A "No Chain Day"....

...that's how Lance Armstrong refers to those extremely rare days on the bike when the pedaling just seems so effortless you swear there's no chain. They're a gift from the gods and there's no way to make them happen or even predict them.

I had one of those a couple of weeks ago.

Weather and work schedule together conspired to pretty much keep me off the bike for almost two weeks. I think I was able to sneak in one or two commutes, but that was it. (OK, so I'm a wuss and don't ride in the rain...)

I had planned a ride around Oneida Lake with a friend, for the Saturday following that two week layoff. I was looking forward to it, because it's far too rare that I get to spend four hours on the bike and not having done any real physical activity for two weeks, I was starting to get twitchy. The weather looked like it was going to be stellar. (This, in a month where it'd rained every other damned day, too).

As per her usual style, she showed up late. We switched her seat and pedals over to my Felt. I did this with the supposed intention of being a nice guy. My ulterior motive was far more sinister: it was a sales pitch.

We hit the road.

I took a lot of the back roads through the scenic mucklands. There's no shoulder to speak of, but there's also little to no traffic. We finally picked up the state route with it's wide shoulders and whizzing cars, in Lakeport.

Normally, I circumnavigate (and ride around) the lake in a clockwise fashion. Heading west first usually means on the return leg, you have a tailwind. This particular day, there didn't seem to be much of a breeze, so I was immediately suspicious. I thought "Uh-oh, that means a headwind on the homeward bound side...."

Looking down at the Garmin seemed to confirm my misgivings. I was holding a steady 20-21 MPH easily. I figured surely we must have a tailwind. I kept checking flags and trees looking for a sign of wind direction, but everything seemed dead calm.

At our first pit stop in "downtown" Bridgeport, I threw a small piece of paper in the air as a telltale, but it seemed to indicate that we were heading into what little breeze there was.

As we left the pit stop, she bolted ahead of me and said "County line! Two Points!" as she crossed the Madison/Onondaga County line. It went over my head. I was too busy setting my sights on a cyclist off in the distance. I said: "I gotta'..... He's mine...." I dropped the hammer and took off after him. (I'm a sucker for a "rabbit" off in the distance). I caught him and then sat up enough for my riding buddy to hook back on.

We finally got off Route 31 and down onto the lake shore - one of the portions where you can actually SEE the lake.

My Garmin experienced a bit of electronic flatulence (and I forgot to hit "start" until we were a ways from our stop) so I didn't have a real good handle on where we were, time-wise, but it seemed we were ahead of my usual pace for the ride. I was showing a 21 MPH average for the first hour. Unheard of for me.

We made our second pit stop in Brewerton. As we crossed the bridge over the Oneida River in Brewerton, she again jumped ahead of me at the county line and claimed her two points. Ok, that's enough of that shit - now I'm onto her game. Bad move on her part - I know exactly where the remaining town and county signs are; I've done this ride a bunch of times.

Up County Route 37 and made the right turn onto NY 49 to start heading east again.

I told her about my ride through there a couple of years ago: It was the weekend after 4th Of July. As I turned the corner onto 49, I saw people all lined up on the sides of the road and assumed it was for a late Fourth parade. I said to one guy standing on the corner "Wow, is all this for me?" He looked at me kind of funny and sort of laughed. I rode on, seeing more folks lined up on the sides of the road. I saw a sign in front of a church that said "God Bless Major Phillip Dykeman USMC " and it started to sink in what I was seeing: folks gathering to pay their last respects to a soldier coming home. I felt like a complete asshole. Yeah, I didn't know, but still..... When the cortege approached, I stopped and took my helmet off. THAT ride took on a whole different tone after that....

I also told her that the pavement between Central Square and Constantia was pretty ratty. I neglected to tell her that drivers on that particular stretch of road seem to be more hostile to bikes than anywhere else on the whole 60 mile route.

True to form, we got many requests that we vacate the pavement while we rode through there. We smiled and waved.

My earlier suspicions were confirmed to a degree - we had a slight headwind, but not enough to really be a factor. Speed dropped down into the 18-20 MPH range, but it still seemed FAR too easy.

Being the complete, competitive jerkwad that I am, every time I knew there was a town sign coming up, I ramped up the pace and rode her off my wheel- so that when we got to the sign, there was no sprint to contest. West Monroe, Constantia, Bernhard's Bay, and Cleveland, were all "mine".

We stopped again in Cleveland. We got drinks and hung out for a while. Little did she know, I was calculating the sprint to the next county line, and I knew exactly where it was - I know someone who lives directly across the street from the sign! I bagged that one easily.

By now, she was really beginning to fade - probably still feeling the effects of a triathlon she'd done the weekend before. I sat up a bit, but still pushed the pace before the remaining signs in Jewell and North Bay.

We dropped down into Sylvan Beach and I led her off the main highway down Lakeshore Road where I used to live. (Much more scenic). We did a little cyclocrossing through Verona Beach State Park and back onto Lakeshore on the other side of the park. Lakeshore eventually dumps you back onto Rt. 13, and I knew that, as soon as you made the right turn onto 13, the Oneida/Madison line was about 50 yards after the turn. Jerk that I am, I took off and bagged those two points too.

We made the last turn onto my road.

I know that from there, the road drops, levels out for about a half mile, then drops again, just before the house. If I can keep my speed from the first hill to the second, I can fly those last couple of miles.

I went down in the drops and cranked. The speed from the first hill began to ebb before I quite got to the second, so I stood and hammered for all I was worth.

In my body's first display of the effects of the ride, my right quad immediately knotted up and dropped me back onto the seat. Still, when I rolled into the driveway a hundred yards up the road, I felt like I could do it all again.

Epic, absolutely epic. That was one for the record books.