Allez la Douze: Dropping Flies
An ancient Velominati legend states that when the The Prophet created the common fly, he gave it a maximum air speed of exactly 12 kilometers per hour. When he created the common Cyclist, on the other hand, he gave us a maximum climbing speed of 11.9 kilometers per hour.
The worst flies on the planet live in the Pyrenees, where it is hot and humid. I recall an overcast typical day in the Pyrenees, the kind of day where the flies pull back the drapes, look outside, and decide to take the whole family out to the Cols for an afternoon of Cyclist Surfing. As it happened, we were on a big ride that day; we started with the Col d’Aspin, went over the Tourmalet, and ended at Luz Ardiden as the sun was tucking in behind the shoulders of the mountains surrounding us.
It was here, on the lower slopes of the last climb, down within the suffocating effect of the tree line where our sanity was most severely tested. Luz Ardiden is the cruelest kind of climb, the sort that is always one hour from ending, as Will Fotheringham once pointed out. With 13km to go, the speed you climb at is 13km/h; with 12km to go, the speed drops to 12km/h, then to 11, and so on with always an hours’ riding left before you.
The guns had been thoroughly drained of any power after 160km over two of the most fearsome climbs in the Pyrenees; the mind was not far from cracking. I do not know what is worse; the noise of their flying droves, or their endless dancing upon the arms and legs, but the flies here are incessant. It is hard enough, climbing at track-stand speed, without the added challenge of doing so while wildly swinging an arm or two about and cursing every manner of airborne invertebrate.
The reserves were tapped and the bottom of the V-Well scraped for every bit of speed in an effort to escape this torturous hell. Above the treeline and into the pastures, the flies found more appealing hosts than boney Cyclists, and I was left to once again commune with butterflies – the only sort of flying insect I find at all tolerable.
Every summertime climb I have ever done has been accompanied by these pests; and every summertime climb – irrespective of my fitness – has been enjoyed at a maximum speed of just under 12 kilometers per hour. Having insects capable of flying a bit faster than the struggling cyclist is Nature’s enforcement of Rule #5, it is the Way of Things.
Vive la Vie Velominatus.
simple solution – get faster.
pretty sure The Prophet had a bit more than 12KmH in his guns.
Here we get a kind of horsefly that loves sucking cyclist sweat. They bite and you definitely don’t want to get one down inside you jersey!
Rule #5 // Harden The Fuck Up
Yep 11.9 kph. Universal isn’t it?
Much of the way up to Windy Ridge on the V-to-V. Also on Hurricane Ridge a couple weeks later.
Good training for the mind. In not minding.
Hey Jamie! How was the maritime voyage??
The worst flies are in the Pyrenees… obviously this rider has never been to the west coast of Scotland In midge season…
@Frank you Dutch photographic plagiarist. I refer you to my gravatar, shot by me as I topped Luz Ardiden last year ha! For me, the most beautiful view in that part of the Pyrenees.
The flies around there are truly fucking horrid. I blame it on all the cows and sheep that tend to wander about at the least opportune moments, when you’re either heaving yourself up a mountain or flying down one. I’ve video footage on my Youtube page from the morning I climbed the Col de Solour where you can actually see the buggers buzzing around the camera.
I want to ride this sometime in my near-ish future. It just looks like a beautiful, painful, climb.
Get to top, turn around, fly down, mouth open. Revenge.
Pardon the pun.
@Xyverz
It’s truly beautiful. When you go, be sure to hang out for a while in the cafe in Luz San Sauveur village square, at the foot of the climb. That place just reeks Rule #80 compliance with riders from around the world chatting and sharing their stories.
@napolinige
The worst flies I ever experienced were out in Pillsbury Forest in Northern Minnesota – they were so bad, you’d smack your hand on your neck and get about 15 of them right there. We rode in long-sleeve wind-breakers with the zipper down so the jacket would poof up and the flies couldn’t bite you. And baggy shorts for the same effect.
And there too, I think our speeds were in the 12kp/h range altogether too often.
“Luz Ardiden is the cruelest kind of climb, the sort that is always one hour from ending…..”
Oh I hear you brother, I hear you.
@PeakInTwoYears
I leave a week from Friday… Consequently, no Whidbey Cogal, with or without flies.
@Graeme
Fair enough. And now I don’t want to, neither.
@meursault
I honestly don’t know where some of you keep these photos just in case there’s a relevant time to post them.
@American Psycho I don’t think too many of us would consider him a Common Cyclist.
@Graeme
I have and I defy anthing to be worse in Europe
@Mike_P
While I don’t dispute your assessment of my character in principle, it is in this case the other way around, mate. Photo was taken in 2003 and has been offered as a VVallpaper since 2011, when taking your avatar shot was hardly a twinkle in your camera-hands index finger.
(I also doubt either of us was the first to take a photo from this particularly glorious location.)
Ouch, Solour (is that spelled right?) is another bad one. We were actually up there training for the L’Etape in ’03 and we hit that one during the event. I have no memory of the bugs on that climb – only the pain.
