The full report of the 2009 Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour

It is six miles from Dover to Durham, New Hampshire.

This distance is not particularly taxing; it could be a lovely summer’s day bike ride. Downtown Dover can be a bit stressful but once you are clear of the new Hannaford’s grocery store the shoulders on Route 108 are wide and smooth. There is plenty of space between you and the cars. The hills are rolling – not steep enough to be considered real climbs and great to coast down in an aerodynamic tuck. There are even two town-line signs that mark intermediate sprints when you are riding with a group.

However, if you have already covered 98 miles in five and a half hours, this last stretch is a hellish misery. The last 40-or-so miles, my quads warn me that each pedal stroke might be their last. I stopped pulling up on my pedal stoke 40 miles ago after my left hamstring turned into a giant Charlie-horse. My left shoulder feels like someone is unzipping the skin and stabbing it with an electrified knife. My lower back is so tight that I can’t sit up straight to stretch out.
But at least I don’t have to pee again. I urinated in The Garrison Players parking lot back in Rollinsford and the coffee seems to have stopped forcing liquid out of my body.

As I roll through downtown Durham, the Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour is nearly complete. All I have to do is thrash my way up the hill that is in front of Holloway Commons and coast back to my truck in the outdoor-pool parking lot. The Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour was: 6 hours and 3 minutes on a bike; 105 miles; 3 states; 10 towns and 6 coffee shops.

The tour is not a sanctioned event and it benefits no charity organization. It actually serves no purpose at all – other than a training ride. Early season rides are usually long rides that allows your body to acclimate itself to riding, after months of riding the ass-groove on the couch.

The ride was the brainchild of UNH graduate and local cyclist Ryan Kelly. He mused about it in his blog. He wanted to combine two things that have universal appeal, riding bikes and drinking coffee. In the post, he recognizes the good and bad points of this ride. Good, riding bikes and drinking coffee. Bad, 6 hours of stopping and starting riding in the dead of winter.

As a way of adding my personal touch and challenge to this ride, I decide to do it all on my single-speed bike. Last winter I found the joy in riding a bike with only one gear. This year I decide to challenge – in retrospect, I would use the word ‘punish’ – myself by doing The Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour with only one gear.

After a long string of emails, we meet up at the Breaking New Grounds coffee shop in Durham at 7:45 a.m. and a chilly 22 degrees. Ryan already has his first cup of coffee when I arrive; black, Hazelnut.

There are two current UNH Cycling Team members there, not including me, that were going to only do a portion of the ride with us. Allison Gehnrich and Sean Berry accompany us to Exeter then head back to campus. Both Allison and Sean are exhibiting their usual behavior; Allison looks slightly frightened and Sean is not wearing enough clothing.

“I’m wearing leg warmers and two pairs of bib shorts,” Ryan said. The two pairs were necessary to protect his “situation” from getting too cold, he explained as he waved a hand over his crotch. The jacket he was wearing was a UNH Cycling Team jacket from his freshmen year. “The zipper broke the week I got it and I just got it fixed last week.”

Ryan Carne has a long-sleeve base layer, short sleeve jersey, a winter cycling jacket and a women’s white and black windbreaker. (Later on in York, Maine, he will remove a folded-up, plastic grocery bag from the front of his shorts, re-fold it and re-insert it. Again, situational protection.) He is has a slight build, probably weighing 150 pounds, soaking wet.

We roll out of Durham promptly at 8 o’clock and head south on Route 108.

We arrive at the Big Bean in Newmarket at about 8:30 a.m. Ryan gets his second cup of coffee and a muffin. I buy my first cup. We drink our coffee as quickly as possible in order to keep on schedule. Ryan calculated that all of our stops should take no longer than 10 minutes so that we don’t have to finish in the dark.

My friend Jack meets us at the Big Bean. Jack, 64, has ridden and raced bicycles for the about 25 years and currently has less than 6 months to prepare for his second trip to the Senior Nationals.

We saddle up after we pay for our coffees and thank the waitresses for their good-luck-on-your-hair-brained-plan wishes. We all gather together to take a picture in front of the Big Bean. I plan on taking a picture at each coffee shop in order to document the adventure.

We ride south to Me & Ollie’s in Exeter. Through this leg of the ride, I am pushing at hot pace. I am at the front of our pack, feeling like a million dollars. I am doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do; go hard from the start and run out of gas by the middle of the ride. However, my excitement overrides forethought and I don’t realize this at the time.

