Equipment - Helmets That Saved Me - Bell Biker, Gallows Hill Road

Long story ahead...

Bell Biker, Gallows Hill Road, Redding, CT

Note: Gallows Hill Road in Redding, CT is immortalized (at least in my eyes) in the story about the Revolution "My Brother Sam Is Dead". If you're from the Connecticut area there are mentions of Hartford, Ridgefield, Croton-on-Hudson (NY), a few other places. The bit that gets me is that they walked ("marched") long distances, like Redding to Hartford. Anyway, on to the cycling bit.

When I Got The Helmet

I bought (or rather my parents bought) this helmet for my trip across Pennsylvania when I was 14 going on 15, back in 1982. When I got into cycling I was all about touring - that's the kind of cycling covered by Bicycling magazine. I wanted to ride with panniers, a triple crankset, wide range gearing, long wheelbase bike, yada yada yada.

My mom, ever supportive of my endeavors, found that the local Westport Y offered bike summer camps and requested a catalog. I pored over said catalog like it was a build kit for a bike... okay, maybe not that long, but I pored over it for hours and hours and hours. There were all sorts of choices, from a massive trip from Canada somewhere to somewhere in the US (Montreal to CT? I think it was 600 miles), others that were pretty short.

Because I was a bit tentative I selected a two week long trip that started somewhere way out in western PA and ended in Philadelphia. I think it was supposed to be 200 miles or something. Not very far but enough - the idea was to spend some of the days doing stuff, not just riding from one place to another. It was supposed to be a tour, not a trip.

The drop off was a nervous affair. I wasn't really sure of myself and I had no idea what to expect from the others. I quickly learned that most of the group were kids that weren't really active and their parents thought that dropping them off for a bike camp would get them in shape ("lose weight"). I can tell you that there were some miserable kids on that tour.

In contrast I'd been training in preparation for their quoted max 50 mile day. I wasn't sure if I could do a week of 50 mile days in a row but I certainly could do a few, and I did 72 miles one day in a bikeathon. I felt prepared.

Therefore when we plodded along waiting for the kids that literally didn't ride their bikes before camp I got pretty bored. As a distraction I tried going up one of the hills as fast as I could. The lead ride leader (we had three adult chaperone types) sprinted ahead of me. I tried going hard up another hill and he sprinted again.

I thought he was just having fun. I didn't realize it at the time but the Y policy was that one ride leader had to lead. Another had to sweep. The third one was the only one that could check up on the riders in the middle. We had one male ride leader, a very outdoorsy type, very fit. He was like a little Paul Bunyan. We had two female ride leaders that seemed to be more like daycare teachers, although one was admittedly an experienced touring cyclist. This meant she knew a lot about packing panniers and tents and cooking and where to camp but didn't really feel like sprinting over hills like it was a Strava KOM. The three ride leaders quickly agreed that the male would generally lead the group, especially when I started hammering up the hills.

Keep in mind that when I was 14 I was a scrawny kid. At 17 I weighed 103 lbs (my physical before going to college), so at 14 I was probably in the 90 lbs range. We carried our gear on the bike, for me it was mainly clothes, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, some tent stuff, a flashlight (for a headlight - can you believe that?), and some food. The leaders carried the tents, stoves, heavy food like canned food, and first aid kit stuff in addition to their personal gear.

The male ride leader happened to have a Schwinn Continental. I'd done some research on bikes before getting my Dawes Lightning, and I knew that the Continental was an absolute beast of a bike - 55 lbs or so, and that was without any gear on it! He had to have been easily pushing 100 lbs of bike and gear. My bike was something like 24 lbs and I was probably loaded down to maybe 45-50 lbs.

So basically the ride leader was sprinting against me while effectively pulling a trailer with a small kid in it. If you've ever pulled a small trailer with a kid in it you'll understand - it doesn't seem like much, 40 or 50 lbs, but man oh man when you start going up a hill it's like the bike dropped an anchor.

Into the asphalt.

I don't know if the poor guy was into racing at all but let me tell you, after that week, he had to have been pretty strong. We were sprinting up every hill - it was like a game for me. He made the mistake of telling me that a ride leader had to stay in front of all the camp riders. To be fair he told me this in the context of, "If one of the women are leading don't sprint. You can sprint up hills when I'm leading."

I interpreted this as, "If he was leading we were sprinting."

I'd look at him as we started up a hill, start going faster, he'd go faster, and then we'd end up going as fast as we could up whatever hill. I inevitably blew up and then we'd crawl to the top, gasping.

Then we'd do it again.

