In which the author has a bad night and a good day.
Racing for Pink Slips
It’s late October, 2019, and I’ve decided to make the trip from Houston to Georgetown, Texas to participate in a dart populaire with the Hill Country Randonneurs, the Austin-based club that got me started with randonneuring.
According to RUSA’s rules, a dart populaire is
an event whereby teams of cyclists all ride to a common destination from various starting points. Dart Populaires are team events of 8 hours duration and 120km minimum distance…. It is patterned after the 24-hour Flèches-USA and Arrow team rides.
Each team is made up of three to five members, and at least three members must arrive together at the finish to earn RUSA credit for the ride. In keeping with randonneuring’s tradition of quirky rules, the ride must be completed in exactly eight hours, and at least 25 kilometers must be ridden during the final two hours of the event. Eight hours is very generous for a 120-kilometer ride, so in practice a fair amount of time usually gets spent sitting around shooting the shit and eating donuts at controls.
For the sake of convenience, the Georgetown teams will all start and finish at a common point, Rentsch Brewery, but each will take a different looping route through the Hill Country west of I-35. Peter Nagel, the ride’s organizer, has designed five routes, but only thirteen riders have signed up, forming three teams on the event’s online signup sheet.
I sign up for a team captained by my friend Jeff Newberry, from Austin. Jeff is an obsessive randonneur who has just completed his third Paris-Brest-Paris, followed immediately by a 1200k event in raging Texas heat. The other three members of the team, Amy, Rob, and Denis, have similar credentials, far outstripping my one 600k brevet back in 2017.
I’m a little worried about keeping up with Jeff’s team, but remind myself that the dart populaire is traditionally a fairly slow event with long control stops. Jeff has decided to name his team “Racing for Pink Slips,” in honor of the movie Two-Lane Blacktop. In the film, a sullen pair of drag racers (played by James Taylor and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson) race a hapless sports car owner (Warren Oates) across America, and form a frustrating love triangle with a hitchhiker (Laurie Bird) along the way. Jeff lets it be known that everyone on his team must wear a pink jersey, and that he can loan me one if necessary (it is).
Houston riding buddy Fred and I arrange to drive up together. The Astros’ trip to the World Series has richly rewarded his side hustle of reselling sports tickets, and he offers to pay for the hotel if I buy dinner. It’s a deal! Fred reserves a room at the Mariott in Round Rock, about fifteen minutes south of Georgetown.
Fred picks me at 7PM on Friday night to begin the three-hour drive. About an hour later, after passing though Chappell Hill, Fred makes a sudden declaration that he is in pain and needs to stop. I’m not sure what’s wrong, and he doesn’t say anything to clarify other than that it’s “more complicated” than pulling over to pee on the side of the road. Grim-faced, we drive on looking for somewhere, anywhere with a public restroom.
About 10 minutes later we stop at a gas station and get out of the SUV. Fred seems unsteady and is making weird sounds. A family is working inside the store, feeding a home-cooked Indian meal to their kid and watching television. Soon, I hear the sound of violent retching coming from the bathroom and start to worry about Fred’s health.
I hang around in the store for fifteen minutes and buy a Topo Chico and some Cheez-Its. Fred is still in there. The people running the store start looking worried and ask me to check on him. I knock on the door and Fred says he’ll be out soon. I explain that my friend isn’t feeling well, as if that wasn’t patently obvious.
Coincidentally, a woman also entered the ladies’ room just as we came into the store. She hasn’t come out either and the store employees ask me about her too. I tell them that I don’t know her. They all seem a little confused, like we might be up to something weird together in their store but they can’t quite put their finger on what it is.
Finally, Fred emerges and hands me his car keys. I ask if he wants to go back to Houston. He says no. We drive 20 minutes to the next small town, about halfway to Round Rock. Again, we stop at a gas station and Fred spends 15 or more minutes in the bathroom while I wait. I peruse the merchandise. Among other things, the store sells packages of edible paper that kids can write on, then eat.
