Extreme Sports Part II: Built to Race

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoyNAMDOnRc&feature=youtu.be
2. Wait for it to load.
3. Play and read.

Bzzzzzzzz! 
5:53am. Roll over, check the alarm. 
Where am I? The basement? No. LA? No.
Oh--Australia. Wait. Not Lauren and Pat's place...
BIKE RACE! QUICK! GET OUT OF BED! 

LIGHTS!
The clothing I laid out last night: leggings, a sports bra, and a tank top plus Jason's bike jersey, size XL and his windvest. "You're gonna want that--gets pretty cold up in the Wingellos."


6:03am. Teeth brushed, dressed, packed, head downstairs.
"Morning! You hungry?" No. I'm not even awake. And the butterflies in my stomach are keeping me perfectly full, thanks. 


7:00am  Jason and Aaron are talking in the front seat of the car.  Struggling to keep warm. Why am I doing this? I barely know these guys. I don't know the course. I don't know if I can even finish.  What if I fall? What if I cramp up? What if it's miserable, grueling uphill the whole way? What if Jason and Aaron finish hours before me? What if I get bored and want to quit? I could be cozy in bed right now!  Eventually doze off.


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8:08am "We're at Macky's! Wanna grab a coffee?"  McDonald's. Small flat white, please.  Ahhhh warmth. Caffeine does not help pre-race jitters. 


8:26am Arrive at the race, park the car, still clutching my empty cup for any remaining heat. "It's 6." 6 What? "Yep. It was even colder last year. Still had the rain though. Well, reckon we should get out of the car and get set up." 6. 6 degrees Celsius. 


9:00 am Check in. "I was able to get you a last minute registration transfer from this guy that dropped out. Here's your race plate. We'll waive the $100 fee." Bill Speed, #496. Nice.



9:30 am Head back to the car, lube up the chain, take off the North Face. Brrrrr. "I keep some clear construction glasses in my truck if you wanna wear 'em." Safety first. 


9:40 am Ride over to the Start Line. No time for a pre-ride. I don't want to know which hills I should be dreading right now.  


9:45 am Slurp down a Roctane. These should probably be regulated.


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9:50 am "Alright ladies and gentlemen. It's gonna be a mass start with self-seeding." Utter chaos. "Unicyclers and tandems, please start in the back." Hope they have an ambulance nearby . "Now there's some things you should know about the course.  It's divided into 3 Rings: a 6km blue, a 27 km red, and a 19 km yellow.  First you start out with some firetrail, then it gets tricky. Make sure to watch out for.." 6+27+19. That's ummmm that's not exactly 50km. How much is 50k in miles? Oh. And my iPod. Get that playlist on. Ok and can I reach it from the back jersey pocket? No? Ok sports bra it is. Between the rain outside and the sweat inside I'll be lucky if it survives... "And we're ready to start here so in 3--2--1--GO!"


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10:00am   This is it. Your first race in years. Your longest race ever. Your coldest, wettest, most lonesome bike ride, halfway across the world from home. Go. Get past him. And him. No stupid! Pass on the right here. 


0.3km   I'm doing it. Nothing hurts yet and my fingers haven't frozen stiff. Glasses getting foggy though.


1km  Out of the clustermuck. Slight uphill. Gear up. Kill it. Go.


4km  In the zone: heart rate fixed, legs braced to do work.  Riders, rocks, trees, and trail become a blur. 


6.6 km  Turn coming up. The red arrow points sharply, get the inside lane. Brake: right for rear--No! Left for rear. Australiaaa. 


6.7 km  Wait, red arrow? One ring down, 2 to go. 


8 km  A collage of jerseys walking bikes up a hill. Sign on the trail reads: The Wall. Oh ya. That. Hike, push, left right left. Calves cramping up. 


9 km  Water. Hop back on the bike, get ready for downhill. Shoot! Glasses completely fogged. Rip em off. Brake with one finger. Shove em in the back pocket. Squint downhill. Good thing the rain is weighing down the dust and sticks.


15km Singletrack. Stay in it. Don't crowd him, but don't lose him. Technique. Finesse. No-- Strength, crank it! Up the rocks! But don't pop a tire.  