Eventually I did beat him. I remember the feeling of triumph when he finally blew up first, then used whatever lung capacity left to yell at me to not get too far ahead. For me that was a huge victory.

Toward the end I was "outclassing" him regularly. I was drafting him on the flats and then popping out for the hills. It wasn't fair, him being handicapped about 50 lbs, pulling all the time, all that stuff. I felt some sympathy so I toned down the attacks.

My favorite day was when they leaders polled us the night before about the next day's itinerary.

"Okay, we can do a really long ride tomorrow, 50 miles, and then we can spend the next day at Hershey Park. Or we can do about 30 miles tomorrow, another 20 the day after that, and we'd have a few hours at Hershey Park."

We collectively voted for the 50 mile day. We were out and on the bikes pretty quickly (it was like herding cats getting a bunch of 14 year olds onto their bikes). We ran out of daylight at about 9 PM.

Yeah, 9 PM.

I think we were out there for 10 or 12 hours. I took a wrong turn somewhere, we were in the middle of Amish land, dark farm country with no street lights, and it was getting dark.

The experienced touring ride leader had stayed in the area at some point before and knew an Amish family around the area. She called, we got permission to stay, and we rode through the dark to some farmhouse. It was huge, to be honest, about 15 kids camped out on the first floor with room to spare.

Thing was that during the day we'd go kind of hard for a while, stop, go hard again, so on and so forth. I felt super strong even at the end of ride, at night, I was just jonesing to go out and keep riding.

After a great "farm to table" breakfast (I couldn't bring myself to drink the warm milk but the eggs and ham were great!) we rode what seemed to be a mile or two and then we were at Hershey Park.

Eventually we got to Philadelphia, where a van was waiting to drive us all home. While we were there we ran up the Rocky steps. The statue was up there (I had to Google because I was wondering if it was my imagination). When I ran up the stairs later, during one of the Philly Corestates Race, it wasn't there. I was crushed that it was gone and then wondered if it'd really been there all those years before.

When I got back home I gave the panniers back to the Y, took off the rack, put the skinny tires back on, and my 14-21  "racing freewheel". I rolled down the driveway, turned right, and did a wheelie when I punched the pedals. I sprinted down the road and blew up a few hundred yards later.

It was great.

To me that was riding, to go really fast, to sprint, to go 100%.

The bike racing bug had bitten me hard.

Over the winter I saved up, negotiated a combined birthday-Christmas-months-of-chores present (where I contributed some money also) and ordered a sight unseen Basso for $550 ($50 was an upcharge for the tubulars - the shop laced over tubulars and glued on some tires for that $50). It checked off all the checkboxes:

 - Columbus tubing
 - Campy derailleurs and shifter
 - Campy hubs
 - 53x42 chainrings
 - 15-21 freewheel for Junior gearing
 - tubular GP-4 rims
 - Modolo brakes

What I didn't realize is that it wasn't all that.
 - The Columbus tubing was Zeta, which is basically their worst tubeset. It was a tank of a frame.
 - Campy Nuovo Record front and rear derailleurs and downtube shifters. Fine.
 - Campy hubs. They were Tipo hubs. Fortunately back then Campy only had one grade of bearings - excellent - and their hubs were all virtually the same quality. The Tipo hubs were great. But they weren't Nuovo Record.
 - 53x42 chainrings. They were on an Excel Rino crankset. I only knew about Excel Rino because Lon Haldeman rode Excel Rino stuff when he won RAAM. I figured it must be good if he used it. It was cast aluminum, the absolute cheapest crankset you could possibly make. But I had no idea and the chainrings were black and drilled out so I loved the crankset. The bottom bracket was the cheapest piece of junk you'd ever seen. The axle had studs on it, you used nuts to tighten the crank down. Horrible.
 - 15-21 freewheel. This was a blessing because I didn't understand the gear limit although the sales guy Lou did. Lou was the silver medalist in the state road race the prior year and was a pretty good rider.
 - The GP-4 rims were installed in place of the G40 clinchers. At the time there weren't any good clinchers so the GP-4s were a natural. I didn't realize that they'd just glue the cheapest tires on the rims. They both flatted a day apart at the end of my first season. When I went to remove them they popped right off - there was barely any glue on the rim. Yikes.
 - Modolo brakes. Not the pro ones. Not even the mid-level Speedys. I can't remember what they were. Cast. Flimsy, But they were Modolos.

I upgraded stuff over the years.

