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Locked. Loaded. Full Metal Jacket.

Scorching heat and the drought of recent weeks caused a dusty haze to hang in the air.

Just twenty miles in, things were relatively quiet as the oppressive heat was already beginning to take its toll.

The radio crackled and then a voice coming from somewhere in the melee of support vehicles behind funneled through my earpiece: "Fifteen kilometers until the first section of cobbles, fifteen kilometers." Everyone knew what that meant. You have heard of shit hitting the fan, but the fan is rarely on "High," as it would be in fifteen kilometers.

The tension in the peloton was palpable and riders were becoming sketchy. One hundred eighty riders slowly started picking up speed.

Ten kilometers until the first of twenty-one sections of atrocious cobblestones and the whining drone of the tires against the pavement was escalating in intensity.

Like a giant wave continuously cresting and crashing into itself, desperate riders were scrambling up the flanks of the pack and filtering back into the sea of the peloton. Anything and everything was fair game at this point. Sidewalks, driveways, and grass were all catalysts for people who wished to get to the front.

Sssmack. The first crash. He must have hit that traffic island.

Five kilometers out and the speed was increasing relentlessly. Elbows, shoulders, and heads were clashing in frantic attempts to hold position. The radio crackled again: "Hans what is your position?" Not wanting to take a hand off the handlebars to respond during the rolling rugby match, I swore to myself and wondered the purpose of the mal-timed question. I managed to hit the "talk" button that was clipped to the inside of my jersey and respond that I was right where I needed to be, at the front.

Like the sound a bomb makes when falling from the sky, the whine of the tires was swelling to a feverish pitch. I licked my lips. Killer instinct. The battle hath commenced.

A literal KABOOM as one hundred eighty riders funneled into the first section of cobblestones. Behind me, I could hear the first sounds of metal against stone as people piled themselves into the bottlenecked entrance. Dust kicked up from the leading cars was so thick that visibility was reduced to no more than thirty feet. Like a car outrunning its headlights, there was no time to react to what you might suddenly find beneath your tires. Bodies and bottles with the lethality of landmines ejected themselves from bikes and were strewn over the road. Tires exploded left and right and the ensuing sound of metal rims against the ancient, uneven cobblestones filled the air.

We were screaming across the cobbles. Thirty miles per hour over some of the most gnarly stones you could possibly ride your bike over. A jackhammer strapped to my ass would have been more forgiving than what I was riding over. The only reason I knew that my legs were still attached to my body was because of the forward progress I was somehow making.

Not that it was worth anything at this point, my vision started waver. Fiery black clouds reduced my vision to a fine point as all spare blood dumped into my legs. Finally, we exited the cobbles. Breathe one, two, three. Breathe one, two, three. Ah, vision restored. The fifty, fifty ratio of dust to air had clogged my nose and inflamed my lungs.

A quick survey told me that I had made it in the front group of about forty and there was nothing but clusters of carnage behind. The fan was on "High" all right and we all had to go through that twenty more times. Only 35 of the 110 miles covered, it was going to be a rough day in the saddle.

My mind was in a different realm. I felt no pain, no discomfort, just a wild, crazy-eyed out of body experience. Like a hound on a hunt that has gotten its first taste of blood, I was salivating in anticipation of the next section of cobbles.

Boom!

Silence.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

A bird chirps. The sweet smell of the freshly plowed fields gently wafts to my nose. From my warm tingling wounds, a faint tickle of blood snaked its way down my leg. A cloud passed overhead. It was certainly a beautiful day.

Startling me from my stupor, I could hear someone calling in distress over the radio. With a groan, I picked myself up from the pavement and remounted my bike. When my front wheel failed to move and I saw the holes where spokes should have been I uttered the four-letter equivalent of "hmm, that’s not good." I was on the left hand side of the road and wheel changes always happen on the right hand side. So like that stupid game "Frogger" where you have to dodge in and out of traffic to get to the other side of the street, I carefully navigated my way to the other side while avoiding the constant barrage of bikes, cars, and fiendish motorcycle "gendarmes" that whizzed by.

Safely on the proper side of the road, I radioed back to the team car for a wheel change. Precious seconds turned into minutes. A cow raised its head and looked at me with only mild curiosity. "Oh cow, only if you knew what was happening. Look at yourself, just munching away on your grass. Your days are so easy. Yea, well, I have dreamt of this race for years now. I’ve ridded 12,000 miles in preparation just this year and I am standing in the grass, holding a wheel above my head, and talking to a cow." The team car finally arrives with my wheel. The cow lowered its head again. "Oh go moo yourself…only if you knew…"

After motor pacing for a bit, I leapfrogged from splinter group to splinter group in a desperate attempt to make it to the back of the race caravan. Cobbles, again. I was flying. Just one hundred meters from the back of the caravan and tire pressure goes to zero. Another four letter word is uttered.

I rode the flat through the cobbles and onto the pavement all the while looking around desperately for someone with a spare wheel. Jackpot. Monsieur, si vous plais. Merci. La equipe de Estais Unis, oui…..Merci. I was off again with a new lease on life.

Cobbles, again. Tire pressure zero, again. Four-letter word, again. Another four letter word for good measure. Twenty miles later, five sections, and a demonstration in bike handling skills, I get my third wheel change from the same Frenchmen. The race was over; I was already fifteen minutes behind what was left of the peloton. Plumes of dust could be seen rising in the distance from where the peloton was and where I should have been. I still intended to finish. For preemptive purposes, I said another four-letter word and went off on the hunt again.

Shortly afterwards, though, the gendarme forced me to the side of the road and ended my race. The darkness of my sunglasses shaded that race official from the wraith of my gaze.

There were only about sixty finishers that day, and my story is hardly unique. Paris-Roubaix gets me out of bed and onto my bike in the morning. I thirst for the goose bumps and the adrenaline induced ecstasy that only this race gives me. I love to ride, but Madame Roubaix is why I savor the suffering.