24km Seemingly endless singletrack. Uphill, downhill. Turn, swerve, gear down quick, up, brake, down, jump, butt off the seat. Don't get complacent. Any tree could be the one you crash into.


27km Last loop. Ask a guy for the time. Doing well. And it gets easier from here. Eat a GU. Water.


29km What's that up ahead? A pink bike? Competition. If you can see them, you can catch them. 


30km "Hey, how you going?"  Uphill fireroad, a perfect time to chat. We are not in the same age group. Crisis avoided. We play leapfrog for a few k's.


32km  Wrists are killing me, grip is tightly fixed. If I lose muscle control in my fingers, then I won't be able to break. Shit. Try to straighten out fingers one by one. The shocks. I cannot believe I forgot to unlock them after the fire trail. Shit. Tap the RLC away from me. Ahhhh, much better. 


34km  Steeper grade, can't shift into the small front chain ring. Get off the bike. Deep breath. Water. Feels good to stretch my aching back. Clear out 100g worth of mud. Try shifting. Good. On we go.


35km  Continuous uphill. Bottom of the chain gets caught between the frame and top of the gear cog. Never seen that before. Don't panic. Can't pry it loose. Guy looking for an excuse to rest comes to the rescue.


37km Chain needs rescuing again. Mountain biking playlist is over. Switch to shuffle. Stretch the back, crack 4 vertebrae.


39km  Still going uphill. Guy stopped on the side of the road, checking an odometer. "You don't wanna know how much farther we have." Ok, then please don't tell me. Just keep biking Susanna. Don't think. 


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The effects of the Roctane are diminishing. The mental exertion of the past couple hours is making itself known. Temporarily tune out. The cranks turn of their own accord, the wheels spin in time, the trees pass indistinguishably. 


Look around. This is nature. This is Australia. This is gorgeous.  
Appreciate it. Feel the rain, the wind, the freshness of both on your face.  The rhythm of the music pushing you forward and your heart beating in perfect time. '
Thank you, bike, for taking me here. Crank, pedals, cog, chain, wheels, frame--how ingenious!  A mechanical marvel. Thanks for toughing out the rocks, creeks, flats, and steeps we've come across. 
And the mud--forgot about that, huh? How nice: that all this Earth--artfully splattered on my feet, my legs, my face--will be easily removed in a long, warm shower soon. 
Even the pain. That dull ache in my quads, hammies, arms, and back: I earned it. 


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41km The payoff.  Downhill! Don't go crazy. Keep your head. Watch for the water bars. Any tiny pebble could sling my eye out. Put the glasses back on? But then I can't see. What's worse: broken bones or being blind? Bones, apparently. I can't be bothered to slow down, reach back and grab those glasses.


43 km Whooooooooooo!!! I yell, out loud. This is why I bike. Speed. Endorphins. Kick ass music. I'm in a video game. I'm racing. Ride no-handed to stretch my back. Spread my arms. I'm flying. Yahooo! I could do this forever. Whoosh! Passed somebody. Round the turn. Hug the bike with my whole body. Yesss.


45 km Trees give way to open farmland. Cows on the left, horses on the right. Pass an older guy on the flats. "No hands?! As if these paddocks weren't punishment enough!"  Paddocks! So that's what Jason was talking about. Paddocks are just farms. Huh. Wait! Paddocks are at the endddd! Almost there! 


48km Out of water. You'll live. Just one more mile. Just one more ride to St. Pat's. You could do this when you were 5. 


50km Back aches, parched, fingers swollen from braking, wrists pulsing, music blaring. The Finish Line. 


3:17:34  Guy in a white get-up with a mic announces my name. I ride up. Tell him where I'm from. These announcer guys always need things to talk about. Poor spectators have been miserable--waking up early to sit in the rain for three hours. "So you just came over here on holiday and decided to race?" "Yep, I'd like to give a shout out to Jason. I don't know if he's here yet or not but I really want to thank him for lending me all this great gear." "Well, I'm not sure what a shout out is, but yes, thank you, Jason!"  Get me some water. And maybe I could finally stomach some solid food today?


3:22:01  "Oh look, everybody! Here's Jason now!" Rush back over to the Finish Line. Yep, that's him. I beat him. "Ya she may have beaten me on my old bike, but just wait. Aaron still hasn't finished!"