 - Campy Super Record front and rear derailleurs. I couldn't install them at the time so I had the shop do it.
 - Bar end shifter on the right. I installed that.
 - Gipiemme crankset and BB. I think I installed that.
 - Eventually got different freewheels, once I was a Senior. As a Junior the 15-21 was all I needed.
 - Ambrosio Crono rimmed wheels. I can't remember the hubs but those were some nice rims.
 - Clement FuturCx/Futurox kevlar belted tires. I used them for a long time, until I could afford Vittoria CX/CGs (front/rear).
 - Modolo Pro brakes. In red no less.

The Crash

I started riding regularly with a group that met at Oscar's Deli on Main Street in Westport, CT. We'd do about 35 to maybe 50 miles, depending on the time of year. At first I was well out of my league. I have no idea how I got home each time, some of the older riders must have been very careful to keep me on route. Part of the tough part was that it was a 10 mile ride to get to the ride, and a 10 mile ride to get home. I was adding 20 miles to the ride just getting to and from the meet point.

As I got stronger I got cockier. Eventually I was trying to match the better riders, one Cat 2 Senior (Morley B, who I worshipped like he was a demi-god) and one super classy Cat 2 Junior,  Bill W. There were a couple Cat 3s and the rest of them were Cat 4s. Back then everyone started as a Cat 4 so they were all normal riders. The Cat 3s seemed human but "really, really good". The Cat 2s were demi-gods and properly so; it's where I thought that there's no way I could be a 2 but if I could I would.

(Interestingly enough one of the guys from that era joined my current team Expo Wheelmen, completely unbeknownst to me. A couple years ago I was sitting at one of the meetings, saw him, and thought, wait, I think he was part of the Oscars crew 30 years ago. Then he came over, "Hey, Aki, I can't believe it's you!". And if that's not weird enough when I was doing the shop rides nearby, in 2009-2010, one of the riders doing the ride was also from the Oscar's ride. As we're about 2 hours away from the Oscar's ride location it's amazing that these two guys ended up in the same area as me. Anyway, that's yet another tangent...)

One day Bill W attacked on some random, generic backroad in the Redding/Easton/Bethel/Newtown area. As I was in the "I'm getting good at this" mode I followed, sprinting hard, trying to keep him in sight. The other riders let us go.

We were going fast and I thought, okay, I'm going to catch him, I'll out-corner him because I know how to stick a knee out in a corner.

The road turned hard left, Bill slowed aggressively and leaned really hard into it. I followed at a much higher speed because I was going to catch him and obviously I could go faster than him.

It was a really long left curve, virtually a 180, and very sharp.

By the time I exited it I was on the right curb and panicking. I managed to stay upright but to my horror there was a hard right curve immediately following that left. Switchbacks like these - two in a row - basically don't exist in Connecticut so I was caught with my pants down.

I got the bike heeled over to the right but I had started on the right curb, almost in the bushes. In other words I'd done about the earliest apex possible, the worst thing possible. I found myself skimming the leaves on the left side of the road, the wrong side, the oncoming traffic side.

I started thinking about survival now - catching Bill wasn't the goal anymore, my goal was to not become a hood ornament or to hit too big of a tree.

I tried to slow but the steep hill, my sprint start at the top, and the curves kept me from scrubbing off any reasonable amount of speed.

I exited that second curve on the left shoulder and wouldn't you know it, there was a left curve in front of me.

Three hard turns in a row?! On a descent? In Connecticut?!

Crap.

I dropped the bike to the left, hoping that I could make this turn, praying that it wasn't a long turn.

I was leaned pretty far over to the left, hoping I'd stay out of the trees, when I hit a severe gradient change - the road basically dropped out from under me (later I realized that even in a car the front tires would momentarily let go of the road - the gradient change was that sudden). My front wheel went light, the front end washed out, and I hit the deck.

I slid down the road, bounced off stuff in the shoulder, and ended up sitting in the middle of the road, my helmet in my hands.

I'd really clocked my head hard, my head hurt, and for a few seconds I sat there trying to gather my thoughts. I almost got hit by the rest of the club carefully descending down the same hill. When I stood up my shoes lost traction - it was that steep. I slipped down the hill uncontrollably and ended up crawling up the hill with my hands on the ground to get back up to my bike.

My bike seemed okay, I wasn't bleeding too badly from anywhere, and we had to get going. I got on the bike.

I gingerly rode back to Oscars, then back home, my head pounding. I felt a little nauseous for a while, like a few days, but eventually it went away. Headaches also, but again, they went away. I don't know what I was like immediately following the crash but I think I was lucky to escape without major problems, based on the nausea and headaches.

I know now I had given myself a concussion, and, in fact, it was probably the worst concussion I've had in my life.