I even catch the pack unaware and scoop up a few town-line sprints on the way to Exeter.
At Me & Ollie’s, Carney jokes that this will be the only century, or 100 mile ride, that we will actually gain weight because of all the stops, coffee and pastries. I order a Gooey Granola Roll that lives up to Ryan’s hype.

I snap a few photos of us spread out on couches, our bikes stacked against each other out side.
It is important to eat when you’re doing long rides. If you run out of gas 50 miles from home, you have 3 options; limp home, stopping at every convenient store on the way in order to shove Little Debby cakes down your gullet – Little Debby’s usually give you the biggest bang for your buck, as far as the calories to dollars ratio; you can call someone for a ride home – something that no self-respecting cyclist would ever do; or you can just man-up and grind your way home, fueled by self-hatred for blowing up mid-ride, repeating “I am never going to do this again” like a fifteen year-old that raided his parents liquor cabinet the night before.

I fit into the last category.

Ryan, Carney and I leave Me & Ollie’s, headed fro Amesbury, Mass. in search of our fourth coffee shop. Allison, Sean and Jack ride north, toward Durham and Newmarket, because they don’t have other things to do.

On Route 150, Josh Austin, another local rider that races with Ryan and Carney for Nor’East Cycling Team, catches up with us. I told him about our ride earlier in the week and Ryan had called him from our last stop.

We don’t find a coffee shop in downtown Amesbury and Ryan does not appreciate my suggestion of Dunkin Donuts. His tone is firm, almost like an annoyed parent.
Newburyport, Mass. was next on the list. I ride up to Ryan and put my hand on his shoulder, telling him that his was a great idea.

“I have a thousand bad ideas for everyone good idea,” he says.

“Well, this was a good one,” I say as we soak up the sunshine in the cloud-less sky. I still feel as though I am full of energy and excitement.

We do a lap of Newburyport and all we see is a Starbucks. I don’t even think of suggesting another chain. Ryan asks a man walking his dogs if there is a coffee shop near by that isn’t Starbucks.

The man chuckles and gives us directions Plum Island Coffee Roasters, which is in a yacht storage yard.

Ryan is the first one of us through the door. But he stops half through the doorway.

“This place is sick! It’s so warm in here,” he says. A fire in the corner and side-ways glancing patrons greet us.

I get my second coffee drink, a cappuccino. Everybody else orders crumb cakes or pastries. We fill our water bottles in the bathroom with warm water because they will soon cool to about 35 degrees, the outside air temperature.

“I wish I could order a cup of luke-warm coffee so I could just chug it,” Ryan complains. If it weren’t steaming hot, he could throw them back and be on the bike in less than 5 minutes. Instead, we have to sit and sip them slowly.

Everybody uses the bathroom, except for me. Ryan’s previous coffees started taking effect between Exeter and Amesbury. The magic of coffee has not affected me, yet.
While we put on our helmets and re-mount our bikes, a patron exits the shop and strikes up a conversation. The commentary is generally the same.

You always hear something like “You guys are crazy” or “Good for you”. But the man outside Plum Island Coffee Roasters throws in something new.

He says he enjoys doing his 25-mile rides, which is good enough for him – nothing crazy like 100 miles in the middle of winter.

“When I start riding my bike, my wife always says, ‘You keep riding that bike’,” he says. “Anyone that tells you that riding a bike impedes your sexual performance is a liar. My wife always tells me, ‘Keep riding that bike’.”

We all have a laugh, thank him for his adivce and ride on.

From this point on there is long gap between coffee shops. We tried to find one on Hampton Beach but nearly every store has a “closed for the season” sign hanging in the window.

On B Street, after riding past the closed Ships Inn Coffee Shop, my two cups of coffee want out. Ryan and I pull in to the entrance of a parking garage in order to urinate, out of the buffeting winds coming from the west. The last thing you want at the midpoint of a ride this long is to have a stream of coffee-pee blow back all over your leg.

From Hampton to Portsmouth, we fight the western crosswind and scream up the coast. During this section Josh and Ryan ride in front of Carney and me. Josh has a bad habit, Ryan tells me later, of getting on the front of the group and riding – in this situation, referred to as pulling – hard. This is particularly miserable for me because I am not as strong of a rider as Josh is, but also because I have one gear.