When Fred comes out, I ask again, more emphatically, if we really shouldn’t be driving back to Houston. “No.” We continue.
Between Elgin and Austin, Fred asks to stop again but this time he doesn’t make it. He starts puking out of the car window before I manage to finish parking at yet another gas station. When we get out, one side of Fred’s black SUV is streaked with bile. Fred is exhausted and dehydrated, nothing left inside. There’s no way he’ll be able to wake up early in the morning and ride 120 hilly kilometers, even at the relaxed pace of a dart populaire.
At this point, however, it makes the most sense to continue to Round Rock and check into our hotel so Fred can get some rest. I buy a 24-ounce can of cheap beer to drink in the room and we get going again.
We pull into the Mariott at about 11PM, later than intended because of all the bathroom stops. It is in an isolated area full of huge, dark chain hotels. I am very hungry now and there is no walkable fast food in sight. Fred collapses on his bed and turns on the television while I bring in the bikes.
Alone, I drive Fred’s SUV out to I-35 and look for anyplace open, settling on a 24-hour Whataburger as the best of few options. It feels like half of Round Rock’s population is either working or eating in the Whataburger, and the other half is roaring up and down the I-35 access road in their cars and trucks. I see some high school kids inside Whataburger and imagine growing up here and counting the days until I can get the hell out of town. I buy a chicken sandwich and French fries, and bring them back to the hotel.
Fred has passed out. I eat my sandwich and fries, drinking the beer I bought on the final puke stop. I’m feeling a little high-strung after the trip so I take a natural sleep aid I brought along, turn off the TV, and climb into bed around midnight. My phone alarm is set to 5:45 AM.
The hotel bed is comfortable, with big, fluffy pillows and a soft comforter. At first everything seems ideal and then my mind starts racing. I worry about how Fred is doing and what will happen in the morning. I worry I won’t be able to keep up with the fast team I joined. It seems that there’s been some interaction between the sleep aid (which may or may not have been 100% legal in Texas), the beer, stress, and the lump of greasy fast food in my guts. My anxiety takes an existential turn, engendering feverish, confused, and contradictory thoughts about the nature and origin of matter, the universe, and human consciousness. These relentless and incoherent ideas fuse with my worries about the ride in a malign synergy. I imagine myself waking up in the morning and telling everyone I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this today. I imagine they will all be very disappointed, and that I will be very ashamed of myself.
I feel like I’m going insane in my bed at the Mariott; it’s like the time I accidentally took too much grape-flavored childrens’ benadryl on a solo camping trip to Big Bend National Park and started hallucinating in my sleeping bag. On top of everything else, the beer I drank is making me have to get up and pee every 15 minutes. I feel sort of okay with my eyes open, but when I get back into bed and shut them the racing thoughts return. I finally dare to look at the clock and it’s 1:09. Ugh. The room has steadily been getting colder and I realize I’m shivering under the comforter. I fumble in the dark to find the thermostat and turn it up a few degrees. That does the trick, and I fall asleep after the room warms up.
I wake spontaneously at 4:15, feeling relatively stable but slightly sleep-deprived. I can’t get back to sleep, so I put on my cycling clothes and make coffee in the room. Feeling little appetite after my rough night, I force down a banana just to make sure there are at least a few calories in my system at the 8:00 ride start.
Fred wakes up and seems a little better, but says that there’s no way he can ride today. No surprise there. He’s going to drive me to the ride start, then rest at the hotel until the ride is over.
I wander the cavernous hotel, looking for more food. Some guys are setting up a buffet in the lobby, but they tell me it’s a special “sports breakfast” for a football team staying at the hotel, and I will need a ticket to get anything to eat. Okay, we’ll find a McDonald’s or something on the way to Georgetown then.
Except we don’t. We keep seeing fast food places along I-35 only after we’ve passed their exits. We settle for a dreary rural convenience store, where I buy a bottle of juice and a slice of lemon pound cake. I pick at the cake, still with no appetite, and save half in my handlebar bag for later. The juice works better for me, and I assume that with the dart pop format we’ll have plenty of opportunities to buy more food along the way.