3:25:56 "And heeeeere's Aaron!" Smile for pictures, chug more water, finally eat a banana. Shiver. It's still freezing outside and the decrease in adrenaline has sent less warm blood to my extremities. 


Back at the car. Can't hardly get my shoes off: my muscles are too sore to balance and my finger dexterity is hindered by coldness.  Take some wet layers off, leave some wet layers on.  Climb back in the car, still muddy. Couldn't be happier.




Pictures, followed by soundtrack and stats.

I made the Critic's Review!!!

Bike Race Soundtrack:
1. Stress - Nero (Justice Remix)
2. The Intro - The XX
3. Hear is King - Axwell
4. A Dream Withing a Dream - The Glitch Mob
5. Reasons - Project 46*
6. Warp - Steve Aoki**
7. Josie Nordrum***

*Frankie and Shayne, I love you!
**Mom, I wish I could've fit it in somehow but I didn't. But because you got me into biking, I'm putting it in the credits.
***Josie, you are my main inspiration. Get it, girl!!

Stats: I finished 5th in the Female Open ages 16-29 category. Less than 45 min after first place. But for once, it wasn't about winning or losing. This was a Journey Race.

~BONUS!~
Did you catch the foreshadowing 'may I direct your attention to the center ring' in the last post? Well, it was unintentional. Funny, life.

Extreme Sports Part I: The Warm-Up

 Let us begin documentation of some radical sporting eventry by first paying homage to the sporting event to top all sporting events: the Olympics. If you remember television in Summer 2000, then you remember a shot of the Sydney Opera House, followed by a shot of some sweaty Africans, followed by a shot of tall, buff white guys in itsy bitsy teeny bikinis. 

Conveniently, Pat's friend Jason lives right next to Olympic Park. He drove me through it on the way to his house. The Park is empty and eerie, but here's the outside of the main stadium. 

And now ladies and gentlemen, may I direct your attention to the center ring for the main event: 

MOUNTAIN BIKING!!!

In addition to being a great driver-through-Olympic-Parks, Jason also happens to be good at owning 2 badass bikes.  His is a Niner, top o' the line. The one I borrowed was a 2009 Stumpjumper Elite and (dare I say it) I liked it better than the Mokomoko Kona or the Specialized Safire I ride at home (Josie, pick your jaw up off the floor. Some of us will never get to experience the essentialness of S-Works.) 

About an hour west of Sydney lies the Blue Mountains, so named for the bluish hue they get when the eucalyptus trees let off some kind of ... errr. .. something. Clearly botany is not one of the Four Tenets of Chemical Engineering.  Anyways, we drive to the small mountain town and then ride a train for half an hour up the mountain. This is awesome because that means we get more bang for our buck. And by bang, I mean singletrack. And by buck, I mean $4.80 train fare.  

The trail is called Oaks Firetrail. Here is a picture of Not Me riding it. (I have trouble pulling out my camera to take shots of boring firetrail like this; I have trouble stopping my flow to take shots of exciting singeltrack. Wattarya gunna do?)

Ta-Da! A Waterfall of Rocks! 

(This one is me)

Some cool black rocks that neither Jason nor I had the geological background to identify. Jackie Liu, please read my blog and tell me why these ones exist at 2000ft when everything else is sand-colored rock.

We had gotten a rather late start and with the sun setting completely by 5:15pm, it was somewhat of a race against time.  Jason told me about a little extension trail we could take after the uphill and before the singletrack that would lead us to a great view of the Napean River........  The nappy what? Anyways, I am a Nordrum and so I said 'Yes! Let's cram it all in. I don't care if I have to pedal until my cranks come loose. This is an "and" world, dammit!'   Here are the results of that decision: we made it back without riding in the dark, I got to see the Napean River, and these photos: 

On the edge of the worrrrrld! More like a rock cliff. About 500m high (1600ft)

I've been to the Grand Canyon, and lemme tell you what: this was not the Grand Canyon. It wasn't nearly as deep and it had trees and mountain biking. Blue Mountains: 1 Grand Canyon: 0

 The singletrack part (known as bushwalking trail to Aussies without bikes (known as hiking trail to Americans without balance)) was carved by kangaroos. I'm serious. Really. Jason told me that instead of just whacking down a bunch of bushes, they used the path trodden down by wombats and kangaroos.  Here is a picture of a kangroo with a joey. (Hint: it's behind the bushes on the left)

Can't see it? Alright. Here is a picture where that same kangaroo is on the right side of the path, again hidden by bushes. 