Nonetheless I can't imagine what would have happened had I been wearing my favorite "Kevlar helmet" (my faded yellow Campy cap, which looked sort of like Kevlar colored hence I called it my Kevlar cap). For this reason I saved the Bell Biker helmet as one that saved me.

Bell Biker
Note the right side of the picture (left side of helmet) where the foam is not as thick as the left side of the picture.

I didn't think it looked damaged at all, at least at the time. Now that I look at it, or the pictures of it, I realized that the left side of the helmet looks pretty compressed, like maybe to half the thickness as the right side. It must have been a real solid impact. I didn't notice the compressed foam back then so I still wore the helmet after the tumble. Eventually I convinced my mom to buy another helmet for me.

That was the Brancale Giro.

Story - G Fox - and a little history

When people ask what I "do" for fun I tell them I race bikes. A lot of people figure I mean motorcycles so I have to clarify, "You know, like the Lance bikes."

Then I get a lot of nodding. And one of a few reactions.

Unfortunately one of the more common ones is, "I never heard of him until someone I know got cancer and I found out he won the Tour de France after he got over cancer." Then there's talk about cancer, how tough it is on a family, and a report on how that someone is doing.

Another is, "So you race the Tour?". I have to smile sheepishly and admit that, no, I'm not that good. I'm just a very amateur version of those pros - akin to intramural softball versus the Yankees.

Or the Red Sox, in deference to the future missus.

We were at home one Saturday when a slew of people looked at the house. One well educated potential house buyer asked if I race up the Pyrenees like the pros. I took a liking to that couple right away but they didn't buy the house.

I usually say, somewhat inaccurately, that my races are not on TV, that I don't appear on TV. But that's not entirely true.

First off, a couple years ago, I got a very excited call from a friend asking if I'd just raced in some Friday Street Sprints (the Connecticut Sprint Championships, if you must know). Apparently I was on the news that evening. I never saw the clip but now that I remembered it again, I'll have to ask if I can get a clip from the news station (our local cable TV). So, yes, for a few seconds, I was there on the TV.

And second, I was on TV. Just not the way you think.

That's me!

If you look at the picture carefully, you'll notice a number of things. I suppose I could run a contest, but I'll point out what I've noticed over the years.

1. I'm really skinny. In this shot I was sixteen years old (based on bike, team jersey, helmet, shorts) and probably weighed less than 100 pounds. I figure this because when I went to college at 17 and 11/12ths years old, I was a massive 103 pounds. That sounds great for a climber right? Problem was I couldn't climb. And at that point, I didn't have quite the sprint either so my race results weren't very impressive.

2. No ANSI approved helmet - the Brancale Giro helmet I'm wearing was nothing more than a thin plastic shell with some foam strips inside. I painted the helmet (the other side is much better looking) with a Rising Sun and some Japanese words. The Japanese characters are real - I had my mom write down some encouraging words like Victory, Strength, Speed, and a few others which I forget. Then I painstakingly painted them on the helmet with my plastic model paint, using the brush I used to detail 1/72 scale soldiers and various other fine bits.
I also added a number of cooling vents - I added three to each of the sides (and enlargened all of them) and two to the back (there were only three to begin with). Although such modifications typically negate a helmet's safety, this helmet is so bad it didn't matter. I do know that even recently a number of strong racers cut out lots of foam out of their (previously approved) helmets to improve cooling. No word on how they fare when they hit the ground, although the riders I am thinking of are all with us still. Nowadays I think such helmet mods are unnecessary - they're all quite good with ventilation straight out of the box.

3. Toe clips and straps. I'm using clips and straps. 'Nuff said. Right before I went clipless I used three straps per foot. And even with the straps so tight my feet went numb I'd still pull out of the pedals if I shifted hard in a sprint. Not a problem with clipless pedals. In this picture I'm on the original pedals (Miches, Campy knockoffs like all pedals that era) with double straps, the ends with toe strap button things. The button things are so you can yank really hard on the strap without slipping, even in the wet.

4. Non-aero brake cables. The (red!) Modolo Pro brakes replaced the original Modolo Speedys/Sprints (I forget which came on the bike but the originals are on it in this picture). Stiffer, more solid, and lighter, they were my favorite brakes until I got aero cables. The following year, in an attempt to do the aero brake look, I actually ran the cables backwards, the housing exiting the actual lever and looping back around to the bar. I eventually got DiaCompe aero levers, the kind Eric Vanderaerden used in the 1983 Paris Nice, used Shimanos for a while, and finally went to Ergo levers.

