{"id":45027,"title":"Cyclocross and life's ruts","description":"Kentucky University professor and enthusiastic amateur cyclocross racer Brian McNely of The Post Racing and the Louisville Cyclocross Collective considers the role ruts play in his sporting passion, life and the Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner\u2019s acclaimed novel Crossing to Safety.","content":"

Crossing to Safety | Riding Ruts in the Bluegrass with Wallace Stegner<\/p>

Published in<\/strong>: <\/span>CYCLOCROSS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>

Academic and enthusiastic amateur cyclocross racer Brian McNely considers the role ruts play in his sporting passion, life and the Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner\u2019s acclaimed novel Crossing to Safety<\/em>.<\/p>

Life can't all be about ruts can it? Read on to find out.<\/p>

\"BrianThe author. Image: Graeme Gardiner<\/em><\/p>

I\u2019ve had Wallace Stegner\u2019s novel, Crossing to Safety<\/em>, since 2013\u2014not long after I was hired at the University of Kentucky.<\/p>

I grabbed it from a table in the elevator breezeway near my office on the 13th floor of Patterson Office Tower. Everything on the table had spilled out from a retiring professor\u2019s office\u2014outdated textbooks, volumes of old academic journals, the odd novel or slim chapbook. Crossing to Safety<\/em> stood out in that wasteland topography of old ideas.<\/p>

\"visualABOUT RIJDEN<\/strong>: <\/span>Rijden grew from a passion for Flemish-style cycle racing. We're a UK independent that publishes this free online cycling magazine and creates sustainable gifts for cyclists. Read <\/em>more about Rijden<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>

\"visualI had read some Stegner as an undergrad in the mid-1990s, in Glenn Love\u2019s Western American Literature seminar at the University of Oregon. On the breezeway table, the novel shouted my name, waved to me from 1995. I grabbed it without thinking and tucked it under my arm.<\/p>

\u201ca literary gargoyle for ten years\u201d<\/em><\/p>

In my office I placed it high on a beige metal shelf, atop a small stack of paperbacks\u2014The Plague<\/em>, Berlin Stories<\/em>, The Art of the Commonplace<\/em>. It stood vigil like a literary gargoyle for ten years before I reached up, pulled it down, and blew dust from its nut-brown cover.<\/p>

\"*\"WHO?<\/strong> Brian McNely is a professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky who races cyclocross for The Post Racing based in Louisville , Kentucky. You can read more of Brian's work on his website <\/em>brianmcnely.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. <\/em><\/strong>Wallace E Stegner (1909 \u2013 1993) was an American novelist, writer, environmentalist, and historian.<\/em><\/p>

\"TheImage: Brian McNely<\/em><\/p>

I noticed, for the first time, that the cover image of a late autumn pastoral scene features a tumbledown rock wall not unlike the limestone fences that crisscross the bluegrass.<\/p>

US National Cyclocross Championships<\/h3>

Last autumn, as my cyclocross season reached its crescendo with the National Championships\u2014in Louisville this year, basically a home race for me\u2014I read Wallace Stegner\u2019s Crossing to Safety<\/em> every day, in 20-page chunks. I finished it not long after Nats.<\/p>

It\u2019s a novel about ruts.<\/p>

By January there\u2019s nothing to do but ride the trainer and dream about next year. The late afternoon streetlights flip on and oily pools of wet tarmac shine in the gloaming. An ambulance screams up Oliver Lewis Way, and downtown Lexington traffic squeezes the bike lanes for a beat. There are no cyclists out\u2014yet another weekend lost to cold and rain and wind.<\/p>

I unclip and turn off the fan.<\/p>

\u201cWant to go to Blue Stallion?\u201d Jen asks from upstairs.<\/p>

\u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWe haven\u2019t been in weeks. It\u2019ll be fun!\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIf you say so. Tell me when.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cNow?\u201d<\/p>

The world\u2019s tallest bar<\/h3>

It\u2019s misty and windy and we make the half-mile walk to Blue Stallion with hands stuffed in pockets and chins tucked in scarves. We stand on tiptoe at the world\u2019s tallest bar and get a Hefeweizen and a Bock Sabbath.<\/p>

