Warp speed

with that.' I was still grasping for straws. You know what they say about drowning men.

'You ready?' He hopped on his bike as he asked.

Click! Click! I popped my cleats into the pedals and stood up on the bike hopping it slightly off the ground three or four times.

'Last one to the switchback buys the first pitcher!' I started hammering up to the trailhead in about gear two- three (eleventh gear) getting the jump on Jim. He pedaled up beside me not even breathing hard yet.

'You cheat, old man!'

'I'll show you old!' I cranked my right shifter down changing to about seven so I was in fifteenth gear. Then I moved my posterior further back on the saddle so I could push the pedals through and over the top of the stroke. Once I got rolling good, I cranked up to three on the left shifter and up to two on the right one. Now I was in eighteenth gear and in my hill-climbing stroke. My legs are stronger than Jim's, so I knew I could take him on the hill. The trek up the mountain to the switchback trailhead is a good couple of miles at a grade of at least forty-five degrees. A good warm-up.

By the time I got to the switchback at the top of the mountain I was at least fifty yards ahead of Jim. I dropped back down a couple of gears and stood up and dropped my center of gravity back as far behind the saddle as I could and dove straight down the switchback trail. The switchbacks are about every forty yards or so on that particular trail and they're very steep. The worst part is that there are trees and stair steps all across and down the trail. I don't recommend it for beginners. The first time I tried it I had my center of gravity too far forward and did and 'endo' right over the handlebars. Had I not known how to fall from years of being thrown in karate, I would've been seriously injured.

The trail was much too technical and tricky for me to look back and see where Jim was. I turned a switchback and then I caught a glimpse of him. To make up time he'd decided to forego the switchback, bunny hopped his bike off the trail, and turned head first down the mountain at ninety degrees to the switchback. His body was way behind the saddle and he was screaming.

'Let's go, you old fart!' he yelled as he tore down the mountain, blazing his own trail.

'Now who's cheatin'?' I yelled just as I did a left foot plant and locked the back break, swinging my bike around counterclockwise at the last switchback. I entered the main trail crossroads by the big marker boulder just behind Jim.

Jim hopped his bike up on the boulder and held it up on just the back tire. Then he dropped down and hopped up on the front tire. He did a three-sixty off the rock and landed pointing in the right direction and never missed a pedal stroke.

'Show-off!' I said. Jim used to do bike trial tournaments where they would hop over cars and waterfalls and you name it. He has a picture of himself hopping his bike on its front tire in the scoop of a bulldozer while he's giving a peace sign with his right hand. Like I said, he's a show-off.

We raced down the logging road for a while and cut to the left, and down the 'screamin' downhill-between- the-benches' we had to have hit thirty miles per hour. An 'endo' here at that speed wouldn't be fun. We leapfrogged each other back and forth through the rocky 'whoops' and I took him on the 'crazy-uphill-by-the-tree.' When the trail opened back up to the logging road we were dead even. Jim bunny hopped the big oak tree across the road by nearly a foot! I had to pop my front tire up and dig my big front chain ring (that's a sprocket to you hairy-legged non-bikers) into the tree and then grind up and over the tree until my back tire caught it. I almost went over the handlebars from not keeping the front tire up high enough when I hit the ground on the other side of the tree. Somehow, I managed to stay upright.

'Thank God for gyroscopic motion. Amen, brother!' I muttered to myself and the squirrel that ran across the trail in front of me.

Finally, after about six miles we were up the last hill and back to the boulder.

Jim cried out, 'One more lap!' and kept on going.

I plowed in behind him holding my own. I looked at my heart rate monitor readout on my handlebars: one hundred eighty three beats per minute! That is about ninety percent my max and I had kept it there for about thirty minutes so far. Not bad for an old man. This time around he dropped me on the big oak. I didn't have enough left even to do a chain ring grind over it. I had to hop off my bike and climb over it dragging my bike along with me. Jim was waiting on me back at the boulder.

'What happened, old man?' he laughed.

'Whew!' I panted. 'I got hung up on the tree again. One of these days you have to show me how to get over that thing. By the way, you know you're not but about fourteen years younger than me.'

I laid my bike off the trail with the deraileur side up, which is proper bike etiquette. My legs felt like lead. I sat down on the boulder sucking on the tube in front of my face, which came up out of my jersey around to my back and into the water bag in my back jersey pocket. I felt my rear middle jersey pocket to make sure there was still plenty of water. I'd finished about a fourth of a liter, not enough.

'I was thinking,' I said still breathing hard, 'about the light 'Becca saw.'

'Yeah?' Jim took his helmet off and handed me an energy bar.

'What if it was like sonoluminescence?'

'How, there was nothing in that vacuum chamber but vacuum?' Jim asked.

'When we get back to the lab Monday remind me to make you work out on the board how many different molecules are actually in that vacuum chamber, at least fifty times. Where did you get your Ph.D. anyway?' I scolded him.

'Okay, sure it's not a perfect vacuum, but how could there have been enough molecules in there to luminesce?' he asked.

'Just like sonoluminescence. With that you have a bunch of sound waves pressing a tiny amount of water and other additives into such a small ball that it gets it as hot as the sun for a microsecond or so. Hence, the little flashes of light. What if the dumbbells set up some kind of crazy electromagnetic field configuration that trapped enough of the particles from the vacuum chamber into a small enough ball that the same type of thing happened? Maybe the flash of light didn't cause the explosion but was a symptom of a bigger problem.'