I like riding my bike and I like new experiences. So when the opportunity came up to ride my bike in a new format close to home I decided to bonk those two birds (bikes and new things) on the head by taking part in the Grand Fondo New York. For those of you who don’t know what a Grand Fondo is, a Grand Fondo is a competitive timed ride done with absolutely anyone who wants to sign up. Some Fondos have only a few timed sections on the course, while others have an overall time, and the Grand Fondo New York was of the latter category. Personally I prefer the former format (with timed sections), as it allows me to race for brief durations while also allowing me to roll at the laziest pace possible between the times sections, but I can be persuaded to fondo in other formats also, and that is what I did on Sunday.

I shall now announce that I was not given a free entry from the fondo promoter, and that I did this fondo of my own free will. This information will be of interest to exactly none of you, but I am including it anyway in the interest of full disclosure. This information also allows me to not feel beholden to anyone to write a well-researched or obsessively fact-checked recap of this event (also known as a "lazy writer" clause).

My Grand Fondo New York (GFNY) experience began on Friday, when I had to (reluctantly) go to the GFNY Expo to pick up my registration materials. I usually avoid expos of most varieties, because I have very little spare time, and that spare time is usually spent either doing slipshod home repairs or playing with Littlest Pet Shop figurines (and occasionally I let my daughters play with me, but they don’t get to touch the sparkly figures—those are daddy’s special pets!). I decided to again kill two birds with one stone (fictitious bird body count in this story so far—4) by riding in to the Expo to pick up my numbers.

The GFNY has some sort of affiliation with other events or it’s a qualifier for the world championships of delusion or they give away a Buick Skylark or something along that line (I will now remind you of my disclaimer paragraph above that states that I don’t have to fact check), and because of this affiliation, they require drug testing at the fondo. This is a good thing. It’s especially good because the testing at the Fondo last year caught two clowns (one of which was teammate of mine, again, intercourse you, DA) who had a little extra helium in their balloons, if you get my drift. Fondo-ers this year were subject to random drug tests, and guess who got randomly selected?

Well, as luck would have it, it was the guy who was teammates with the clown from last year who also types a lot about bikes and bodily gases on the internet—it was me. Upon pulling my manilla envelope of registration-al materials out of the box, the nice woman told me I had been selected for a random dope test. This didn’t really register at first, and I thought that there was a registration mix up (a name like Schmalz gets you many inventive alternate spellings), but when my bearded chaperone appeared, I realized that my afternoon was going to get more interesting.

My companion was nice fellow that accompanied me up to the hotel room where the testing would take place. (Note to the Hotel Pennsylvania, how about running a wet rag over those windows about every half year or so? It could really help.) Inside the room, a single, were two drug testing stations. Both were being used when I arrived, so I took a free water bottle and began prepping my sample, so to speak. The wait was about 15 minutes and then it was time to tap my bladder. I choose a cup, entered the bathroom, took out my man carrot and urinated in view of the USADA official, as is required by that poor bastard’s job description. I had no issues with letting loose in front of the official, in fact it was quite nice to be able to have someone watch me urinate for free for a change. I filled my cup with the required amount, and went to hand the cup to the recoiling official when he told me that he wasn’t allowed to handle the sample, and that I would be doing all the pee handling. Yes, the afternoon just got better.

I snapped the lid on the cup (now know as "liquid gold"), and wanted to wash my hands, but was told that I couldn’t use soap because it could potentially contaminate the sample. I splashed some water on my hands and made a mental note to not shake hands with anyone else that day. With my cup filled, I entered the next phase of the drug testing—waiting. I needed to sit for 20 minutes before they could take blood. My tester started the clock on her iPhone and we went about filling out my paper work.

The paperwork portion of the test was like getting approved for a loan or opening a bank account, except we did it with a cup of my warm urine sitting between the two of us. The timer finally expired and it was time to get bloody. The thing about dope testing is that there needs to be two sample of every fluid, so there’s a lot of repetition. I chose two urine holders, two sets of two blood containers and all the equipment that was required to take the blood. With our equipment selected, we got down to business.

First, I had to pour my own urine into two sample holders. I managed to get almost all of the sample into both cups. (Note to those staying at the Hotel Pennsylvania in the future, one of the tables in the guest rooms may or may not have a bit of my pee on it.) And them it was blood time, the technician prepared me and took blood like I was getting physical, and after we filled four vials, the body fluid taking portion was over. After that we packed up my samples, finished up my paperwork, and I was done. The entire process took about 45 minutes.

They informed me that I would be emailed about the results in about four or five weeks, and here’s hoping I didn’t get any spiked Prilosec in the week before my test.

So, the Fondo itself.

My teammates and I decided that this would be essentially a team ride, with a no drop policy and some light spooning at the end. Of course when we made this decision, no one knew that the weather would be more fitting of a moisture laden hell-scape, but these things happen. I parked in Fort Lee and rode across to the staging area (known to many as the George Washington Bridge), and met up with my teammates, we arrived in our pen at 6 am. Which gave us an hour to shiver, huddle for warmth and (theoretically) urinate off the bridge (another item ticked off the bucket list—again, this may or may not have happened).

I will now offer a helpful tip for those who want to do the Fondo next year—bring along something warm and quasi-disposable for the wait on the bridge. I was wearing my clear rain cape, and I was toasty warm, but many of those waiting on the bridge, were not so warm and took to huddling on the ground like a colony of lycra penguins. I avoided eye contact with these poor frozen bastards.

We squatted for an hour on the bridge while the Fondo organizers did their best "ATF blasting music outside the Branch Davidian Compound" imitation with their loudspeakers. We were encouraged to "make some noise" on a few occasions, and then we set off.

That’s when we felt the first few raindrops. The view from the GWB made Manhattan look like a Stieglitz photo, devoid of color and shrouded in mist. Many of us tried convince ourselves that it was just foggy out, but leaving the confines of the bridge showed that it was indeed raining (well played, weather sites that had a 30-40 percent chance of rain). Right now, I’m going to end the suspense and tell you that it rained. All. Goddamn. Day.

But we were committed to a convivial team ride, so we pushed forward. Things went fine until I picked up a nail on 9W after Nyack. The two inch long flathead nail speared right through my rear tire vertically like a piercing trough the ear of a girl who hates her stepdad. I removed the nail, and hoped that the Stan’s fluid on my tubeless tire would magically clog the hole like it does on the videos on the website. It didn’t. We tired using Co2 cartridges and mini pumps, but there was only a fine mist coming out of the large hole in my tire. I need to add a tube. I repaired my flat, and only 20 minutes later, we were rolling again.

The rest of the ride went along in a very moist and enjoyable manner. We rode up to the top of Perkins, had a Coke and shivered our way back down. I was cautious on every descent, because I didn’t give a flea’s fart about my finishing time. We rode and kept the group together, passing the guys with the foaming butts (seriously, they had foaming butts, I think it had something to do with chamois cream, water and friction. It made it seem like they were sitting on saddles made out of Santa’s face.), and, after 7-ish hours of riding, we were done. None of us went to Weehawken to get our finishing medals, because that would mean more miles of riding and going to Weehawken, but we did get a lot out of the day. My teammates and I rode through a trying and ultimately satisfying experience (I shall not use the "e-word" to describe the day here, because that word has been rendered meangingless by overuse—no, your burrito is not "e-word".), and we were the better for it. Personally, I can say that I have never been that wet for that long in all of my 44 years on Earth, and I would gladly do the GFNY again, just in conditions that are less e-word.