You still can't see it?!? Well. Maybe that is because this STUPID camera has bad timing. I literally almost ran into one that was crossing the path so I whipped out my camera to take a picture of the next one crossing and got the above shots. I think I may have a career in wildlife portraits.  Anyways, I crept up on them so you can see I'm not positively batshit crazy and they really were there and, yes, I really saw kangaroos in the wild before I saw them in a zoo, completely on accident. That's Oz for you.

The rest of our 2-hour bike ride was pleasant; we managed to work our way all the way down to that Nappy River. Here's me impersonating a typical female tourist on a bike (i.e. dressed in yoga pants & top, going slow, not muddy/wet, wearing Steve Madden sunnies).

This rock was SO cool: it was all cavitated out, although I don't think the photo shows this very well.

Mountain biking was a full-day experience: two trains to get to Jason's, an hour drive to the Blue Mountains, a train ride up the mountain, and then the return trip. Not to mention biking.  So what do you eat for break-fast when it's 6:30pm and you've had such a day? 

           Naturally.

(If you don't get it, you haven't been paying attention.)

I Have Fallen in Love

So after a couple days of puttering around, I finally commenced Tourist Activities…. The Opera House, The Harbour Bridge, The Rocks, and Manly Beach.

If you have seen pictures of these places before, you have seen exactly what they look like in real life. So I don’t need to post anything here. But I think Grannie might not have, so for her sake, here’s my brief run-down on the Sydney sitch.

It’s GORGEOUS!!!!  Here's us at the Opera House with the Bridge in the background. 

Circular Quay (above) is the name of the harbour area.  It's got street performers, like this guy playing a Didgeridoo, which I would've found to be a whole lot more impressive had I never been to Santa Cruz and seen crazy college kids going to work on those things. All the same, this guy was pretty awesome. Plus, now I can say I've seen an abodigital. One trip to the Outback avoided! :P 

And remember that aeroplane post? Kinda like THIS guy!: 

The next day, we took the fast ferry over to Manly Beach because dammit! whenyouwakeupatnoon, youhaven'tgottimetotaketheslowferry or to take good pictures of you with the House in the background. This is all we got. The Opera House? It's that white thing, way back there. And those shadows in the foreground? Those are us. 

So naturally my reason for going to Manly Beach was... ummmm... manly men*. Of which I'm sure there were plenty; we just didn't happen to find any. We got there as the sun was setting (4:30pm --stupid winter) and caught a glimpse of the surfers before my stomach took hold and announced it was burger o'clock. I really think I'm making a habit of putting these things in my blog, but behold! The BenBry Burger!

I mean, look at this guy!!! For triple the price of In-n-Out, I got this colossal thing with good beef, cheese, bacon, tom-ah-to, special sauce, an egg, andddd BEETS! Yep. That's right. Aussies don't even flinch when it comes to ingredients.  Brekkie on a burger? Why not! A root veggie? Slam it on there!

Then we began drinking and playing pool at the local hotel/bar/restaurant/sports gambling room.  It was 6pm.  2 Jack and Cokes--$20. Ugh. We went to a wine bar down the street to kill some time. I was sorely underdressed, while the pitcher of sangria we ordered was sorely over-diluted.  They call sprite/7Up "lemonade" here, and there was plenty of it in that pitcher, as well as lychee berries which, apparently, I don't like. So after choking down some sangria-flavored soda, I had to spit this back out into the wine glass. 

Ewww. 

That ended our vino excursion and back to the bar/hotel/thing we went. Turns out, they have a rum room upstairs. By which I mean, somebody realized that nobody was occupying the top floor of the building, so they used it to house their Captain Morgan shrine. Pretty awesome actually. They had it fully stocked with C. Mo and complete decorations with barrels and rope and a Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine.  Here's me trying to be the Captain:

Eventually, Lauren and I decided that Manly was just not quite popping enough for our liking. So we headed back on the ferry to The Rocks.  Lauren found the only place that would take me dressed in flip flops--an Irish bar.  Irish bars are like what franchises could have been like if McDonald's had never been invented: they all look about the same (grungy but cozy, with hints of green everywhere), they serve the same stuff (Guinness), but they are each unique in an awesome way, and YOU ALWAYS LEAVE SATISFIED. Exhibit A: Lauren is needed to model for a buck's night (bachelor party) and both of us are required to prop up Elvis for one last pelvic thrust.