I can’t shift gears because I only have one. If I want to go faster, I have to pedal faster; if I want to go up a steep hill I have to stand up and push really hard. My internal monologue on steep climbs is “Le-eg Press! Le-eg Press!” I say ‘leg’ slowly, and then say ‘press’ as I push down on the pedal. I need a mantra that allows me to stay focused as my fellow riders select one of their 20 gears.

For the 21 miles between Hampton Beach and our next stop, Breaking New Grounds in Portsmouth, my legs are spinning as fast as they can. I am bouncing on my saddle, a sign that you cannot efficiently peddle faster. My heart rate (which I know because I always ride with a heart rate monitor so I have a gauge of how hard I am working, how many calories I’ve burned, time in zones, etc.) was much too high. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sustain a pace like that all day.

It was near Wallis Sands State Beach that my legs started to feel rubbery.
Near the Portsmouth-Rye town line, Carney and I race for the town line and my legs turn to Jell-O. I have a bad feeling that I won’t be finishing the rest of the ride.
The Portsmouth Breaking New Grounds is a glorious bastion of cookies, coffee, pastries and hot-air hand-dryers.

At this point, I only look like a cyclist but it feels as though there is nothing left inside of me. In order to fill this void, I order a medium coffee, a chocolate turtle cookie and a croissant. However, my perceptions are skewed; my coffee is a cauldron, not a cup; my cookie is the size of a baby’s head; and my croissant is foot-long sub.

I inhale all of it.

I head to the bathroom to use the hand dryer to warm up my shoes. I hit the button twice per shoe, which dries the moisture that is trapped in my shoe by my neoprene shoe covers, or booties.

Ryan says that it is time to leave and Josh decides no to join us for the rest of the ride. In this, I find hope that I might finish this ridiculous ride.

As we approach York Harbor, a part of York that is about 2 miles south of the touristy York Beach, I feel an anxious wave roll over me. I look at my heart rate monitor, which reads 176 beats per minute. This is way too high.

“OK, my heart rate is officially now determined by caffeine and not exertion level,” I announce to Ryan and Carney. They chuckle.

I start blinking more than usual, but still feel empty.

York Beach is just as dead as Hampton Beach but The Daily Grind coffee shop is open. Ryan and I have that “not-so-fresh” feeling anymore. In order to finish this ride, we stay only long enough to use the bathroom and pound some juice.

From this point on, we don’t stop at another coffee shop.

From this point on, the fun isover.

At Ogunquit, we turn west and head up Berwick Road. At mile 80-or-so, we have to start climbing some hills and it is hell.

“We got him on the ropes,” Carney shouts as he briefly accelerates up the hill.
“Heckler’s all over his machine,” Ryan yells, accusing me of thrashing around on my bike in an uncontrolled and labored manner.

They’re right. I am throwing my bike left to right as I struggle up the hill. If they decided to, they could drop me; they could just float away from me with their stupid gears. I am against the ropes but I have no choice but to finish.

We crest a slight hill and Ryan asks Carney how fast we are going.

“14.5 miles per hour,” Carney says.

“I don’t think I could go any faster if I had to,” Ryan says. As long as someone else is suffering as much as you are, your own misery is easier to accept.

In the distance between Ogunquit and Dover, all the coffee, water and juice I drank during the ride decides to make my miserable state worse. Within the next fifteen mile, I stop to urinate four times. Each time Ryan groans, “Ahh … again?”

The rest of the ride might as well be a black spot in my memory. From South Berwick back to UNH, the ride turned into an exercise in pain management – how to block out every piece of sensory input that tells your body to stop. Every muscle ache and joint twinge compels you to bail out of this flaming wreck that is your body.

As we head south on Route 4 from Southwest out of Berwick, I try to hide in Ryan’s draft so that I don’t have fighting against the wind. I float around behind him until I hear the least amount of wind noise. When it’s relatively quiet, you know you’re in the sweet spot – that he working harder than I am.

As we cross the Dover town line, I have never been happier to in Dover. Only because it means that I am one town closer to the end of this ride.

We roll through downtown Dover, Ryan and Carney say me that they are going to stop at Dos Amigos Burrito’s.

Should I stop and gorge on burritos, try to make a dent in my 4453 kilocalorie deficit?

“If I stop now, I won’t get started again,” I tell them. I say good-bye, thanks for coming on this adventure with me.

I tell Ryan that it was a great idea, again.