5. The picture is reversed! I'm really not riding a left hand drive prototype bicycle. The negative was flipped somewhere.

6. I'm still using downtube shifters in the shot (Campy, for those who care). I didn't change to a right-side bar-end (Suntour) until a year or so later.

7. This was my second of three red road bikes. My first 10 speed was red, this was red, and my first Cannondale was red. After that Cannondale I've always seemed to have black, blue, or some silver-grey sort of bike. The exception to the color rule were my last two mountain bikes - the last serious one, a full suspension XC Jamis, was red, and my current "traded it on a whim" bike is white.

I figure the photographer was a local rider (he was on the same team) who did about a third of the pictures for the first few years of Winning Magazine (the pictures seemed evenly split between him, Darcy Kiefel - that racer's wife, and some third guy named Graham Watson). I figure the race was the state road race in 1984, perhaps the Greenfield Stage Race in Massachusetts. There were virtually no other races where I rode with such a leafy backdrop.

What was interesting was my girlfriend at the time loved to shop and worked at G Fox. And one day she noticed the flyers had a bike racer on it. And not only that - the bike racer was her boyfriend!

One night shortly thereafter she and I trekked over there and I took all the flyers by one of the escalators - probably about 50, a stack a foot high. I figured that if they told me to put them back then I'd ask for a "modeling fee". It didn't matter, no one questioned why we were so interested in the weekly specials anyway.

My mom (of course) framed one of the flyers. It's the one pictured and hangs next to my desk now. And she kept it with her wherever they lived - Japan, Belgium, Indiana, Spain. (Yeah, yeah, I know Indiana doesn't fit in there but they did live there.)

So when people ask me, "So have you ever been on TV?" I can say, with a straight face, "Yep."

Story - Bloomin Metric and Me

So why the Bloomin' Metric?

In a way, doing the Bloomin' Metric is a bit like coming back home.

It was back over 25 years ago that I had started riding seriously. I was a kid back then, just about to leave middle school, and I'd been graduating from bike to bike. I had gone from a 5 speed Schwinn Cotton Picker, a 56 pound behemoth of a banana seat bike, to a shiny red Schwinn Traveler III (10 speed, $214.95 with tax). And I was lusting over bikes with gum lever covers, no "safety brake levers", downtube levers, and lots of aluminum. Aluminum was the old carbon and it was the exotic, light, expensive stuff. I could barely afford $2.95 steel toe-clips - $14.95 aluminum ones were out of the question.

Along these lines, I'd been pestering a friend of mine Ken about bike racing. Road racing, to be exact. I thought I was a road racer back then. I was light (four years later, I'd "grown" to 103 pounds), there was no track around, I'd never heard of a criterium, and "time trialing" was something that required lots of super light stuff made out of aluminum. And I loved to climb.

Obviously I had to be a road racer.

I said that to shops when I went dreaming about bikes - that I was interested in road racing. On hearing that one shop owner promptly threw me out.

"Get out of here, stop wasting my time."

To a kid, that can be pretty demoralizing. And it was. But a couple shops let me stare at bikes for hours at a time. One larger shop had a friendly guy who let me stare at their Dawes bicycles. And after many, many hours of staring at the bike, staring at the specs, drawing comparison charts, listing possible changes, and perusing Bicycling Magazine for parts which I could put on (and budgeting them), I decided to buy the Dawes. A Dawes Lightning.

After riding it a bit I started changing things. I was obsessed with gearing so changed the cranks to a Sugino with replaceable chainrings - and I got custom chainrings, 48 and 34. (Talk about ahead of the times - this was in 1982, long before the "compact" revolution). I got two freewheels - a "fast" 14-21 and a "long distance" 14-23. I also got some light wheels (20 mm rims) and matching tires. And finally I got a nice racing saddle.

It was after the bike upgrades that I learned about this bike racer named Ken in our school. He happened to be in a bunch of my classes so I sat next to him and peppered him with questions. Eventually I asked him what gear he used going up Wolfpit Road. Wolfpit, I should point out, has a hill on it that has to be in the 15-18% range. It's short but very steep.

"53x15"

That seemed pretty high for me, especially since my top gear was a 48x14. And doing the math (on paper), that was virtually the same gear as a 53x15.

So I asked him for a few months in the winter, four out of seven classes a day, to confirm this. Because I simply could not believe his original answer, I'd ask the question in different ways.

"So if you were riding on Wolfpit from Route 7 to Belden Hill, what gear would you use?"
"Like in a race?"
"Yep."
"53x15."
"No, no, no... Okay... if you were heading from the Center to 106 through Wolfpit, what gear would you use?"
"53x15."
"No... I don't think you understand. Say you were riding to Driscoll from the Center. What gear would you use?"
"53x15."
"Are you sure you know your chainring sizes?"

