Building dreamscapes

Final thoughts on a ride that now seems long ago

A few days after enduring hellish travels home from France, I opened Rouvy for the first time in a year. Rouvy is an indoor cycling app that syncs video of real roads with a smart trainer to create the illusion of cycling in scenic places worldwide.

I’ve gone through (thankfully short) phases where I love Rouvy and its gamified counterpart, Zwift, so much that I wonder why I do anything else. I’m safe and comfortable at home. It’s never too hot or cold or blowing dust in my face. There are no cars around to hurt me. There’s no risk of crashing. I have snacks, an endless water supply, fresh clothes to change into, and a flush toilet. All I need to do is dim the lights, turn on the projector that aims a life-sized image at a pull-down screen, and plug in the Wahoo Kickr Bike that adds resistance to simulate steepness and even tilts the frame to simulate the sensation of pointing a real bike uphill or downhill. Suddenly, I’m whisked away to New Zealand or Switzerland or South Africa to pedal up a gorgeous mountain road while listening to podcasts. I could ride Rouvy every day for years and never run out of new places to “explore.”

“I could live in the illusion,” I will think. “I could just live here and be happy.”

But it never lasts. Not more than a few days go by before I feel strange and disconnected. I miss nature. I miss it so much I can feel the ache in my bones. I miss the sensation of dirt underfoot. I miss the tug of gravity, sinister as it is. I miss traveling through a world of endless complexity. I miss having experiences. I can run the same trail 100 times and start to believe I’m just going through the motions and living in a self-generated simulation. But if I get over myself and start paying attention, I will immediately find something to laugh about, reminisce, or inspire awe. Life is nothing if not lived in the moment. I have to remind myself of this every day.

Like many people in my demographic — women in mid-life who have been beaten down by little traumas, loss, and biology — I long for familiarity and security. Paradoxically, I still crave the peak experiences that the freewheeling adventures of my youth provided almost effortlessly. Still, these experiences come at a higher cost because of a few decades of little traumas, loss, and biology.

I loved riding through the Southern Alps in June, but the trip laid me bare more than it would have 10 years ago. So much living on high alert, navigating unknown terrain, deciphering illegible languages, waking up each morning uncertain of where I’d sleep that night, not to mention forcing my inflamed lungs to work on overdrive for hours each day. Sure, I have general muscle and joint pains, more fatigue, and other issues that come with being older than I used to be. I’m lucky these are all superficial. But asthma is a true difficulty that I didn’t have to deal with 10 or 20 years ago. When I think about getting older, I usually think about it as a question of what terrible prank my immune system will pull on me next.

So I returned home from Europe exhausted. Two airlines dragged me through the ringer before I could claw my way back to Colorado. By the time I made it home a full day later than I had planned, I never wanted to leave again. This borderline agoraphobia lasted a couple of weeks. During that time, I looked to Rouvy for comfort. I found it in a series of familiar climbs: Col d’Izoard, Col Agnel, Colle Delle Finistre, Colle di Sampeyre, and Col de Turini. I returned to the Torino Nice Rally route from the safety of my home and relished each virtual ride. I hadn’t even realized these climbs were so big — all 4,000 feet of elevation gain or more — nor did I expect to be twice or even close to three times as speedy without a loaded mountain bike, breathing filtered air, from the safety of home.

Today, as I was wrapping up virtual Col de Turini, I realized I didn’t want to let this place go. I didn’t want to return to comfort and familiarity. I wanted to turn left on that virtual pass and see where the road took me. Of course, it was just a video on a screen. The illusion ended there. I looked around at the small darkness of the room and remembered the terrible heat wave, that it was 95 degrees outside with an ozone alert that assured breathing difficulties. Plus, if I leave from my front door, there’s nowhere new to explore. It’s all more of the same. Of course, that’s not true. That’s never true.

What I mean to say is that I’m still searching for a balance between living in the real world and living in an illusion, while recognizing that the line is irrevocably blurred. I’m grateful for my privilege to spend 10 days on the Torino-Nice Rally route. I’ve had fun remembering it here. Here are a few final photos from days nine and ten of the journey.

I think everyone was nearing a breaking point on day 9. Creaky knees, saddle sores, general aches and pains. Amber quickly tired of carrying so much weight on her back after her front rack broke the previous day. We woke in soggy tents with our aching bones pressed into the ground, then packed up after another unsatisfying breakfast of whatever was left in our frame bags. We descended through a stunning gorge and arrived in an unbearably hot lowland village — 85 degrees with high humidity. Another rainstorm was approaching. All we had left to accomplish that day was a 5,500-foot climb to nowhere — just another bump over a mountain that could easily be bypassed by following the busy highway to Sospel. Still, it wasn’t a question of whether or not we wanted to do the climb. Of course we did.