Before we split up, Ryan says that we should do this again – when the weather is nice, when we’re in shape. “Like, April.”

“Yeah, sounds good. I’ll do it, just let me know when. Enjoy your burritos,” I say as I keep pedaling my way up Central Ave.

Then, there is just me.

And 6 measly miles between me and a pointless success.



All rights reserved.
This is the property of Phil Heckler and only Phil Heckler.
I rode it, I wrote it and therefore I own it!
Any taking, biting, sampling, plagerism or copying will result in legal action.
You've been warned.

A Dinner Party for the Ages and Ageless!

- cokes and cola

- cheese head string cheese, cr. cheese, Parmesean Cheese

- Quaker Quakes and oatmeal bread

- bread, oatmeal bread and mini bagels

- lemon and onions

- G.F. Chicken nuggets and fish stix

- Hamburg

- pizza

- pretzels

- orange juice

There are so many way to organize and cross-reference this list.

Barb and I went food shopping about a week ago and somebody left their list in an impulse magazine rack at the check out.

 I read it, re-read it and tried my hardest to wrap my find around this list.

You can group liquids together; cola, cokes, orange juice.

There are multiple cheese products; cheese head string cheese, cr.(eam) cheese and, presumably, Parmesan Cheese.

There are two vegetables; Onions and lemons.

There are two pressed and formed food-esque items; fish stix and G.F. chicken nuggets (We can only guess what "G.F." stands for) and I'll even put Hostess Pies and Quaker Quakes into this group.

They also love their carbs; pizza, pretzels, bread, oatmeal bread.

   Or you could group things in a different manner, perhaps "Things to make a meal".

   Let's see.... what could we have for dinner tonight? We'll add some class to our dinner by making a three-course meal.

   As a something to nibble on before our dinner party kicks off, we'll have a platter of pretzels and Quaker Quakes on a beautiful Dale "The Intimidator" Earnhardt commemorative plate.

   If anybody is thirsty, feel free to offer them your diverse selection of beverages; Cokes, cola and orange juice.

   We'll start with an appetizer of 3-Cheese Alaskan Halibut Mini-Bagel Bruschetta; torn up string cheese, cream cheese and Fish Stix (the "X" marks the spot for tastiness) on mini bagels toasted to perfection with a dusting of the finest Kraft Parmesan Cheese.

   Next, we'll move on to the first course, Chicken Nugget Pizza. A delicious Market Basket deep-dish pizza with chicken nuggets artfully arrayed in the shape of the Talladega Speedway.

   For the second course, get ready for Hamburg Surprise! The surprise is ONIONS! A pound of 93% lean ground beef simmered in lemon juice , with a dash of O.J. We'll make a casserole by layering oatmeal bread, hamburg, veins of string cheese with a crumbled Hostess Pie crust. Bake for 15 minutes or until heated all the way through.

   For dessert, we have everybody's favorite, Deep-Fried Cookie Mix! Heat up that vat of partially hydrogenated soybean oil - we have to watch our Trans Fats, don't we? - and toss in cabbage-sized balls of Cookie Mix. Let them sizzle until they are a dark brown on the outside and gooey on the inside.        

* Here's a fun tip; if your guest are gamblers, make a game out of dessert. Get a fondue-pot style fry-a-lator and  put it in the center of the dinner table. See who can make the farthest, half court shot of Cookie Mix in to the fry-a-lator. Takes bets. If your friends are like mine, they're only in Gamblers Anonymous to shut up a spouse - they'll need this non-track-related betting outlet. It's not gambling if it is between friends, right? *

     I hope your dinner party is a hit. 

I bet, it will be!

Coffee Tour - Completed

The Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour was a success.

We rode to 3 states, 10 towns, 6 coffee shops.

We rode 105 miles. 

I peed on the side of the road 4 times.

I bonked before the halfway mark.

I suffered for 4 of the 6 hours we were riding.

I will need at least 3 days to recover from this ridiculous feat.

I have cemented my caffeine addiction.

I did it all on a 44-17 single speed road bike.

I am done with my base miles.

Overall, it was pure sweet hell.

And I will be doing it again when the weather gets better.

Seacoast Coffee Shop Tour 2009

What better way to spend a saturday than peddle your ass around seacoast New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine?
Wait, maybe the didn't come out right?

Let me start again.

What better way to spend a Februrary day than to ride your bike to ten different coffee shops in three different states?

