Covid Riding

I had a fun little gravel ride today with two friends.

We kept pretty good distance between us, not that it matters that much in the open air when we’re mostly moving at 15 mph. A couple times, I thought about other rides on these particular roads – at least once, with one of today’s riders – and struggled to remember, at first, why we could have every ridden in a pack, or clustered around the guy who had a flat, or camped in a tiny little cabin in a county park.

This resetting of older memories is getting more and more frequent for me, a phenomenon that I’ve talked about with many people. Masking and distancing have permeated public life so deeply that it’s hard to remember that they’ve only been around for us since February, and only really common in Minnesota since late July (when the governor mandated masks in public places).

I guess it’s a nice demarcation in our shared personal histories: things we did before the pandemic, things we are doing in it. I suppose there will be a whole set of things that we’ll do after the pandemic, too (ubiquitous masking in health-care settings?) – or not (salad bars are over, right?). For now it’s enough of a challenge to remember that we weren’t being foolhardy eight years ago when ten of us rode in a tight paceline down a rutted, muddy road – we just didn’t have to worry about COVID.

Fi-Mask-co

I have, I think, eleven masks. I have one stashed in each car, two hanging from a hook in my office, one or two on the hat rack at home, and the rest… Uh… Most of them are in my backpack, I think, but maybe a couple are stuffed in handlebar bags on my bikes.

Today, I headed off to the coffeeshop before work without one around my neck. “No problem,” I thought as I rode along, “I’ll dig one out of my backpack before I go inside.” Nope. Nothing there. I zipped my jacket up as high as I could, just under my nose, and went in. “Do you have any spare masks?” I asked. Luckily, they did, and the barista slid one over the counter to me. Crisis averted. When I got to work, I found the two on the hook, one on the cabinet where I leave my bike helmet, and one on my desk. They both went into my backpack for Monday.

Who was that masked student?

I had my individual meetings with my four first-year advisees today – nice young men and women,* all suburbanites, all student-athletes, all excited about college. None of them took me up on my offer to have our meetings by video call, and each of them commented in one way or another about being “Zoomed out” after a disrupted senior year of high school, a summer spent looking at a screen, and now orientation that includes a lot of activities on Zoom.

So I enjoyed talking face to face with them, or mask to mask, eight feet apart. I found it taxing to listen to someone that far away whose mouth is hidden by the masks they all dutifully wore. Nonetheless we had some great conversations that covered a lot of ground I’d expected and needed to cover (general education requirements, Carleton as an institution, Northfield as a place) as well some topics that gave me a better sense of them as people – G, who worries about finding enough time to pursue all of his interests; I, who wants to know the best restaurants in town; B, who has already planned out her major; and S, who wants to meet more people already!

All in all, the meetings were refreshing reminders of what Carleton is all about and that the kids are going to do pretty well despite the world we’ve forced them to live in.

But sill: it’s insane to me that everyone – today, literally every person on campus! – is wearing a mask. Disposable ones, Carleton-branded ones, fancy ones, plain ones, pattered ones, solid-colored ones. 2020: the year we couldn’t see anyone’s mouth, and learned to recognize each other by eyebrows and noses.

* After 14 years at Carleton, I feel like I can almost start calling them “kids,” but I remember feeling So Grown Up at 18…

Pandemic Restrooms

Every day, more signs, posters, flyers, reminders about pandemic health and safety appear around campus. At this rate, the restrooms in our office building will be wallpapered in signage by Halloween. Today’s addition to the door into the two-stall men’s room:

The commodes are new-ish, and there’s a touchless paper towel dispenser, but pretty much everything else appears to be original to the building. This wooden stalls create a look and feel that’s very Hogwarts – but the building went up in 1915, just before the Spanish flu pandemic. I wonder if the college put up posters to exhort masking and washing hands.

Covid Move-In Day

Today was arrival day for first-year students at Carleton – the Class of 2024! I felt a touch of melancholy all day at the atmosphere: dreary weather, parents and freshmen moving into the dorms on strict shifts, everyone wearing masks and maintaining distance, small quiet groups instead of the big boisterous crowds… It’s just not right! But it’s also reality. More happily, I got in touch with my four FY advisees today. We’ll meet tomorrow morning at 10, which is going to be a nice moment.

Falldemic

Today, the weather turned dramatically, shaving off 30º F and turning from windy sun to overcast rain. Not only did this mean that I had to scotch plans for a ride, but also that fall has started, at least in the practical sense that I needed an extra layer when I went outside to today.

