The Lactic Acid Express
by Patrick O'Grady

One fire burns out another's burning
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I don't often ride with other cyclists. I ride with racers.

The distinction is subtle, finer than a legal hair being split by a USA Cycling attorney. Yet the yawning gulf that separates these subsets of the group, 'people who ride bicycles', is as wide as, say, Monica Lewinsky's butt in a Naugahyde jumpsuit with a D.C. phone book in each hip pocket after six months on a diet of Twinkies, Schlitz Malt Liquor tallboys, and jumbo buckets of the Colonel's finest.

To begin with, racers never simply 'ride'. They 'train'. As in 'choo-choo'. A timetable is arranged, a departure point selected, a few warning hoots sounded -- "Alll aboooooooard!" -- and an engine and caboose designated.

Most racers settle in somewhere between these two points on the Lactic Acid Express. But there's always one poor sap who, more Hamtrak than Amtrak, finds himself a lone Costello watching a chain gang of Abbotts highball it over the horizon.

That would be me.

Pardon Me, Boy -- Is This The Lactic-Acid Choo-Choo? Getting spit out in the early seconds of a three-hour training ride would be humiliating enough. But it's rarely that simple. You could turn around then, pedal back to your truck, or to the coffee shop, filled with smiling, happy people who have lives, friends, hair on their legs.

No, this is more along the lines of your cheery childhood encounters with that 18-year-old sixth-grader, the kid with the pointy head and the misspelled tattoos, who thought you were a dork because you had a dad instead of a parole officer. He'd get you down on the ground, then kneel on your skinny arms while drooling a string of slobber toward your frantically wagging face -- then suck it back in! -- before letting it descend again like a slimy spider on a gooey strand of web.

He grew up to be a bicycle racer, a Category 2 roadie; not good enough to sign with Saturn, but plenty good enough to make you shake your head. And for guys like him, it's not the spitting out that bulges his bibs -- it's keeping you in suspense as to when it's coming.

We Will Ride on a Road of Bones. And it's coming. Again, and again, and again. Sure, most racers wouldn't hurt a fly -- because they've tried that, and they know that they can only pull a fly's wings off once. Clipping your wings they can do over and over, like Galileo chucking stuff off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, just to see what happens.

Italians. Fascists. Germans, basically, but with better wine, prettier women and a climate. First they're pretending to study gravity ("Whaddaya say we climb a few hills?"). Next, it's, "Ve vill now be riding a little tempo." Before you know it, they're invading Poland.

Were they abused as children? Did portly Uncle Buster pinch their pink little cheeks once too often, and now they've got it in for anyone who stretches his Lycra in all the wrong places?

Is it a matter of gravity? Mierda rolls downhill, and nobody wants to get caught holding the mortgage on that valley acreage. Especially racers, who resent cycling's position at the tail end of our vehicular food chain, dominated by White Freightliners terrorizing GMC Yukons scaring Mercury Villagers frightening Lincoln Town Cars bullying Dodge Stratuses tormenting Plymouth Neons startling Harleys menacing Hondas.

Devil Take the Hindmost. These lords of the mechanized jungle will occasionally ignore a lone cyclist on the veldt. However, there's something about the sight of an entire herd of racers that triggers their bloodlust. Racers know this from bitter experience with Mack mirrors, sewer grates and personal-injury attorneys.

Maybe that's why they're always trying to croak the weakest rider in the bunch. Simple Darwinism. Keep a tight, fast formation and that gibbering psycho in the vomit-yellow minivan won't be able to pick anyone off. If things get ugly, we'll throw him the fat dude wobbling around at the pack of the back there.

The trick is to not be him. But that takes time and lots of hard work. There must be an easier way.

Say, maybe Monica would like to go for a ride. I could use the company. She could use the exercise. And judging by the chorus of hungry honks just behind me, someone could use the meat.