In which the author plans a RUSA permament and rambles a bit about the benefits of organized cycling and exercise for maintaining his sanity.
8AM, October 18, 2020: I’m alone on my bike outside the Black Dog Café, in midtown Tallahassee. Today’s route—a little over 63 miles in the hills north of town—is cued up on my GPS unit. I press “start,” ride a block, then think better of it and hit the “pause” button. I walk my bike through a gravel parking lot to Lake Ella and snap a photo of some ducks silhouetted by the rising sun. Impulse satisfied, I stroll back to Lake Ella Drive, press “resume,”and start pedaling.
I climb a small, steep hill, turn left onto East Tharpe, and cross North Monroe. Winding my way through the Parkside-Park Terrace neighborhood, I avoid a bike-unfriendly section of North Monroe, then rejoin it and roll northwest; Monroe climbs to cross Interstate 10, then descends out of town to the northwest as U.S. Route 27.
I’m out this morning to check a route I plan to submit to RUSA’s permanents program. It’s a 100 kilometer ride out into the Red Hills region north of Tallahassee, modeled around a route I learned from local randonneurs Aaron Suko and Justin Pogge. A “permanent” is a fixed route that can be ridden for RUSA credit at any time (as opposed to scheduled events like “brevets,” which must be ridden at a particular date and time). Credit for permanents can be used by RUSA members to earn awards like R-12, P-12, and K-Hound. For example, a randonneur belonging to RUSA can earn an R-12 medal by “riding a 200km (or longer) randonneuring event in each of 12 consecutive months.”
Why?
One might ask, “Why not just go ride 200 kilometers every month if you feel like it?”, or “Why ride some ‘approved’ route instead of just riding wherever you feel like riding?”, or “Why do you need an award for something that isn’t a competition and you wanted to do anyway?” For myself—and I suspect many others—the answer is “because otherwise I probably won’t do it.”
I raised these sorts of issues with my friend Jeff Newberry in Austin one day when I was, to be honest, feeling a bit oppressed by the whole thing. He leaned back in his desk chair (he was at work) and (as I remember it) said that one point of randonneuring’s system of rules, rewards, and expanding objectives is to push you to do things you wouldn’t do otherwise.
I’ll buy that. I wanted to do long day rides but didn’t want to race. Randonneuring was all about that too. I joined up, embraced the goals—and well-meaning peer pressure—as incentives to push myself and see if I could hang, and rode the long rides I wanted to and more.
And when RUSA’s permanents program was on hold for months on end due to insurance issues, and brevets were canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my training went straight to shit and I spent most weekends lazing around the apartment and feasting on snacks. I think I’ll do better with some convenient permanents to ride and a P-12 and R-12 to shoot for, and so I find myself out here on this nice weekend morning working on a route to submit.
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Riding out of town on 27, I pass a nice view of Lake Jackson, a shallow prairie lake that sometimes drains without warning through two sinkholes in its bed. A low wall next to the lake is part of the Lake Jackson Ecopassage, a $3.4 million system of barriers and culverts built to protect turtles and other animals as they cross the highway seeking nesting areas or relocating due to drought conditions. A small arm of the lake, known as “Little Lake Jackson,” was cut off here by this road back in the 1920s, and before the construction of the Ecopassage this section of highway had the world’s highest documented animal road mortality rate.
Trending downhill, I soon pass the lake, cross the Ochlockonee River, and turn left onto Shady Rest Road. The first 11 miles of this route, on city streets and highway 27, is an unavoidable “transport stages” on the way out of town; I’m glad to be on quiet country roads now.
I spot a large, defaced Trump sign at the junction of Shady Rest and Florida State Road 12, about 17 miles into my ride. Most other such signs I am to see on today’s ride will include bright yellow stickers warning of “security cameras.” A born skeptic, I have my doubts about these supposed hidden cameras at lonely country crossroads. (But the signs with the fake camera warnings all lack spray paint. It’s a battle of wits.)
At mile 19, I’m ready for a short rest. I put a foot down and eat a banana in the shade by the mouldering ruin of Post and Lumber Preserving Co. Inc., which happens to be a superfund site:
Between 1948 and 1990, wood preserving operations at the facility used pentachlorophenol (PCP) and chromated copper arsenate (CCA). In 1987, waste materials from the on-site pond were consolidated into a surface impoundment and capped. The surface impoundment contains high levels of wood preserving-related wastes. Dioxin and arsenic contamination have been found in the wetlands surrounding the site and in the creek leading from the site to the Little River. The Little River is classified as a recreational river by the State of Florida.