And if fall has started, then the pandemic has now touched – harmed! – all four seasons. We joked in April about how difficult lockdown would be during the winter, and thanks to Trump’s ineptitude, we might now get a chance to see. At the least, we’re going to have to read the dismal news on the pandemic while enduring the dismal autumnal drizzle. And today, students started coming back to Carleton, which means that those poor first-years are always going to remember literal and figurative clouds hanging over their first days of college.

Bike riding in a pandemic

Today marks the thirteenth straight weekend that I’ve gone for a longish bike ride with one or more friends.

Till this summer, I’d gone years without riding with anyone, ever since getting out of the habit of the Tuesday-night gravel rides that the club here in town organizes (or used to, in the Before Times). Pressures at home made me stop, but now with teenagers instead of elementary school kids, it’s easier – if not painless – to get out the house on a weekend morning for a long ride – 30 up to 60 or so miles so far.

It’s been absolutely great to do these rides – physically, socially, emotionally. I have not amassed this many bike miles in many, many years, which can only pay off when or if I can race this winter. And I’ve turned a corner with my riding, where going for a ride, even a short one (like the 20-ish miler yesterday evening with Pete), feels wonderful – but where a 60-miler feels even better.

The pandemic has constricted almost everyone’s social life; mine is largely now messaging with a few friends, talk at work (which isn’t really a real social life), workouts with one other guy a few evenings a week, and the occasional evening beer with a couple people at most. Plus the bike rides, which have been 3-5 hours of conversation about politics, the pandemic, work, Carleton, etc. etc. It’s wonderful. I love the rhythms of these bike-ride conversations, which appeal both in being Guy Talk and in being chats with like-minded friends – and which are thus very emotionally satisfying without being soul-searches. I always end the rides feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally satisfied – and maybe spiritually too, since it’s hard not to like scenes like this:

But. Given the constant talk about physical distancing, about masking, about washing hands and such, it’s a bit weird to spend so long in relatively close proximity to several other humans. It feels wrong, even if we’re pretty far apart from each other. I have to keep reminding myself that this is normal and relatively healthy, that riding bikes was a perfectly ordinary thing to do this time last year, that not too long from now it’ll be normal again. I hope. In the meantime, we’ll ride a few arms’ lengths apart and bring masks so one of us can get beer at the brewery afterwards.

Saturday Activities

Today was an ordinary day, but the pandemic shot through aspect of it.

In the morning, I went driving with Julia so she could practice on the freeway; she’s had her permit for 14 months and won’t have her behind-the-wheel exam for another three weeks because the exams are backlogged after having been suspended for months in the spring due to the pandemic.

In the afternoon I went riding with Pete and wound up as usual at Imminent, where they can only allow about half as many customers as usual due to physical distancing, and where everyone has to wear a mask unless they’re seated at their table. Awkward but also so normal.

And all day, I saw homemade Trump signs, emblems of the cult that has only hardened as the pandemic has wound on. Beyond the run-of-the-mill handmade ones and the obnoxious campaign ones with the “Keep America Great” slogan, the capper was a massive two-sided “TRUMP 2020” sign on a flatbed trailer along US 52 – entirely ringed with barbed wire. Never has there been a more apt metaphor for Trump.

Plexiglas Separation

Plexiglas everywhere! Pretty much any business worth its salt has put up plexiglas barriers at the point of sale, a quarter-inch of clear plastic between the coughing customer and the besieged service worker: at the campus snack bar, at the sandwich joint, at the coffee shop, at the brewery, at the bookstore… At the bank, the barrier was at least three feet high and all the way around the desk. This slot was a little wider than a sheet of office paper and just high enough to slide a sheaf of account-opening paperwork through – but low enough that your last knuckles would catch.

COVID tents

As the new school year approaches for both the K-12 public schools and the private colleges here in town, tents are popping up all over town. Julia’s cross country meet was held today at one of the elementary schools, where several tents stood near the playground. Later, I drove past the girls’ old elementary school and saw two more, mixed into some trees far from the building. They create a strange end-of-the-carnival atmosphere.

Maskcents

I hope that I always remember the scent of wearing a mask: warm, soft, slightly humid, breathy. It’s not appealing, exactly, but it’s not gross either; it’s more like the olfactory equivalent of the taste of a medicine. I like the scent inasmuch as perceiving it tells me that I have my mask on, which is usually the right thing to do. And I’m used to the smell enough now that it fades away after a few minutes. This afternoon, I almost tried to take a drink through my mask, I’d gotten so used to it!

Night Ride 

With the Fat Pursuit and the Arrowhead rapidly approaching (70 days and 94 days away, respectively), I’ve been feeling the need to get out for some long rides. So far this fall, though, a heavy workload at the office and plenty of activities at home have made all-day outings impossible, so Friday I did the next best thing by going out after dinner for a few hours on the gravel roads.