Ya, so this one had a live band, which I always love. Turns out the live band loved Lauren and not two minutes after we walked in,  I noticed the lead singer trying to make eye contact with her. After the song was over, he asked the crowd "Where's everybody from? Australia?" (loud cheers.) "Ireland?" (cheering and laughing) "The States???" He looks our direction and Lauren half raises her arm. I jump up and down, raise my arm, and yell "Us!!!!!!!!!" Obviously. Somebody's got to keep that obnoxious American stereotype going, so you're welcome.  It paid off too: after the set, he got us some drinks and told us about this awesome bar called Cheers. We went. It was exactly identical to the Cheers set (that TV show from, like, the 90s with Kristie Alley?).  I am cropped out for vanity purposes, but you can be absolutely sure I was really at Cheers because Lauren checked us in there on Facebook. 

It was there that Craig the Singer became Craig the Crazy (or probably just Drunk). "I am not a Taco Bell" he pronounced. With his accent, I at first thought he said "I am not a tinkerbell." Either way....For all of our probings, Lauren and I could not figure out what had prompted him to say this--we hadn't even been involved in a conversation when he said it--and so we proceeded to spend upwards of 45 minutes laughing. We cried off ALL of our makeup in the process.  

And it was there, completely sober and very tired, that I fell in love with Aussie Rules. I was watching 'regular' Union rugby on one TV when all of a sudden, these guys on the TV next door were running around like crazy people, playing monkey in the middle with a rugby ball. I had to know what this sport was. Craig the singer told me. Wowww. What a game. I can't explain it right now, but I'll try after I see it live (hopefully soon). Because I know you are just itching with curiosity, here is a video to tide you over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqymJpIhpPY  It is not, in any way, a good representation of the sport in play--the best part of Rules is its fluidity and quick pace, whereas this clip is stop-and-go.  But it has AC/DC in the background so you do what you can.

*Turns out I was correct in my assumption of How Manly Got to Be Named 'Manly'.  Some white imperialist actually appreciated the manliness of the indigenous peoples whose homes he would soon destroy. So he named the beach after their "confidence and manly behavior" (Source: wikipedia. duhhh)

Welcome to Sydney

Arrived at SYD, taxi to Lauren and her boyfriend Pat’s place in Brighton Le Lebanon*. (*Brighton Le Sands)  It’s a cute little suburb next to Botany Bay with a lot of Lebanese and Greek influence (read: a 3-for-1 cultural experience package, complete with kebabs! Yay Australia!).  Lauren and I haven’t seen each other for 4 years, but it could just as well have been 4 days.  She’s fantastic as usual, and we’re right back to girly banter within minutes. Pat is the nicest, most generous person of any age, gender, race.. actually he may not be a part of the human race. More like the Rare Angelic Race. 

After 14 hours of plane contraption, I was ready for a little 'yog' the next day. Well. That Sydney air is so pure and the water so sea level-y that after a week of altitude training in Sun Valley, I ran 10 kilometers without even realizing it! (that’s almost 6mi for you Imperials).  I think running is one of the best ways to see a place because biking and driving are so fast you have to worry about hitting things, while walking doesn’t cover enough ground for my short attention span.  

I was ready for more adventure, so Lauren and I headed out for Newtown, the Haight Street of Sydney.  We had run into a few train platform obstacles, namely not being able to find the correct one, when an older rosy-faced lady came to our aid.  She was headed for Newtown as well and would be more than happy to point us in the direction of all the local pubs, whether or not we had asked her to (we hadn’t.)  She proceeded to spend the entire train ride bitterly complaining about those ‘disgusting young couples’ taking over Newtown. “Those young couples are just everywhere you look now, in shops and pubs and ughh young couples living in Newtown these days.”  Lauren is exactly one half of a young couple although she lives 15 minutes away from Newtown, so I guess we were exempt from the lady’s wrath. Ha.