You know that skit "Who's on first?" You get the idea.

Ken said that I have to realize that riding up and hill and racing up a hill are two different things. That low gears are for blown up racers. That you can turn big gears on something other than a screaming downhill.

These concepts were all foreign to me. So after months of questioning, when a moderately warm day finally dawned, I decided to ride to Wolfpit on my Dawes, and ride the hill. I had the 14-21 installed (the "race" freewheel) and my custom 48/34 chainrings. And I was ready to make some efforts.

I started in a 48x19 (didn't want to use the big-big, even back then) and sprinted up the hill. Surprisingly I made it. But "just to make sure", I did it again.

Fine.

So I did it in the 48x17. And the 16. It got harder and harder. And I did two of each, figuring the first was probably "lucky". Finally I did the 15 and it was hard. I hadn't planned things out right - I should have started at the biggest gear but I was afraid. Afraid of rolling to a stop while tightly strapped to the pedals. Afraid of rolling to a stop when cars approached from behind and in front (there is no effective shoulder on this steep hill, and the sides are banked upwards quite steeply from the road).

So with toasted legs, I tried to go up in the 48x14. And failed. I turned around and coasted down the hill. My knees ached so bad I didn't walk comfortably for a couple weeks after that but my world had opened up.

I reported with glee my success on Wolfpit. Now I drilled Ken on all the hills, not just the one hill that everyone in town knew. Incredibly (although as an adult it's quite predictable) he claimed he'd use the same gear everywhere in a race.

I started riding around and trying big gears all over the place. It was hard work. I sprinted up everything. It broke my legs.

And it was a blast.

Ken mentioned he and his dad were going to do a local ride (it had just started) called the Bloomin' Metric. And unexpectedly, he asked if I'd like to join them.

This was different. It was one thing to talk about gearing and stuff. It was a totally different thing to ride with them. But Ken, a very mellow kid with a reassuring aura about him, convinced me it would be fine. His dad paid the fee and I got myself a nice little patch.

I showed up at the ride on my Dawes with my swim trunks - I'd read about bike shorts and how you're not supposed to wear anything underneath - and this was as close as I could get. Ken (or rather, Ken's dad) realized he might have underestimated me but we started off nonetheless.

Their pace was insane and I quickly realized I was in way over my head. We were probably going 16-18 mph but I was struggling everywhere, especially the flats. That stunned me as I had been more worried about the hills. I learned that day that speed took precedence over strength.

About 10 miles into the 62 mile ride I was fading hard. I had no idea where we were riding, we were flying along on the flats, we were going up some crazy hills, and we still had 50 miles to go! I didn't know what to do. I was actually getting a bit scared. I was a guest, I couldn't just say "I have to turn around", and even if I did, I didn't know where I was.

That's when a bee stung Ken's dad.

He was either allergic or sort of allergic. Whatever, the bee saved me (and ruined their day). Ken and I turned around to find a sag wagon, reported Ken's dad's location, and went home (per his dad's instructions). His dad made it back somehow, I don't remember the details. I just remember being appalled at my lack of cycling strength.

My discussions with Ken turned a bit more serious. I knew I didn't know a lot before but I thought I knew what I didn't know. Now I realized that I didn't even have a clue of what I needed to learn. Ken advised me on what I needed to do. First, get some riding clothing. Second, get a race bike that fit better. And third, start racing.

I slowly worked on the three things. I got a jersey by collecting granola bar UPC codes and sent them in for a $20 jersey. I bought some Detto Pietro Art 74 shoes - the standard starter shoe. I fiddled with the cleat till my knee didn't hurt too much.

I begged my parents for a race bike - a combination birthday and Christmas present. I eventually got a Basso with Campy, Excel Rino, GP4's (tubulars!), and real aluminum caged pedals (Campy knock-offs but they looked cool anyway). I had a 53x42 matched up with a 15-21 (it even had a 16T and an 18T!) and felt like a racing god. And when I got the bike, the shop made me buy some new fangled lycra shorts - I believe I was the first one to try them. One of those "Have the kid try it out, if he likes it then I'll get one" kind of deals.

I watched my first race about 6 months later (the '83 National Crit Championships), Ken there with me, both of us perusing the first ever issue of Winning Magazine (and its multitude of Eddy Merckx stories). And on my own I entered my first race about a month after that.