@frank I concede to you on the dates :-)
I just came back from the Pyrenees and lesson is learnt, as you can see the annoying fellas managed to appear on the picture.
@humancyclist
Ah, the sweet taste of revonge!
@Xyverz Oh it is a beauty. I have the privilege of cycle guiding in the Pyrenees and this is right in the area i guide around (Bareges).. I love this climb (and hate it).. That and the ride up to Gavarnie and the Col du Tentes are some of he best in the area. Please go – it will change your life. It did mine.
@Mike_P
Is there a time of year that one can go when these li’l fuckers aren’t obnoxious? I’m guessing that if such a time exists, it’ll be a Rule #9 (snow/ice/etc) day?
@Richy Pea
How would this compare to The Volcano for pain? Haleakala is another mountain I want to climb…
Aussie blow flies. The worst. Fortunately, unlike most Aussie critters they don’t kill you instantly.
On a different note, that climb looks amazing.
I can go one better. Riding the 4WD tracks up Mt Kosciuszko (Australias highest mountain, but not so high on a world scale) underneath the chairlifts in summer, the gradient is such that riding just faster than walking pace is a big effort. The march flies, with their big green eyes, orange bum and long stinging proboscis circle like vultures waiting for a sick animal to die. The deeper note of their slow wing beats compared to regular bush flies make them easy to identify. And then like a buzz bomb, the humming stops.
That’s because the bastard has landed on your blood enriched left calf, and its proboscis is begining to drill into your skin. At this point, timing is everything. You must pick a few metres of track, engage extra effort from your body, and take a hand off the bars to whack that prick and not fall off.
But you miss, and the humming starts again.
@Graeme
+1 and you simply can’t see or hear the midge until it’s too late. Avon Skin So Soft Dry Oil, Woodland Fresh is the only thing that I’ve found that counters them. It has the added bonus effect of putting a sheen on the guns and arms but it’s no Baxter…
Cripes. All very good reason to train to go really really hard up hill.
@Xyverz
No flies in Hawaii. OK, a few dengue carrying mosquitos, only in one area, but flies are way down on the suffer list. Actually they are not on the list. Climbing is cruel enough without worrying about flies too. The Volcano does not dish out much pain unless you go at Dutch Monkey speed.
@Gianni if only our mosquitoes carried dengue, then they might not also carry Ross River Virus and Barmah Forest Virus.
And @frank, until I see the winner of San Sebastian getting around with corks hanging off his txapela, I will maintain that Australian flies are worse than Pyrenean
@frank
Does this mean we get to see the teenage Frank mtn. cycling photo? It has been awhile…
@Gianni
The Volcano isn’t as steep as Luz Ardiden? Hmm, I might have to start there. And I can’t catch Dutch Monkey speed, let alone anybody else I ride with. I’m just still too fat to climb. (Working on that, though! I’m finally back below 100kg!)
Funny how things change… a few years ago upon seeing that photo I would be killing to ride a motorbike up that. Now, the first thing that came to mind was feeling the burn in the legs, then feeling a adulation upon cresting the top, then finally the adrenaline of the decent. Motorbike may give me a similar adrenaline rush, but that is only a fraction of the experience that riding a push bike along that road delievers.
@Xyverz
Keep working on that weight loss. I started at 95kg a couple of years ago. I am down to 72 down and still a little too fat to climb well. Still, start your climbing now and make the most use of the Gravity Assisted Resistance Training it provides you.
I was climbing in a fly-infested zone and flatted and ripped the sidewall out of the tire. I swapped the full tire (extra prepared that day thankfully!) and both arms and legs were mostly black from flies drinking my sweat.
On the way back down, it felt like riding through a hailstorm.
Im with @Marcus, our flies, and every other fkn animal not chained up down here, are big bastards and they hunt you down and deliberately get a free ride just to piss us off more.
e.g. Saturdays ride of a mere 50kms I was privileged enough to have a veritable zoo along the route, from said flies, 3 marauding magpies spaced evenly along the sojourn so as to lull me into a false sense of security till the next attack, redneck utility drivers and a big stinkin’ slow moving Brown snake that I suspect was just waiting for a slow moving cyclist in Rapha (me) to come along and start the season off nicely.
So @frank, having never been to the beautiful part of the world you are describing, I can only imagine it to smell like roses and be full of butterflies as I hoped it would be.
The photo looks to darn idyllic to be anything but.
@Puffy
Thanks, mate. Back in March of 2011, I’d gotten my weight down to 82kg (from my start at 125kg!), but over the past 8 months, being unemployed, depressed, and otherwise sick, I’ve gained a good portion of it back. My goal is to get back to 85kg and see where it goes from there.
