Two Rides, Two Days, Same Time of Day, Completely Different Rides

Riding the same route, the exact same roads, every day on a bicycle can be an entirely different ride each time.  This is certainly true of a group ride where who is on the ride dictates the pace.

For the past month I have been riding alone and settled into riding the same 25-mile out-and-back ride four or five days a week.  I ride just a little east of due south out of Lancaster for nine rolling miles, then up a three-mile climb. I turn around in a parking lot at the top, descend a different hill and go back to my home in the city on the same road just west of due north. 

Yesterday, the wind was out of the North NorthWest at 17mph, a perfect tail wind.  I felt good and rode hard out of the city and up the first long climb and all the way to the top of the three-mile climb at the end.  Eight miles into the ride there is a speed indicator telling people to slow down for construction.  It is on the far side of a bridge and slightly uphill.  Yesterday I first lit the sign up at 22mph then was down to 20 as I passed it.  By the time I stopped at the turnaround, I had covered the 12.5 miles in 48 minutes with more than a thousand feet of climbing. The ride back was a slow slog in a headwind. On the steepest part of the 3-mile descent, I only reached 37mph. 

There are 14 Strava segments on the route, seven in each direction. Yesterday, I made five PRs on the ride south. 

Today, the wind was 10mph out of the SouthWest.  It was a grinding headwind. I rode hard up the the big hill, but it was just over an hour when I reached the turnaround point.  On the way back my top speed was 51 mph, but with the wind 45 degrees off of a straight tail wind. I did not have any record segments on the way back. At the construction sign where I went 20mph and 22 yesterday, I first lit the sign at 13 mph, then 12 today.

Same road, consecutive days, about the same temp, but such a different ride.  Using my heart rate as a relative indicator of effort, yesterday I set all those PRs and had a high heart rate of 143. Today my highest heart rate was 155. 

Salary as an Expression of Equality: Democracy in America

I was listening to a translator of "Democracy in America" talk about how carefully Alexis de Tocqueville chose words to express the depth of equality in America. Harvey Mansfield, the translator, then spoke about salaries in America.

Tocqueville explained how important it is that in America everyone receives a salary, bosses and workers. In an aristocracy, the nobles do not receive a salary. Receiving wages, being a hireling, is something nobles cannot do. The recent royal couple move to North America is confirmation of this. 

Before listening to the talk, I saw a member of Cult45 who was angry that the media do not give her idol credit for donating his salary. After being reminded of Tocqueville's view of salaries, Trump refusing his salary could be yet another indication of how superior he believes he is to everyone else. 

His own words about his intellect would make a peacock blush.In America we are all equal and our salaries, even if those salaries can be described as "princely," are an indication of how class distinction has no place in the America.

Tocqueville visited America for nine months in 1831 to write about prisons. Before the end of the decade he wrote a thousand-page two-volume work that is still the best summary of politics in America in print.

Tocqueville admired much about America, but was also clear about our faults. He visited during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson and found him loathsome. It is no wonder he is Trump's favorite President. Tocqueville wrote sadly and compellingly about the terrible treatment of Native Americans and slaves in America. Tocqueville's companion on the trip, Gustave de Beaumont, wrote about the horrors of slavery after he returned to France.

He also predicted accurately that the 20th Century would be dominated by the conflict between the US and Russia.

Two Rides in Paris; Two Decades Ago

In September 2000 I made two trips to Europe to attend several business meetings.  Both trips took me to Paris, first for three days, then for two.  Because of where I stayed and my schedule, the rides were very different.

On the first trip, I had meetings only on the west side of Paris so I picked a hotel between the meeting site and the best place in Paris for bicyclists: L’Hippodrome:  the horse-racing track next to the River Seine on the southwest corner of Paris in the huge park called Bois de Boulogne.  There is a two-mile road around horse track that is closed every day, year-round from 10 am to dark for bicyclists.  The road varies from one to three lanes wide and actually has about fifty feet of elevation change—uphill on the east side, downhill on the west.  Every day, local cyclists circle this loop in groups varying in speed from casual commuters taking a lap, to groups of fifty or more averaging 25 to 27 mph. 

The fast group is local racers from teenagers to 50+, but as in America, more old guys than young.   These guys ride very orderly pace lines when the groups are smaller than 20.  Bigger groups tend to have three or four guys up front doing about 90% of the pulls.  Once in a great while, in the off season, a current or recent Tour de France rider who lives in Paris will drop in on the ride and take the pack to some painful speed above 30 mph.  I always ride American-flag jerseys or my team kit.  Parisian bike racers are as friendly as American Cat. 1,2,3 racers so no one talks to you anyway, but with the American-flag stuff on, they know I can’t speak French—especially at 27 mph.  Most bike racers in Paris are blue-collar guys who don’t speak English, so the ride is not a social event for Americans.

But it is a great ride—no square turns, and just about any pace you could want will have a group you can ride with.  I was in Paris three days in early September and managed to ride four times.  My hotel was in Suresnes, just across the river from the training ride and half the price of a Paris hotel just because it is outside the city.  From my hotel, I rode down through the center of town, crossed the Suresnes bridge and turned right at the second road to get to the ride site.

On my second trip to Europe in September, I spent two days in Paris and did not ride in the training race.  In fact, I stayed in a hotel near the airport 12 miles northeast of Paris.  One of the days, I had a meeting in the center of Paris and one in a suburb just south of the city.  I rode from the airport to the city center then to the south side and back.  The road to the city is a 4-lane highway.  It was like riding from Paoli to Philadelphia on Route 30—EXCEPT, no one screwed with me at all.  It was flat and dull but not dangerous.  At the city line at the town of Porte de Villette, the way into the city was through a cobblestone traffic circle with 6 intersecting roads and a railroad overpass.  Once through the circle, I rode straight across Paris splitting lanes with the scooters and couriers and having a great time. Again, lots of traffic but no Neanderthals in SUVs trying to kill you.  On the second day, I took a ride through the suburbs of Paris near the airport.

Of course, the best place to ride in Paris is the training race but riding in the city is great if for no other reason than experiencing heavy traffic without the small-minded people with big engines that we put up with on nearly every ride.