Nobody’s mood was particularly upbeat on this day, and we settled into our rhythms a fair distance from each other. Despite ragged breathing and tired legs, I was feeling chipper. Even when my body is far from its best, I will always embrace the flow-state-inducing power of an enormous climb. Rain clouds moved in, dulling the colors, but the scenery was still gorgeous. The Maritime Alps were so different from their soaring siblings to the North. The vegetation and the scenery reminded me of coastal California. Lora pointed out a narrow-leafed shrub and wondered if these were olive trees.

We climbed to the Fortress of Authion, another World War II ruin that we did not take much time to explore as raindrops started falling. It was not warm at 6,400 feet. Amber and I bundled up and descended 1,200 feet to Col Turini and waited a while at a bar where cyclists were everywhere and the service was not friendly. By the time Lora and Danni arrived, it had mostly been decided that the group would take the shortcut off the TNR route and descend directly into Nice. I was set on finishing the tour on the official route. Mostly, I was settling into my rhythm on the ride and finally feeling strong even though my breathing had not substantially improved. I was not in a hurry to be done. Also, selfishly, after nearly three weeks of traveling in Europe with either family or friends, I craved a whole day I could have all to myself.

So we went our separate ways, with my friends turning right for the straight shot to Nice and me turning left toward Sospel. It was an incredible descent with seemingly bottomless hairpin switchbacks, verdant cliffs, waterfalls, and old stone villages. In Sospel, I rented an apartment downtown that only cost 60 Euros. The quirky French woman who let me into the apartment insisted on giving me a small tour of the old neighborhood with alleys as narrow as my shoulders. I went into a grocery store and bought only produce for dinner, along with a box of detergent to do my laundry. I gave myself a shower, gave my bike a shower, and then I washed everything including my shoes, which were starting to smell so bad that I had considered throwing them away. Now everything was clean, my stomach was full of salad and I was as happy and comfortable as I could be.

Of course, when the morning of day 10 arrived, my back was sore, it was raining, and I remembered that my friends were probably already soaking in a hot tub in Nice. Ah well. Riding is what I chose, and I was glad for the opportunity.

The route climbed onto a maze of fireroads rippling along the coastal hills. How am I not in California? I could hardly believe how familiar this place felt, and how different it was from the jagged Alpine Peaks I’d pedaled through just days earlier.

I had to cross over three or four more cols on my rolling route into Nice. I believe this is the descent from Col des Banquettes.

The village of Sainte-Agnes reminded me that I most definitely was not in California. I marveled at this crowded old village, impossibly built into a cliff. But why? I thought I had possibly crossed into Monaco at this point, and that place is just strange. As it turns out, this is another 20th-century war fortification to protect the area against possible Italian and German invasions. This is essentially what all of the Torino-Nice Rally route is: Tracing the ghosts of wars past.

I never crossed into Monaco; I only saw it from above. It did indeed look busy, beautiful, and very, very rich.

The final climb on the route is Col de la Madone, a climb made famous by cycling pros who regularly time-trial this 922-meter pass out of Nice. Indeed, even on this rainy Thursday morning, at least a dozen skinny men on skinnier bicycles passed me as though I were a stationary object. I also thought it funny that I was still decked out in head-to-toe rain gear and shivering mildly as they flew past with their jerseys wide open and chests bare. Clearly, I have a lot of work to do on my power output.

I reached Nice around 1 p.m., made the mandatory stop at Cafe du Cycliste, dipped my front wheel in the Mediterranean Sea, and went to find my friends.

We went out on the town to reminisce about our ride, celebrate Danni’s birthday with delicious French cuisine and far too much wine, go for an evening walk, strip down to our skivvies and swim in the Mediterranean (I did not swim. I’m so scared of the ocean that I couldn’t make myself do it.) I had nearly forgotten that it was Summer Solstice. All of this time, all of this distance, and summer was only now just arriving. Daylight lingered as we walked the four miles from downtown to our airport hotels along the beach at 11 pm.

These are, of course, the experiences that I can’t have on Rouvy. All of them. I appreciate these opportunities to break out of my comfortable bubble and build dreamscapes for those tougher times.

Torino-Nice Rally, day nine
La Brigue to Sospel
46 miles
5,610 feet of climbing
7.1 mph average moving speed
8:48 elapsed time

Torino-Nice Rally, day ten
Sospel to Nice
43 miles
4,075 feet of climbing
7.6 mph average moving speed
6:43 elapsed time

Total
Torino to Nice
425 miles
58,850 feet of climbing
6.3 mph average moving speed
10 days elapsed time.