@Xyverz Well I was out from May – End of August this year and they didn’t start going away until towards the end of my time there, although this year was particularly wet at points and the winter finished later. Horse flies are the worst and Luz Ardiden is bad for them as is Col du Soleur (which i think someone else mentioned about). I haven’t rode the Haleakala so couldn’t comment really although I have watch the vid of @Frank riding it, I would say in isolation the Volcano would be harder however there are many climbs around the Luz Ardiden area to incorporate into a bigger ride. Basically – you can keep riding around that area until the wheels come off, and they will! You never really win or beat those mountains, you just make a deal with them that day and survive. The next days is just that – another day and The Man with the Hammer will be close at hand. I think he might own a Gite near La Mongie because I always seem to meet him in the tunnels around there…
As I climbed some of the lesser Cols in the summer 12kph seemed just about my average, maybe a little lower. To read here that it’s the universal climbing speed fills me with joy, I must be improving although on l’Epine in 40 degrees C when I hadn’t seen my pals for a while (heard them above me) and butterflies really were flying along beside me I urged them to make a dive through the spokes.
My infected deerfly bite (like horsefly) a few years back. Better example of a target pattern than I could find anywhere on the net.
Photo pre-dates buying a bike and Rule #33 compliance.
Riding to the start of my first race I had a fly bomb into the back of my throat. I was most pleased when I managed to hock it up and spit it out.
But I wondered if I might regret squandering that little bit of nutrient and protein in 2 hours time…
@JohnB
The first cousin of the scottish midge has made it’s way to the West coast of Ireland. Little fvckers. We’re having an unseasonably warm end-of-summer, which is great for evening rides as long as you don’t mind riding through clouds of biting bastards. Found some stuff called ‘Smidge’ made by some Scots that works. Never got any results from that Avon stuff even though half the local CC swear by it…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smidge-That-Midge-Insect-Repellent/dp/B00413715E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379401549&sr=8-1&keywords=smidge+insect+repellent
When I climbed the Bieler Höhe in Austria this year I was in the 8-9kph section, which was as slow to invite flies to sit on my handlebar!
I don’t remember flies going over the Tourmalet last August, maybe they thought I was an inanimate object that had been carelessly left on the edge of the road.
I don’t remember there being many other cyclists in Luz saint Sauveur but it was midday when I got there and any one in their right mind would plan on hitting the slopes earlier on in the day to avoid the heat.
I wish I done Luz Ardiden but with the Hautacam already in my legs and the Tourmalet and 115km ahead it seemed like a mountain too many. Next time.
@snoov
Nasty. That bite doesn’t look so great either.
@James
This is true, every word.
They are so big you can see their shadow on the ground beside your own. You can feel them land on you and then you try swipe them off. At our camp in Jindabyne in January you hear calls amongst the group of ‘right calf,’ ‘left butt cheek’ to alert the rider to a mammoth of a march fly on them. I nearly fell off my bike last year as I watched one of the guys pretending to be a windmill as he swiped away the bastards.
Yep, sorry North American & Euro-Velominatii, but you fuckers know nothing of flies or other fucker insects. Riding in summer down here in Oz, north winds, 40 degrees and every mutation of big fat fly hitting you in the face as you hump it into a headwind spiked with dust whist trying to avoid a bogan in a ute hurling a beer can at you. The only advantage of the big Dunny Budgie fly is that they’re so big their wings make the sound of an idling chainsaw so you can hear the fuckers coming.
My vote goes to midges too… much worse than any standard fly.
Not as bad individually as a horsefly but those tend to be lone attackers. Midges swarm.
We have the occasional wasp – a bit like the ones you get in France. I had one go down my jersey once and he just kept stinging me until I could get him out.
But my single worst insectal experience on a bike has to be the time that a bee flew into my mouth and stung me on the tongue. Lucky I’m not allergic, but it was extremely painful and swollen and I had to get tweezers and pull the sting out when I got home.
Yeah, march flies are shite, but slow and stupid too. Well, I reckon only the stupid ones visit me. They alight so gently though, you barely feel them. My dog hates them, and I had a mare who would stand still so you could swat them off her legs, she hated them so much. Dog runs inside at the sound of them.
One of my very few religious beliefs is that everyone gets a fly. As soon as you kill your fly, God notices and sends you another one. There is always a fly. The best thing i learned in Kung-fu is how to move fast enough to swat any fly. it’s all God does. He does not give a crap about sparrows falling, he just makes sure that everyone has a fly.
The worst thing is out West, when the buggers will actually follow your fork into your mouth! If eating outside. You have to wave and swat as you open your mouth.
@ChrisO
There are a load of medical folk in here and I’m not – but if a next time (and anyone else) don’t use tweezers on a bee sting. You just squeeze the poison out of the sack and into you and make it worse. You need to avoid touching the sting and get either very fine tweezers or the back of a couple of knife blades to pull it out right at skin level without squeezing the poison sack. That way will result in far less pain and swelling. Easier said than done but I have managed to stop a few people making things worse that way. Of course doing that down your own throat would be another challenge!
My personal worst one was a Hornet. Darned thing was so big had a little beast sat on it’s back with a spear and shield when it appeared alongside me. When it stung me on my back it felt like the wee fella went clean through my shoulder blade with his spear. At that point I fell off my bike and became a sitting target for a few more stings for good measure.