We pull into the parking lot at Rentsch Brewery around 7:20, about the same time the other riders start arriving. It’s a chilly fall morning, about 40 degrees. Jeff shows up and hands me a short-sleeved pink wool jersey that seems a little too thin for the weather. Shivering, I put it on in the freezing parking lot and get my bike ready to go.
After changing, Jeff walks up and asks me if I would mind changing teams because Fred’s team now has only two members. I agree, and he asks for his pink team jersey back. I change back into the (much warmer) orange jersey I had been wearing already, and introduce myself to my new team, now comprised of myself and two Austin riders, Ian and David. Both of these guys went to PBP a few months ago and David in particular seems like kind of a badass. He’s wearing a RAAM (Race Across America) jersey. I mention that I’m not all that fast, but he doesn’t seem to mind because of the 8-hour format of the event.
My new team will be riding a route called “Go Long to Ding Dong.” The Ding-Dong route has 10 extra kilometers compared to the others, and will pass through the town of Ding Dong (founded by two men named Bell). The 80-mile route heads generally north-northwest to Killeen (with a few jogs to the northeast, then turns back south and west to Briggs, then southeast through Andice to the finish back in Georgetown.
The first 20 miles to Florence is into a fairly stiff headwind. David Baxter, obviously the strongest of the three riders on our team, pulls our tiny paceline the whole way to a donut shop in Florence where we stop for a long break.
To me, the important thing is that it feels absolutely great to be out riding my bike in the Texas Hill Country, even if it is cold and windy. It feels as if the night before never happened, and I spend the whole day loving the ride, especially as the day warms up and the headwind dies down a bit. The Hill Country scenery is not spectacular, but is subtly bewitching. I love the rolling, grassy hills dotted with small live oaks and salt cedar. We cross the Lampasas River twice, its clear water rushing over a limestone bed. I’m not fast, but it feels wonderful at age 50 to be in good enough shape to ride 80 windy miles in hilly country and know I could do much more if I wanted to.
Despite missing the opportunity to ride with old friends, I’m glad that the last-minute team change happened. It’s nice to spend the day getting to know some new people, and Jeff’s pink jersey was way too cold anyway. It feels refreshing not to have the route in my GPS unit for once, and I’m spending far less time than usual staring down at its tiny screen.
At the turn south in Killeen, the headwind turns to a tailwind, and the rest of the ride is a breeze. There are about 12 miles spent mostly climbing from our second crossing of the Lampasas (at Ding Dong, where we don’t notice any sign) to the control in Briggs, but the effort doesn’t register as a big deal.
In Andice, we run into Jeff’s pink-jersey team kicking back at the Andice General Store, which doubles as a lunch counter with picnic tables outside. Some of them are drinking beer already. I buy a bottle of Mexican Squirt and order some French fries. People are snapping photos of one other with their phones.
Everyone hangs out until 2PM and then heads for the finish, with the teams staggering their starts by a few minutes to avoid riding together. We have plenty of time, so stop one more time for coffee in Georgetown before an easy eight-mile cruise to the finish at Rentsch Brewery.
Fred is waiting there and seems to be feeling much better. He says he slept until noon and has even managed to eat a few things. I get changed into street clothes, turn in my brevet card, and enjoy a glass of beer with the other riders before leaving for Houston.
Fred is hungry now, so we stop at Jimmy Vega’s Smokehouse, a local barbecue joint that ride organizer Peter recommends. I am ravenous after the ride and wolf down my chopped brisket sandwich and potato salad in a few minutes. It is wonderful. Fred takes a few cautious bites of his food and puts the rest in a to-go container for later. Then I start hiccuping. I will continue to hiccup for hours on the road, until we get back to Houston. Back in my apartment, I take six deep, controlled breaths and the hiccups stop.
