500 meters to go before the top of the hill, narrow road, huge truck behind you, getting louder. You look back… once. You don’t want to see that… thing… again. It’s big. Getting bigger. Just a bit further. This is the end of your ride, just over the hill and down a 4% grade for less than a mile. You make it to the top, where it flattens out. You’re burying yourself, picking up speed, and the $!#%# thing is getting LOUDER, sounding like it’s right on your tail. Full sprint mode, as in “Cap’n, she can’t take much more of this!” 25 miles, lots of climbing, and NOTHING makes your legs scream like they are now. Finally, a couple hundred meters down the hill, ’round two corners, you look back, and it’s gone.
I’m going to have dreams tonight that it’s about to plow through my bedroom. For those under 50, forget JJ Abrams Star Wars reboot. Find “Duel” on Netflix or wherever. Spielberg’s first film out of college. You’ll understand.
OK, the actual ride report. Kevin didn’t ride yesterday so this morning was one of those very-rare not-on-the-schedule events. We were hoping to ride the nice bikes, but the roads were still wet and even a light sprinkle from time to time. Since I had already done my two rides up Kings this week I wasn’t about to go up again, so we did the Old LaHonda/West Old LaHonda/84 loop. A bit shorter than normal at just 24 miles, but we made it special by stopping at Woodside Bakery, picking up breakfast (I’d planned ahead and used one of those Tour de France Caravan “backpacks” that fold up to the size of a wallet).
But the soreness in my legs right now isn’t coming from Old LaHonda. It’s totally from burning every match we had, trying to stay away from that huge evil truck coming up behind us on Jefferson!
“Duel” for me was the most impressive piece of directing Spielberg ever did. Kudos for surviving the ride without a heart attack!
Agreed! In my opinion, Spielberg does a better job connecting with something primal than George Lucas. I will go way out on a limb and suggest that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a “better” movie that Star Wars (“better” being more than just entertainment value, of which Star Wars delivered more of). I was about to say that Spielberg depends more on people to carry the action, but in Duel, you gotta give an awful lot of credit to the truck…
I have been a fan of this movie since first seeing it at age 12 in 1971. I have it on VHS and DVD. You can find an interview on youtube that Spielberg did about the making of Duel. I am just mystified by something, however. Originally the telefilm was 70 minutes in length and was going to be aired on TV as part of the “Movie-of-the-Week” series. Universal liked it so much they decided to release it as a feature film but needed 15 more minutes of footage to accomplish this, so the scenes with the stranded school bus, and the car being pushed into the train by the truck were added. How was this accomplished when the truck was demolished at the end of the movie? Spielberg specially chose the model used, and there was no “understudy.” He knew the final scene was a one-shot deal which was why he used 6 cameras to capture every possible angle.