit steward, who regaled us with her knowledge of the geology (1.2 billion year old anorthosite that occurs only in three places on the planet) and the plants of the alpine tundra. We wolfed down some sandwiches and got the heck out of there before the weather deteriorated further. Meanwhile, back at the camp, our cohorts had discovered that they could watch practices of an international ice dancing championship at the Olympic Ice arena (for FREE). That first night we also discovered a wonderful folk concert in the park (for FREE), and we hung out with the locals eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Those of us that had hiked Mount Marcy felt the rigor mortis entering our legs, a condition that accompanied us for the rest of the trip.

On second day in Lake Placid we rented some kayaks from a shady guy with a hernia named Captain Marney, and paddled around until we got tired. Mr. Jackman showed his true colors by splashing anyone that got within 20 feet of his boat. After we returned to terra firma we went in different directions. Dave, Anna, and I headed out to the ski jump area, where we saw olympic skiing aerialist hopefuls launching themselves off astro-turf launching pads and flipping to and fro at heights up to 40 feet before crash landing in a swimming pool. Dave and I took the elevator to the top of the 120-meter ski jump, which is indeed quite intimidating. Eric went for a bike ride because he could not think of anything better to do.

Just as we began to get used to our new home at The Pines, it was time to roll out on our fourth day of riding - this one a 65-mile ride from Lake Placid to Tupper Lake. Eric had scouted out a fantastic back road the day before along the Au Sable River leading out of Lake Placid. This was one of the finest roads of the trip. Generally flat, perfect pavement, and twisting along with the river. At about the 15-mile mark we turned onto the Whiteface Highway, a dastardly section of pavement that heads up at about 8 to 10 percent up the lower reaches of Whiteface Mountain. At about 2 miles into this climb the road forked, with a toll booth on the left fork for those that cared to continue to the 4600-foot mountain summit. Although we had decided earlier not to ride up the mountain, Anna, Eric, and I could not help ourselves. We paid the 5 bucks each, shifted to a lower gear, and trudged upward. The road turned out to be not too steep, never exceeding about 8 percent or so (for comparison, Mt. Washington averages 14 percent). Nevertheless, we were staring at another 2300 feet of climbing after the toll booth on top of about 1000 feet we had done before the toll booth. At the 3800-foot level we rode into the clouds, and by the time we hit the top the visibility was about the same as what we had on Mt. Marcy. We lingered at the top only shortly, got a naked picture of Eric in back of the summit sign, and then had an exciting ride down, made more so by the bumpy pavement and 30 mph cross-winds that would occasionally push across the road.

The excursion to the summit put us about 90 minutes behind the rest of the group, which stayed ahead of us the rest of the day. This day featured a lengthy collection of county roads which I had mis-numbered on the cue sheet (thanks again to the 1987 atlas). Ione did a fantastic job marking the road with yellow chalk at each intersection to keep us going where we needed to go. We rolled into Tupper Lake at about 77 miles, where we stayed in a cute little set of cabins each sporting a thick accumulation of moss on the roof. Tammy was particularly impressed with the diminutive size of the bathrooms, which required that women sit side saddle on the toilet if they wanted to close the door.

Our fifth and penultimate day of riding was our longest, 115-miles from Tupper Lake to Gloversville. This day featured flatter roads, no big climbs, and lots and lots of lakes. In general, we were on lightly traveled State highways with wide shoulders. The wind was an ever-present friend or enemy depending on which way the road twisted and which way each particular gust decided it wanted to go. Some of the State Highways, particularly Route 10, were fantastic, with smooth winding pavement, no big uphills, a tailwind, and spectacular scenery. We stopped for lunch on this day in Speculator, NY, which I gave the award for the coolest name. The end of the day featured a long descent into the Mohawk Valley to Gloversville, which as you may have guessed was once the largest manufacturer of leather gloves in the world. We un-did our enormous calorie outlay for the day by heading to the Chineese buffet.

For our sixth and final day of riding we threw away the cue sheet and figured out a way to ride the entire 50 miles back to Niskayuna on rail trails and canal trails. The route was as flat as you'd expect it to be. The trails were generally paved with the exception of about 8-miles of well-manicured and very easy to ride stone dust. The 40-miles of Erie Canal Trail we did on this final day was just a small section of the Erie Canal trail system that stretches over 300 miles from Albany to Buffalo. Dave had done a tour of this previously and knew something about the trail. All of us enjoyed looking at the working locks on the Mohawk River as well as the abandoned locks on the original Erie Canal.

Ione met us back in Niskayuna, where we retrieved my van - no worse for wear during its week in the Walmart Parking Lot, unless you count the three pounds of pigeon shit on the windshield that resulted from parking under a light pole. Upon my arrival back in Mansfield I stepped on the scale to discover that the 440 miles I had ridden had resulted in a weight gain of five pounds - truly the sign of a great trip.