I worry a little about whether the sticker on the banana peel I toss into the brush is biodegradable or not, then pedal off down Post Plant Road.
Turning right onto Point Milligan Road, my course begins a counter-clockwise loop through the hilly country between the towns of Havana and Quincy. I need to pick some control points out here, so that riders can provide proof of passage with a photo. At the northeast corner of the loop—just south of the Georgia border—I choose the 5F Farm Event Center as a control. It’s deserted today, but I’ve heard that on Sundays there are often soccer matches here, and you can buy treats like fruit cups from vendors. I’ll take more futbol and fruit cups, less nativist paranoia please.
Eight or so miles later, I pick a big, ugly church as the control point for the westernmost extreme of the loop, then ride south into the town of Quincy. A Marathon station will serve as the Quincy control, where riders can stop for snacks and drinks before finishing the route. With the Covid-19 pandemic continuing unabated in October 2020, I’m not making a convenience store stop today unless I really need to. My second bottle is full and there’s a granola bar in my bag, so I snap a photo and hit the road.
From here it’s a quick ride east on U.S. 12 back to Shady Rest—completing the loop in the country—and heading back to town the way I came. There’s no getting around the fact that the portion of the route back into Tallahassee on U.S. 27 is usually a bit of a slog; the afternoon traffic can be heavy, it’s mostly uphill, and there is little shade. At least it’s not hot today and there is a slight tailwind—the last time I was here I crept along for what felt like hours, baking in the summer sun and struggling to keep heat cramps at bay. Today this section is a relative breeze, and in what feels like very little time I’m finishing up my trip back at Lake Ella.
Today’s ride took about 5 hours and 15 minutes, including stops. Not fast, but I set out to have a nice, relaxing morning in the country and didn’t have anyone with me to try and keep up with. That, and my general feeling about riding really fast echoes former Sex Pistol Steve Jones’s attitude about guitar solos: “I can’t play solos and I hate them anyway.” The Strava segments can all keep their champions as far as I’m concerned.
But why??
One might also ask, “Why do these long bike rides all the time anyway? Isn’t that a bit masochistic?” Most randonneurs would argue that 63 miles is really a short ride—100k is the minimum distance for any randonneuring event—but it would have seemed quite long to me just a few years ago. Why set goals like riding 100k and 200k rides every month in the first place?
For one, I just think it’s nice to be out in the open air all day without a screen in my face, but there’s a bit more to it. Back in the early 2000s I found myself doing things like having a minor panic attack when faced with the problem of selecting a parking space at the psychiatrist’s office. This sort of thing has come up a few times in my life, and I’ve sometimes been given a prescription to help me feel reasonably okay until whatever stress or life situation that precipitated the breakdown mellows out, and life feels manageable enough to get by with over-the-counter self-medication again.
The problem for me is that these drugs usually sort of work, but I also hate taking them because the feeling of being able to cope that they produce feels unrelated to (or even opposed to) “happiness” or “enjoying life” as I recognize and appreciate them. So I’ve always ditched the Wellbutrin™ or whatever as soon as I think I can get away with it. (Your mileage very much may vary and I know a lot of people really need these things to feel good and function—I’m just talking about me here.)
So when I staggered into the psychiatrist’s office that day and she happened to say, “You know, there are studies showing that exercise can be as effective as medication for treating depression,” I gave it a shot and started going to the gym more. Which, as it turned out, totally worked for me.
Over time, I discovered that really beating myself to a pulp would buy me several days or even a whole week of blue skies and sunshine. To be honest, today’s ride (or something like it) isn’t 100% optional from a mental health perspective. I feel way better coming into town than I did leaving.
But it’s still hard to get up off the futon and ride 200k—double-hard if I’m feeling low already—so having a club to be part of and friends egging me on is a good thing.
So that’s why. You may find some other reason you like for yourself if you give it a try.
The Finished Route
After I finish the ride, I trace my route in Ride With GPS, polish up the cue sheet, and submit it to RUSA’s permanents program. After a few weeks and little more polishing, I get a message that my submission has been approved and is now RUSA permanent route number 3978. Check it out:
When you ride this route—and I hope you will—please play this song first to get a good earworm going for the day.* Up the Irons!