\u201cDo you think maybe you\u2019re kind of in a rut?\u201d<\/em><\/p>

Jen takes a sip from her Wei\u00dfbier glass and gets a little foam on her upper lip. \u201cDo you think maybe you\u2019re kind of in a rut?\u201d she asks.<\/p>

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\"visualI look around the bar. There\u2019s a wall that says \u201cFeatured Artist of the Month\u201d above two giant beer fridges, lit cheerily from inside. A Wildcats basketball game plays on all the screens.<\/p>

\u201cI don\u2019t think the word \u2018rut\u2019 means the same thing to me that it does to you,\u201d I say.<\/p>

\u201cYou know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cA stag loves a rut.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cCome on.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cRuts are safety.\u201d I sip my Bock Sabbath. \u201cCheck out the Featured Artist of the Month.\u201d<\/p>

I think about ruts<\/h3>

We eavesdrop on the four millennial women next to us, each tucked behind beer flights fanned like cards in a poker game. We talk about work and the kids and her marathon training and my cycling offseason. We bundle up and walk home into the wind, in the winter dark, and hold gloved hands. I think about ruts.<\/p>

\"imageI think about ruts. Image: Rijden.<\/em><\/p>

In Crossing to Safety<\/em>, Stegner\u2019s protagonist, Larry Morgan, lands a job teaching English at the University of Wisconsin during the interwar period.<\/p>

\u201cexpertise is worth nothing\u201d<\/em><\/p>

He embodies the angst of that precarious time enjoyed and despised by all professors\u2014the early career excitement of acknowledged expertise and the realization <\/span>that your expertise is worth nothing unless you write, publish, play the academic game, and publish some more.<\/p>

Driven by hard work<\/h3>

Larry writes, and publishes, and publishes more, and it\u2019s still not enough for a long-term faculty position. Academic jobs are scarce, the country is on edge. Larry and his wife Sally have no generational wealth. They are unmoored but driven by hard work.<\/p>

\"IGrabbing a Blue Stallion. Image: Brian McNely.<\/em><\/p>

At a faculty party they meet the Langs\u2014Sid and Charity\u2014wealthy and privileged and self-assured. Charity is all charisma and charm and full of answers in an indeterminate world. Sid is affable and plays the academic game well but can\u2019t publish.<\/p>

Naturally he nabs a long-term faculty position. The Langs take pity on Larry and Sally, using their connections to find Larry work in a publishing house. The two families forge permanent bonds. Eventually Larry and Sally name their daughter Lang.<\/p>

Crossing to safety<\/h3>

Crossing to Safety<\/em> is a novel about love and friendship, hard work, academe, privilege and good luck, writing, growing old, a garden and a serpent. It\u2019s also a novel about ruts.<\/p>

Ruts cut through the center of the story and point it into new directions. Sally joins Sid and Charity in Vermont for the summer, at the Lang\u2019s idyllic Batten Pond. Her days are patterned by Charity\u2014even rest and relaxation are written into the schedule.<\/p>

\"visualNEVER MISS OUT<\/strong>: <\/span>Subscribe to get all our latest cyclocross guides and features<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0with Rijden\u2019s free email newsletter.<\/em><\/p>

\"Subscribe<\/u><\/a>Back in Madison, Larry house-sits for the Langs, puts his head down\u2014\u201cdog to vomit\u201d every morning\u2014and begins his second novel. In the afternoons he teaches high school teachers how to lecture on Beowulf and Thomas Hardy.<\/p>

Stegner uses ruts to tell us about Larry and Charity, the novel\u2019s key archetypes. He shows what happens when you ride a rut toward some greater aim, and what happens when the rut rides you into the ground.<\/p>

\"CyclocrossRuts can ride you into the ground. Image: Rijden.<\/em><\/p>

For Larry, ruts are evidence of work, patterns of effort, grooves of productivity. Butt in seat, words on page. For Charity, ruts are rules for living, for governing life. In Larry, ruts are a creative way through. In Charity ruts are tracks toward a predetermined end.<\/p>