Fast forward about 10 years. Our team leader/captain/mentor decided we should do a double metric as preparation for the State Road Race. The Bloomin Metric was perfect - food stops, a route everyone could follow, and what we'd now call a "target rich environment". We'd do the two laps fast and steady, eating at every stop (three or four per loop), and work together to maintain a high average speed. As a bonus, we'd wear our team gear (which had our shop on it) and advertise the best way possible - ride around a couple thousand riders for 6 hours and show that we actually ride what we sell.

One of the guys on our team? The guy that sold me the Dawes. It's a small, small world.

I had no aspirations for the road race so this became my "race". I risked all and took my lightest wheels, 280 gram tubular rimmed wheels, super light 200 gram tires, etc etc. We trained for the event. The actual day had perfect weather. We rode hard and I found myself, incredibly, pulling for most of the second 100 km (it would be safe to say I pulled maybe 1/10 the time the first lap and about 2/3 the time the second). I flew up the hills, kept pulling on the flats, and rode my heart out.

I had one bad spot at about 150 km but recovered. I pushed through because I read about how Greg Lemond felt bad at the beginning of the 82 Worlds but pushed through because his parents flew over to watch him. He ended up taking second to Moreno Argentin, beating Sean Kelly into third. So when I started to fade into oblivion on a particularly hard false flat, I drank more Gatorade, dug deep, killed myself, hung on, and kept going.

Miraculously my legs came back around.

They felt fatigued, no doubt about that. For much of that second lap I kept thinking, "Oh, this will be it, this is where I'll just blow." I'd ride at the front to buy myself "drift-back" room. And I'd make it. Incidentally, this is why I pulled so much - I thought I was going to blow up so I kept going to the front. Every time I asked my legs to push through to the top of a hill or do an extra 5 or 10 pedals strokes at the front they came through. I've rarely felt that good in my life and I've never felt that good on a 124 mile ride.

Like the racers that we were, we started attacking each other towards the end of the second loop. It was much more like the end of a classic compared to a typical group ride. Typical group rides end as a bunch as the group responds to all attacks, solo or otherwise. At the end of six hours though the small group (perhaps 10 or 15 of us) was fatigued. An attack would go and only one or two would have the courage to chase. The rest would look around, hope the attackers were going to blow, and pray things came back together. The "break" would collectively blow up and things would come back together.

Our team leader took off though and it looked good. So we all peeled off, chasing him in ones and twos. I had just done a huge jump when POP, a spoke went. Rear wheel, my first broken spoke, and it was twanging around in an alarming way. I sat up and watched everyone ride off - I waved off the ones that looked back. It was only a mile or two to the parking lot and I rolled in, wheel thumping the frame and brake and bits of tire flying off.

I was physically shattered. I had shredded a virtually new race tire. I'd rubbed aluminum and paint off my frame - almost put a hole in the chainstay. And my rim was dead, a dent in it that ruined its braking performance.

But it was worth it. A great ride. And we did what we set out to do. For months and even years, customers would come in and mention something about "I remember when you guys passed me and you were on your second hundred and I still couldn't keep up with you for more than a mile."

That was my Bloomin' peak. I can't imagine doing a double any time soon. The feeling when you reach the parking lot the first time and simply turn around... there's an element of "no turning back" when you commit. And it's scary. Makes my stomach feel like it did when I was 14 and getting lost in the depths of Fairfield. It doesn't mean I may not give it a shot one of these years. It just means that it's not in my repertoire right now.

I would like to do the Metric fast one day on the tandem. That would be fun. I have a mental list of tandem updates I want to make. Closer ratio gears - I got the cassette but it's not on yet. Faster tires - I've read about 25c tires on tandems (we're running 28c's). A much more aero captain's position - currently the bars feel like I'm on a mountain bike - one that's too big at that. Maybe some Spinacci's - the semi-aero bar from the mid-90's now banned from UCI and USA Cycling events. I think a lower stem will work, maybe some narrower bars.

Of course there's the fitness. We'd need to do some more regular riding - we'll be able to do that once we've settled into wherever we're going to live. And then we can go and regularly do some good tandem rides. Get used to the nice feeling of rolling down the road at 25 mph while putting out the effort that would net 20 mph on a single.

Heck, I can live up to the threat I made Gary in January this year. We could go down to Florida some January for some early season training and try and rip apart some Cat 1 legs.

But that would be a whole different ballgame.

Doping - Basso and DNA

So Tailwind Sports, the organization that runs the Discovery Team cycling team, issued a press release. In it they state that they've told Ivan Basso, with a fresh investigation launched in Italy on his alleged Fuentes doings, to stop competing until things are cleared.