That's better. That's less ambiguous and licentious.

But that is what R.Kelly and I are going to do on saturday; at least ten coffee shops in ten towns, in 100 miles, in under 7 hours (or before the sun goes down whichever comes first).

I put a hit out to my fellow seacoast-area cyclists and have gotten a mixed bag of results.
Jay told me that he would gladly join me for this ride when the predominant color of the world returns to green, you crazy bastard! Keep in mind, his words not mine.

This is going to be an epic day of riding, extreme stimulant overdose, cookies and cakes, and alot of peeing on the side of the road.

The route will be as follows:
- 8:00 a.m. roll out from Breaking New Grounds in Durham.
- The Big Bean in Newmarket.
- Me and Ollie's in Exeter.
- Hollow Cafe or in Amesbury, on Main Street (I looked it up but don't remember the name).
-Plum Island Roasters or Caffe Di Siena in Newburyport, on some street (I looked it up but don't remember the name).
- some place in either Hampton, Seabrook or Salisbury.
- Cafe Kilim in Portsmouth (although I heard there is a really good place in Kittery).
- there's a bunch of places in Ogunquit (I have been there before but I don't remember its name).
- some place in South Berwick.
- Cafe on the Corner in Dover,
then back to Durham.

Wow.... this is going to be epic. A century ride in February? I've never done it and it might kill me, but it will be quite an adventure.

Stay tuned for an account and pictures.

What they try to slip past you

I don't feel particular motivated to write anything tonight, which includes my profile about a lovely married couple.

One thing that did catch my ear this evening was a quick couple of lines Charlie Gibson read from the teleprompter.

I'll paraphrase it for you:

American Airlines, as of April, will no longer be having a customer service telephone line. If you wish to comment on anything, you must write an e-mail or send a letter.

To steal a line from Frank Wheeler, it seems to me that there is considerable amount of bullshit going on here!

If they are cutting back the staff necessary to field phone calls in order to save money, why should we believe American Airlines will leave the requisite staff in place to read all the e-mails and letters that will coming their way?

Is it just me or does anyone else think the mailing address will be one of those industrial sized document shredders? And the e-mail address might as well be AmericanAirlinesCustomerService@kissmyass.youallfellforourtrick.com.

Since the Annuciation...

So alot has happened since I declared my blod D.O.A.
School has started.
I have begun training for what promises to be an eventful collegiate racing season.
I have interviewed a delightful couple for an english class.
I have managed to fall behind in my reading for class already.

But the most momentous thing of late is that I have begun listening to NPR.
In the past, my music choice has usually been -as was deftly described on one of those commentary shows about the 80's- "music that makes you want to drive fast and punch people."
It was metal, metal, punk, screaming and loud. I remembering thinking that NPR was just what old people listened to because they just couldn't handle as much rocking as I could.
My sister once tried to convince me that NPR wasn't just blabbering and grim news. That there was actually good content. I poo-poo-ed her. I tend to do that alot; poo-poo-ing, in general.
However, I now find NPR to be an excellent source of news, entertainment and generally interesting programing for my short drives around the seacoast area.
I might be getting to old to rock. I don't entirely believe that. I am only offering that as some sort of explanantion.
I think my ability to rock hasn't diminished at all. I cite for you an indoor training ride that I did with the team two saturdays ago. When AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long" came on, I had no qualms about shouting all the lyrics, which were particularly ill-timed; it was the two minutes of 10 out of 10 Rate of Perceived Effort (my heartrate soared to somewhere around 190 beats per minute).

On another topic, on World News Tonight this evening, an anchor did a piece about the country's ultra-rich continuing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on luxuxry items, specifically $40,000 suits. These suits are hand-tailored from exotic fabrics, like Alaskan Yak fur, and the white pinstripes are actually white gold!
This left me with one desire; I would love to slap a rich person, particularlly an imbecile that bought one of these suits.
Just flat-out slap him or her. In this situation, I would have no problem if it were a women.
Man, that would feel good... for me.

the forgotten blogs destiny.

I think that my blog is now deceased.

I have not written much since I have returned.
I am not sure if I will continue to write in the future.

There is not much to write about anymore.
As of now, the days proceed in the fashion: wake up, work, come home, shower, go to sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat endlessly.

This is only until school starts again on the 20th.
Then everything will change.

I will start writing again when I start racing in the spring....

... I promise. By that time I will have something worthwhile to write about.