American cycling culture<\/h3>

Cycling culture is strange to most Americans. To Kentuckians it\u2019s almost an offense against nature. Cyclocross is a weird little outlier, popular in far-off places such as Flanders and Falkirk.<\/p>

\u201cMost crossers I know think a lot about ruts\u201d<\/em><\/p>

Most crossers I know think a lot about ruts. In many races, success or failure is defined by the course\u2019s muddy or rooty ruts, which can change from lap to lap.<\/p>

In this oddball sport, you ride as hard as you can for 60 minutes, on a bike ill-suited to the conditions, on a circuit of grass and mud and sand and gravel, dotted here and there with downed logs or unrideable steep pitches or artificial barriers that the best of us hop and the worst of us dread.<\/p>

\u201ccyclocross is even nerdier\u201d<\/em><\/p>

The specialized vocabulary of cycling is legendarily esoteric, but cyclocross is even nerdier, with terms and ideas and obsessions that even road racers and mountain bikers find tiresome.<\/p>

\"ImageWhen it\u2019s all done. Image: Brian McNely<\/em><\/p>

We obsess over tire tread and tire pressure and tire type; we have charts and graphs that match air pressure to conditions; we spend hours gluing tubular tires and watching race footage and adjusting handlebar position by fractional millimeters.<\/p>

We sprint at the beginning of the race, then hang on for dear life\u2014our heart rates continuously in the red. We ride the easy bits hard and the hard bits harder.<\/p>

Ruts are safety<\/h3>

In any given course, ruts are safety, so long as you ride them true. A rut shows you where others have been, and a good rut grooves the world\u2014not too deep, not too sharp, not too loose, not too rocky. A good rut splits aces and covers the hardways. A good rut is freedom.<\/p>

\u201cany fear and you will be crossrutted\u201d<\/em><\/p>

Riding the rut is like jabbing an epipen. You commit. You head into the rut at full speed. Any hesitation, any doubt, any fear and you will be crossrutted\u2014your front tire washes out, you go over the bars, you fling yourself into oblivion.<\/p>

The rut is a belay line, a ripcord. The rut is a bright blue line on a drugstore pregnancy test. You keep your godsdamn hands off the brakes, pedal hard, and say \u201cI do\u201d as you dive into the rut. You get stuck in to stick things out.<\/p>

I can\u2019t explain any of this to my wife at the bar, or as we walk home, and she hasn\u2019t read any Stegner.<\/p>

In her first letter home from Batten Pond that turbulent summer, Sally tells Larry: \u201cYou like ruts, because ruts are a sign work is being done.\u201d A rut is a promise, and the material embodiment of one way through. A rut is a way of crossing to safety, but it\u2019s not foolproof. You can\u2019t ride it halfway.<\/p>

To roar<\/h3>

The view outside now is swallowed nearly whole by mist. I put dinner in the oven and open my laptop at the kitchen counter. I look up the etymology of rut. Its Latin root is rugire<\/em>, to roar. I look outside again and see only the cold bright corona of a streetlight on Oliver Lewis Way.<\/p>

\"BrianThe author in action. Image: Zach Roberts.<\/em><\/p>

There\u2019s a hand-written note in pencil on the inside back flap of Crossing to Safety<\/em>, in the retired professor\u2019s unsteady scrawl\u2014\u201cp. 201\u2014life is the thing happening while you\u2019re making other plans.\u201d<\/p>

\"visualREAD MORE<\/strong>: Want to read more of our unique cyclocross articles? Do you want to improve at cyclocross or find out how easy it is to race in Belgium? <\/em>Read all of Rijden\u2019s cyclocross articles for free<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>

\"visualMaybe. Or maybe life is what happens in the rut\u2014once you\u2019ve committed, you hold on and work your way through.<\/p>

\u201croar into a rut with your eyes wide open\u201d<\/em><\/p>

If you roar into a rut with your eyes wide open, there\u2019s an excellent chance you\u2019ll roar out the other side, picking up speed, moving with confidence into the next obstacle or corner or climb.<\/p>

17 December 2024, Brian McNely<\/em><\/p>

\"Rijden<\/p>

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