Some time ago I mentioned Lachlan Morton and that weird ride where he beat the Pony Express:
Colloquially, in the cycling world, we call the practice of trying to beat unwitting “opponents” who are simply commuting to work or otherwise just riding casually “Cat 6 racing.” So what do we call racing a 19th century courier service that went out of business like eight years before the pennyfarthing was even invented? Well, after reading this story, I’m going with “vacation:”
Why is this not in the “Travel” section? I know people lionize Lachlan Morton for pushing the boundaries of human whatever, but sorry, if it walks like a vacation and it quacks like a vacation then it’s probably a vacation. Think about it: what do you do on vacation? Well, you eat lots of food:
“I had one energy gel on the first night but I try to stick with real, solid food because the rides are so long that you want your body to function in a pretty regular, predictable way,” he says. “I’ll eat a lot of sandwiches or frozen breakfast burritos. And then every night I would have a proper dinner which was generally eggs or rice and meat … and kimchi for some reason. It’s rogue.”
And you do a little sightseeing:
“The sunrise is always hard to beat,” he says. “You see the sun coming for probably two and a half, sometimes three hours before you actually get it. A lot of these places come midday are pretty harsh, but early in the morning they can be incredibly beautiful and calm.”
In fact that entire paragraph could very easily be about vacationing on a tropical island, because those beaches can get pretty hot too, which is why by the afternoon you want to be off the sand and sitting at a tiki bar.
You might also take advantage of your time off from work and other responsibilities by partaking in some challenging yet rewarding recreational physical activity. For example, Lachlan Morton chose all-terrain bicycling:
“The surprising thing for me on this trip was that the terrain that was the hardest or the slowest to move through, where it was more technical, I found the most enjoyable,” he says. “The mental challenge of the longer straightforward sections I find more difficult because there’s less to break you out of the enormity of what you have to do.
Whereas people visiting tropical islands might try something like kitesurfing or windsurfing, which can also be pretty hard:
And look, like any vacation there were moments of unpleasantness:
“The hardest thing is getting going in the morning. After huge days, once you rest, your body completely seizes up. Starting in Wyoming, it was like 25F (-3.9C) in the dark. Your knees don’t really want to, (you) can’t really sit on the seat. The question is, ‘Am I gonna be able to make this happen?’”
But when you reach a certain age what he describes above is just called “waking up,” and whether it’s achieving tumescence or simply using the bathroom no doubt that “Am I gonna be able to make this happen?” bit resonates with many an AARP member.
Sure, you can accuse me of being cynical, but even Lachlan Morton hmiself knows it’s a vacation:
“I’m in a very lucky position to seek out hard things to do. It’s a choice, (whereas) most people have to deal with hard things out of necessity,” Morton explains. “So I’m trying to stay aware of that, remembering that’s what you came out here for and leaning into those harder bits. Those physical and mental lows, they always pass. Having that knowledge gives you the confidence to not let it become this never-ending doom.”
I mean does it really get any better than being left the hell alone?
While carving through the American Midwest, Morton was accompanied by a crew but — given they could not follow his route exactly — he was still very alone. Depending on the terrain, it was often up to seven hours before he saw another human soul. Yet even the solitude was something to embrace.
“The time you spend by yourself with uninhibited or undistracted thoughts, you really understand the way your brain works, the places it goes,” he says. “It helps you understand the way you behave on a day-to-day basis and the way you interact with people. That only comes through being alone.”
And who hasn’t had one of those vacations where, instead of bringing your favorite bike you decide to rent a bike from an LBS, and so you have to make do with something boring and uninspiring like a Cannondale?
[Lachlan Morton Cat 6-ing the hell out of some guy on a horse.]
I do continue to wonder which historical figures Morton will try to Cat 6 next, and in researching this I was weirded out to learn that there’s a “History Snob:”
It really was unsettling:
As for the expeditions that Lachlan Morton could potentially beat on his bicycle, this one stood out:
But mostly because “Fridtjof Nansen’s Arctic Drift Expedition” sounds like an obsure jazz fusion album you’d find in the vinyl collection of someone who also owns all those early Letle Viride releases:
[BK Jimmy]
I’m tempted to say you had to be there, but thanks to AI you actually didn’t have to be there:
All fairly accurate apart from the characterization of this blog as “popular.”
But yes, I refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of ultra-endurance cycling as anything other than aggressive vacationing, especially when following it literally involves watching dots, which sounds like the sort of thing you’d do if you found watching paint dry too stimulating. However, I did find myself perusing the competitors’ bikes, and while most of them were pretty much the same, there were one or two standouts, like this one:
And this one:
I’m pretty sure one or both of those riders look exactly like this:
That’s a stare that would stop even the likes of Lachlan Morton in his tracks.