A Sufferfest You Might Enjoy

We did something called the Lookout Loop: 23 miles of rolling hills, out to Niwot and back.

This is where I was introduced to the joys of road biking in a group in Boulder County, which includes amazing views. Gorgeous views of Flatirons and Long’s Peak and, more than anything, views of the butt of the dude in front of you. This proved unavoidable. It’s just the way a road bike positions your body, so that you’re sort of hunched over, and it’s not easy to look up and over the person’s shoulder, and looking too much to the side might make you fall. Which is why you just stare at a dude’s butt, mile after mile, pedal after pedal, butt after butt. There were also nice flowers placed on the side of the road to commemorate the deaths of all the road bikers who had come before us.

As for Cicchillo’s assertion that I wouldn’t be able to do it: he was dead wrong. I found a riding partner, Anne Toslosky, who is 47 and doesn’t look or act a day over 25, and rode a grocery-getting bike with a luggage rack on the back. We rode leisurely, chatting about kids, yoga, work. Whenever I asked how she was doing, she replied, “Just going to get some milk!” (Hey Donald Cicchillo: I totally kept up with her.) We rode in what is sometimes called the “C group” or, condescendingly, the “Cool Group.” We didn’t care that the bike club’s Marcia the Marshall, 59, was constantly berating us to speed up, stay in our lane, stop riding in traffic. We were having too much fun not going fast.

Overall, the ride was pleasant and the bikers did not laugh at me, and I did not laugh at them as much as I thought. I didn’t completely change my old view of road bikers. But the ride ended at the Boulder Beer Company, which was when I figured out the real purpose of the ride: as an excuse to drink beer.

“I came here from Texas,” Borchert told me, “and in Texas all the rides start and end in the Baptist church. Here, they all start and end at a brewery.”
Which is enough to make you want to take up road biking, right there.