Riding gravel roads in the dark is wonderful, especially on an unseasonable night like Friday – 60° F, an insistent but not harsh westerly breeze, a touch of humidity. I left home just as the sun set behind me, calling out for a picture or two. A stop to adjust my seat height – when did I acquire the unwelcome ability to feel that my saddle is too high or low based on the shorts I’m wearing? – and tweak the angle of some new grips. 


Soon afterwards, I was in full dark, riding toward the white spot of road illuminated by my headlight. First more east, waving to a cyclist hiding behind his own headlight as he headed back toward town. Then some south paralleling the county line, waving to the cars and trucks I met, dropping into low spots where cool wet air had pooled, climbing up to ridges where the breeze warmed me. All around, I could see yellow, white, red lights at dozens of farms. Interior lights spilling through picture windows. A bonfire, the smoke almost more felt than smelled. 

A turn to the west onto pavement for a passage through a tiny farm town, dark but loud with machinery at the grain elevator. 


Then back onto gravel, passing the state park and the first deer, timidly watching from the trees from the far side of the ditch. A cat, sitting by a mailbox post. An easy downhill curve that the darkness turned into a mountain pass. A slow, tentative lap around the MTB trails at the county park – tricky to ride with only the headlight and a fading headlamp. Stopped at the high point, I could hears cows lowing, horses neighing, dogs barking, coyotes yipping. The night was really alive. Back on the bike, I found Gut Check Bridge downright scary: wet, banked, downhill. 


After the park, one last westerly section, then northeast up a long, steady climb through a gorgeous stand of hardwoods. Some unseen dogs yapping angrily at me. More deer. Legs burning now from the gym at noon, from 2.5 hours of riding, from an empty stomach. 

North now, back toward town. The last big climb, past a dead deer, gnawed open by night creatures. Another cat, darting away. The rollers on the straight drag back to the city limits. A combine crawling through a cornfield toward two tractor-trailers waiting for its load. The last stretch of gravel, up a hill now crowned with a new tract house, light pouring from every window, people moving around inside. Five minutes later, back inside my own house to stay up too late, buzzing with endorphins and looking forward to the next night ride. 

Border Crossing MTBing

What: the marathon class (four-hour) event at the Border Crossing MTB race, part of the Minnesota MTB series

Where: Whitetail Ridge MTB trails, River Falls, Wisconsin – really fun trails that loop up and down a wooded hillside. Apart for a couple straight stretches along the cornfield at the top of the hill (perfectly situated for recovery!), the trails are very twisty and turny, and very rooty, and not particularly technical except for a section – near the end of our lap – that featured some burly rock sections. Our lap also included two short but steep climbs, which did a very good job of exploding my legs.

When: 8:50 a.m. till about 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 15, 2016

Why: I had hoped to do the Dirt Bag gravel race this weekend, but family plans made that hard or impossible, so when my friend Galen asked if I was interested in this event – rescheduled from July – I jumped at the chance.

Who: the Coyote, my Salsa El Mariachi with a new 1x drivetrain. 

My best gear was the bike, of course, and my new Revelate Wampak hydration pack – which I hope will be a key element of my winter-racing setup.

My worst gear was my new 1x drivetrain on the bike, which was wonky all day. Still, it never failed, so…

The low points were not very low:

  1. When I realized, halfway through lap four of five, that I wouldn’t be able to hold pace for six full laps. Not actually that bad a problem!
  2. When my Four Hour Energy drink wore off after three hours. False advertising!
  3. When the elite-class racers came ripping though about two hours into my race. Good lord they’re fast.

The high point was when, on my last lap – pretty much totally gassed – I still managed to clean all but one of the various fairly technical obstacles on the course. I had been hit or miss with them all day, so I was happy to put my experience with them to good purpose so late in the race. Now I just need to be able to do this on lap two, and at three times the speed!

It was in the bag when I made it up the last serious climb, a steep ramp covered with loose rock, and knew I pretty much just had easy, fun trails to the finish.

The key lesson learned was that Four Hour Energy isn’t, and that the Whitetail Ridge trails are great. I’ll have to try to do this race next year, at its usual time in July.

The takeaway is that the MMBS races are pretty damn fun. I did three this year (this one, the Red Wing Classic in RW in July, and the Singletrack Escape in August in St. Cloud), and found the race experience to be quite different from my usual kind of event – gravel centuries and fatbike ultras. I like the vibe, especially having racers around almost all the time. I look forward to getting better – smoother but especially faster – at this kind of racing.