They state that in 10 years they have never had a positive.

I guess it would be hard to have a positive if the company started listing itself as the team contact (for USPS in this case) starting 5 years ago (2002). Granted the address has been the same but the name has been different.

Splitting hairs, yes, but still. I figure they probably owned the other companies that were listed as the team contacts. So, in 2000, when the contact listed was "Disson Furst and Partners" at this Sausilito, CA address, it was probably really Tailwind Sports which ran the show.

If that's the case, I wonder what they say about Joachim Benoit, a racer they fired in 2000 after he tested positive for Nandrolone at levels of 5.7 ng/ml and 6.2 ng/ml, well above the IOC's 2 ng/ml limit and still above the more lax UCI's 5 ng/ml limit.

Benoit was eventually acquitted. There were no real reasons for his acquittal - simply that there was a long time between the race and the test. No more time, than, say, some of the follow up tests done on recent positive and non-positive racers. After firing him quite publicly, the team discretely rehired him for the following years, keeping him until the end of 2006.

USPS actually kept an archive of the press release announcing his termination due to doping - but a search of the site reveals that it's been discarded, along with the whole USPS team section.

Anyway, back on Basso.

It appears that Basso's carefully worded statement on being available for particular DNA testing, one statement Lance and Tailwind Sports points to as an indication that Basso is willing to work with authorities, will come back to bite him quite hard. With the Italian cycling federation launching an inquiry, one of the scenarios in Basso's statement about submitting to DNA testing will be met.

When he first signed with Discovery, there were assumptions that this meant Bruyneel would have Basso submit to a DNA test. But no, even before the team announced the signing, Basso's lawyer proclaimed that Basso doesn't have to submit to such things. And after the signing Basso had been strangely quiet on the whole topic of providing DNA samples.

The way most people see it, if DNA testing can free a couple hundred people that witnesses and others swore up and down committed all sorts of heinous crimes, then it couldn't harm an innocent like Basso could it?

The problem is that DNA works the other way too. One could claim to be an innocent, live the life of an innocent, and yet be a criminal. In Trespasses, author Howard Swindle writes about a serial rapist that carried on a normal life - owning a small business, carrying on personal relationships - and yet found time to scour his neighborhood and commit many rapes. Convicted of 48, he may have committed twice as many. He was positively identified through DNA. Another criminal who ran free for a long time until DNA caught up with him - the BTK serial killer, Dennis Rader.

I'm not saying Basso raped or killed anyone. But I am saying that although he may portray himself as an innocent, DNA testing will go a long way in proving (or disproving) his claims.

And to be frank, his case looks awfully weak.

Just because the DNA matched between the suspected Jan Ullrich bags (with various code names linked to Ullrich) and Ullrich, it does not make it a given that the Ivan Basso bags (with other various code names) will match Basso's DNA. But if the Spanish investigation was correct and "Birillo" is indeed an code name for Basso...

When things smell, it's usually for a reason.

I guess we'll wait and see.

Basso and Discovery

Discovery signs Basso.

At first, I felt pretty upset. After all, Basso is a cheat, right? He didn't submit to DNA tests, in fact his lawyer said that the procedure was invasive. Invasive? If I knew for a fact that my blood was not in Dr Fuentes' lab, I would have been hollering to give my DNA to prove it!

But when it comes down to it, the Operation Puerto info can't be used against the riders, according to the Spanish Court. Now I don't know how everything works in Spain but I can tell you some things from personal experience. Although bribery is not as open as it is in, say, Belgium, some weird things happen. There is a lot of shoddy workmanship (in some 4 star hotels, you can put your hand through the gaps between the door and the door frame), sketchy rule following (for example, after a light turns red, the next 4 or 5 cars go through), and I know that a really large multinational company had a senior manager taking cruises on the Mediterranean on a conflict-of-interest person's yacht.

Anyway, I don't trust the Spanish courts.

But Basso hasn't done anything wrong. He never admitted to using dope. He hasn't been found guilty of any prohibited substances. No one has alleged faxes with his doping schedule faxed to his wife's maiden name. And he hasn't even tried to race while under suspicion, nevermind win some hill climb.

Now Discovery isn't the cleanest team around, at least not in its USPS colors. For example, one of their mainstays Joachim Benoit was unceremoniously kicked off their team in 2000 for steroid use (he tested positive for nandrolone after winning the Luxembourg National Championships in 2000). Apparently it didn't keep them from having on the team as he served them well from 2001 till 2006.

So, in the end, I have to accept Basso's signing by Discovery.

It just smells so wrong.