We ate lunch at Moo’s, a fabulous chain hamburger joint. I got a Wagyu burger which is high-class Japanese beef. I don’t ever need to pay for that stuff again because, although it was awesome, they serve Australian Angus Beef everywhere--even at Mc Donald’s!  Here is a really attractive picture of me before eating it:

Also, for those of you familiar with my 18^th birthday, here is a fun story: Lauren and I were shopping along in Newtown when we came across a store owned by one of the stars of the TV show ‘Hoarders’. You know, where they are complete pack-rats and shove any trinket, tool, blanket, card, dress, toiletry, etc. into nooks and crannies of their house? Well this shop was like somebody from China had brought over the contents of him and his 16 neighbors’ houses and hustled it up into a 7-aisle shop.  Anyways, we spent almost an hour scrutinizing the goods and I successfully located an (almost) fully functional converter for my laptop, as well as this gem:

A RIPSTICK! For those who don’t know, the Ripstick is a fascinating piece of hybrid transportation technology which combines the platforminess of a skateboard with the wobble-y-ness of only 2 wheels, with the axial turn capability of utter nonsense, which makes for the carving-like motion of a surfboard. Just Google it. In any event, a Ripstick is the singular gift I received from my straight-faced parents on the night of my passage to American Adulthood. Thanks, Mom and Pop!

That night, Pat and Lauren had tickets to see a Wayne Brady show in Newtown.  I didn’t. But I figured I could poke around some of the pubs that lady mentioned and pass the time talking to some of the young couples.  Turns out, the lady was wrong—or maybe 8:00pm is too early to go out for young couples—but the pubs were occupied by middle-aged Aussies, highly involved in their own gossip and catchings up.  It took me about 20 minutes to realize this was not how I wanted to spend the evening, so I sauntered on back to the theater and, God bless the Aussies, they let me walk right into the sold-out show—for FREE.  I may have missed the opening act, but I came just in time to see this: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Bqgjii7P4a4) Wayne Brady improvising a song to Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’. Beyonddddddd hilarious.  Found this on the street afterward. #Fate. 

The Begninng of the Epic Epoch

Isn’t that title a bit presumptive, considering I’m only 2.6 hours into a 14-hour flight which was 30 minutes late leaving the gate? With no itinerary, no lodging, no dependable transportation?

No, it isn’t. Tchaikovsky told me so.  [Start at 13:30 for audio-librio experience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMkC07PmaWA ]

Airplanes, particularly 747’s at night, remind me of some oversized clumsy predator: A massive metal tube stalking along the runway on laughably small wheels akin to an elephant walking on tiptoe; hyperextended wings that don’t dip gracefully like those of a bird’s, but instead, force the whole body to make wide, slow turns.  Good luck passing undetected through the barren landing strip tundra. At least the rumbling engine and white reflective paint are undetectable.

So we all load up on this creature. And we wait…Here’s a seat belt. Here’s a mask. And wait… Here’s a life vest. Here’s a nearest exit which might be behind you. (Great, thanks for pointing that out. I’ve about had it with this boring beast. Would you mind if I located that rear exit right now?) And wait…………………………….

Then all of a sudden, Captain Steve Irwin alerts us that Boeing is ready to go in for the kill and, Crew, please cross-check and prepare for takeoff. National Geographic hits the soundtrack button and the 1812 Overture streams across United Radio Classical Station.  Now, Boeing gets all stealthy and picks up speed until the screen onboard shows you’re going faster than you’ve ever been in a car—135 mph. And then, with trumpets blaring and crescendo building, you’re pressed back into your seat by some G’s and 60,000lbs of thrust.  Cannons sound triumphantly as all four Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines lift the plane off the ground. And it’s off the ground not like a bird in flight. But like a thunderous bull who found wings (and maybe some vodka to go with it) and is headed for the dark side of the fog with a vengeance. After just minutes of continuous acceleration, that red snorting winged bull is bringing you and 375 other troopers to the heavens at 550 mph. Cymbals clash, decrying a full on assault against gravity which, you realize, you’re winning.  A dramatic drumroll seals the deal and away we go.  And all this from what initially resembled a bleached emu with its legs bound together by a thick rope.

Ya. I’m going to be halfway around the world in half a day. A little patience, a little music, a little imagination, and this is starting out to be one epic ride.