PBP 2019 - A home movie

Part One: https://youtu.be/vV0lKIQP-U8

Part Two: https://youtu.be/JQ5JXZyEAxI

Arrivee

So this arrived in the mail.

Living the dream. One account of Paris-Brest-Paris.

I thought I was prepared. I was wrong.

After five years of randonneuring over different distances, through a vast assortment of weather, after climbing hundreds of thousands of feet, after earning a shelf full of rando trinket awards, after a full season of training specifically for this ride, I thought I was ready for the 1230 Kilometer Paris Brest-Paris (PBP) bike ride that starts in the town of St. Quentin (pronounced Can-tan) located in the outskirts of Paris, goes to Brest, a port city located deep in the Bretagne (Brittany) region on the western edge of northern France, and then returns to St. Quentin. After all, according to my friend JB, who completed PBP twice before and would attempt it this time on a tandem, PBP was "just a bike ride." JB has been right about many things, but about this, he was just wrong.

One cannot simply ride this route whenever one chooses and then claim to have ridden PBP.

PBP is more than a bike ride.

PBP is an entire region of France coming out to welcome and support a diverse collection of worldwide adventurers.

PBP is a rolling Tower of Babel speaking the common language of cycling for three plus days.

PBP is an arduous personal challenge, testing body and spirit, that reaches back into history to the very birth of the cycling.

PBP is a moment in time.

PBP takes place outside of time.

PBP is its own reality.

PBP is a dream made real. 

This brief account cannot capture the experience of 6000 participants from 48 countries - no one account can. Add to that the fact that I spent the days that followed the ride in a narcoleptic fugue state, sleeping deeply, often and unexpectedly, as my mind and body swam up from the murky depths of exhaustion and sleep deprivation and the challenge of writing an accurate ride report grows greater. But, most of all, telling the story of PBP is like recalling the details of a dream - some are strong and clear, others linger at the edge of recall, slipping away from easy description and some may be lost in the haze of time. But this remarkable event remains a story worth telling, so, with those shortcomings in mind, I shall try to share a sense of living the dream that is PBP.

First Friday Writings for Randos - The celestial bodies of Paris Brest Paris

{First Friday Writings for Randos - A monthly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This month it's an excerpt from Jeff Tilden's account of his PBP Ride in 2007* . . .

I love the swoosh and the sway and the zoom of bicycling. I love to fly, to corner, to tilt like a gyroscope. It’s primitive and it’s simple and it’s elegant and it’s graceful and it’s powerful. The abject skilllessness of bicycling is its greatest virtue. It requires nothing. A four-year old can master it. A little balance, not much, far less than, say, being a spider. We know this as children, but we forget. We already have everything we need. The PBP is not the NFL. It is, instead, an incandescent union of form and function. Of past and present. Uniting us not with our grandparents as much as some animal 400 million years ago. Bicycling is primordial. We come from an unbroken line of winners, stretching back to the first day we crawled up out of the mud. Every one of our ancestors, all the way back, kept going long enough to beat predators, disease, starvation. Long enough to have a child. With really only the skill it takes to ride a bike. Like the rest of my species, I hale from Africa, and I was born to run through the woods. Or bike, if the woods are paved. A brevet is a race, after all. The human race.

 . . . We reek, but are unaware of it, like fish that don’t know they are wet.  We have been marinated in our own sweat.  Paul saw a café on the way into Fougeres 370 miles ago and has had his mind’s eye on it for two days.  He leads us there and we sit down to an outdoor picnic table feast of sausage crepes, heavy on the mustard, and frittes, heavy on the ketchup.  As we finish, Paul launches into what may be the second greatest pep talk ever.  I cannot do it justice, but the gist was . . .

Boston 400K - New Roads in New England.

            A night in Transit 

At 6:00 am on Friday morning I walked on the Gulf Coast beach of Naples, Florida, carrying my sandals in one hand. Tropical warm water swirled around my ankles as sea birds strolled on stick like legs along the raked sand. That afternoon, I flew to Philadelphia, got in my minivan and drove over five hours to a small airfield on the outskirts of Boston.

At 3:00 am on Saturday morning, I arrived in the parking lot of Hanscom airport in Bedford, Massachusetts.

The Boston 400K was scheduled to start at 6:00 am. The ridewithgps description reported 17,000 feet of climbing. The New England Randonneurs page reported that the ride went through three states: Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The latter two would be new States in my randonneuring collection - bringing the total to 18. But first I had to do the ride.

East Creek 600K - a simmering melange of desires

Close to 40 Randonneurs stream out from the Days Inn located off Exit 8 of the New Jersey Turnpike. Our red bicycle taillights stretch out along the roads that lead away from the north south Interstate  highway, away from the destination driven journey that the highway represents, away from that thoroughfare where every mile is made fungible, forgettable, less than a passing thought, less than a minute's consideration. On the small roads we ride, the miles grow large, significant, they take on their full meaning. This morning we set out to ride 600 Kilometers, 377 miles. The travel, the distance that we take on with our legs and our machines, is the destination. Over the course of this brevet, we will test ourselves where the only outcome that matters is pass or fail. For me, completing this ride will qualify me to ride Paris-Brest-Paris. I have been waiting five years for this. I have 40 hours to finish.

 seeking upekkha

In the darkness of 4:00 am, the cool air sits heavy with dew. As I ride through, tiny drops  collect on the tips of the individual hairs on my arm. I begin the ride searching for balance, equanimity, a place between extremes to accomplish the extreme, looking for that pace that will carry me through the uncertain miles before me. In my randonneuring, I have failed enough to know that success is not certain, but I have succeeded enough to know that perseverance and patience, especially now, in the first few hours of a major ride, can overcome almost any distance. I ride on, working on patience and building perseverance, as the world turns beneath my wheels toward the rising sun. 

First Friday Writing for Randos: PBP 2003 by Paul Johnson

{First Friday Writings for Randos - A monthly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This month it's an excerpt from Paul Johnson's account of his PBP Ride in 2003* 

At the cafeteria I was treated like some sort of returning war hero. 

First Friday Writing for Randos: PBP 2007 by Jeff Tilden

{First Friday Writings for Randos - A monthly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This month it's an excerpt from Jeff Tilden's account of his PBP Ride in 2007* . . .

I love the swoosh and the sway and the zoom of bicycling. I love to fly, to corner, to tilt like a gyroscope. It’s primitive and it’s simple and it’s elegant and it’s graceful and it’s powerful. The abject skilllessness of bicycling is its greatest virtue. It requires nothing. A four-year old can master it. A little balance, not much, far less than, say, being a spider. We know this as children, but we forget. We already have everything we need. The PBP is not the NFL. It is, instead, an incandescent union of form and function. Of past and present. Uniting us not with our grandparents as much as some animal 400 million years ago. Bicycling is primordial. We come from an unbroken line of winners, stretching back to the first day we crawled up out of the mud. Every one of our ancestors, all the way back, kept going long enough to beat predators, disease, starvation. Long enough to have a child. With really only the skill it takes to ride a bike. Like the rest of my species, I hale from Africa, and I was born to run through the woods. Or bike, if the woods are paved. A brevet is a race, after all. The human race.

 . . . We reek, but are unaware of it, like fish that don’t know they are wet.  We have been marinated in our own sweat.  Paul saw a café on the way into Fougeres 370 miles ago and has had his mind’s eye on it for two days.  He leads us there and we sit down to an outdoor picnic table feast of sausage crepes, heavy on the mustard, and frittes, heavy on the ketchup.  As we finish, Paul launches into what may be the second greatest pep talk ever.  I cannot do it justice, but the gist was . . .