Bethel Spring Series - What It Used To Be

So Bethel has become this nice, polished, semi-consistent event. But how was it at the beginning?

Not so polished, nor organized.

One of the first Bethels. Not quite the first.

Based on Easter's date, it's from 1993. The Series started the year prior, in 1992, with a $7.95 entry fee. This confirmed what someone told me a long while back - that the Series started in '92. Anyway, no one wanted their nickels that year ("nickelback", so to speak), even though we'd brought rolls of them to the race. We decided to raise the fee by that nickel for the following year.

Bethel then was different from Bethel now. For one thing, the only van I had didn't run. You can see it in the picture below - a beautiful F-150 if it ran. I ended up selling it to the dump for $20, and they picked up up for free (bonus!).

Instead I got by on using a hand-me-down car, a Mazda 626. I hauled virtually everything in it. I also used my parent's Subaru, and for a while we even rented vans or SUVs.

Packed car, the last day of the Series.

Note the podium (the wood box), my green kit (means it was 2003 probably), the clock, and one of the original "Caution" signs from 1993 or so.

More podiums, cones, gasoline, and my bike up top (a Specialized M2 with Ergo).

I think we were in the "borrowing a tent each year" phase so there's no tent. Either that or Joe B or Tom was carrying the tents home. Whatever, they're missing from the pictures here.

At this time we were still using paper and pen for registration. It started getting complicated when we went high-tech with laptops, which then required some level of dryness, which meant tent sides, and finally heat.

We used a tiny generator after frying two cars worth of electrics (using plug in transformers). The generator was noisy, inefficient, and tried to give up after two years of service. Merto fixed it despite its protests one year and we got through that Series before it really gave up. I gave it to the dump when we moved a couple years ago.

Big honkin' radio, rented from CBRA. Guessing it's 1996-1997 based on the cap, maybe 1996 since a bunch of the pictures are from the same batch.

For the Series, especially in the early years, radios presented a big challenge. I thought for many years of distributing, to the marshals, a car battery with a CB radio attached to it. I figured a fully charged car battery would power a CB for long enough, and if it didn't, we could just hook it up to an actual car.

But instead we used walkie talkies. Heck, the $40 for a minimum CB was a deal breaker, and where would I find 2-3 car batteries that worked? (Forget about all the dead ones I had in my garage...)

For many years we rented radios from the CBRA. We'd get chargers, radios, and pay some fee each year. We finally saved up to buy some Motorola walkie talkies, and we're still using them now, supplemented by several AAA battery powered cheapies.

Mike, one of our two regular officials, standing in the center. Our actual official that day was Dave.

This used to be the scene at the start/finish area. A car or three, dirt, and warmly dressed officials.

Action shot of the same scene.

Perhaps it's 1996, based on other shots from that Feb/Mar. Yeah, that's me, at the back of the field. I'm running a 24H Zipp 340 rear wheel, probably a 28H GEL280 or FiR GL330 front. A very fast, very light set up, for the time anyway.

There's a building back there now, and a big paved parking lot, not piles of sand and dirt.

Doing the lap cards.

Checking the time gap.

Whenever I see this picture, I think of the Tour where Hinault gets into a break in the 1985 Tour, one of the flatter early stages, one that took place in Brittany. A young Phil Liggett comentates that the Bretons, checking the time gap, will be happy with Hinault's progress (Hinault is from the area).

The break has some horsepower. Stephen Roche, who would win it one day, was there with three teammates I think. Phil Anderson, another top rider from the time, was there with three teammates also. Only three or four teams missed the break, and it was up to Fignon's new-for-that-year System U team to do all the chasing.

Hinault finally gets caught, and as he does, the World Champion striped Lemond rockets out of the field.

"Has he caught the field by surprise? No, Marc Madiot, the French Champion, is on his wheel."

Phil concludes this flat day's adventures with the following rhythmic phrase:

"The Tour will not forget the day the Badger came out to play."

What everyone forgets to mention is that the cameras out that day were no normal ones - they were movie cameras, filming "background" footage for the "soon to be released" movie, The Yellow Jersey, allegedly starring Dustin Hoffman. The movie, of course, never happened, but with a chance to immortalize oneself in a film, a bunch of racers broke away on what should have been an easy day.

Not only that, two team leaders were almost across but couldn't quite get there - had the break waited just a touch, with those two leaders in the lead group, pundits were saying that the break would have gained 15 minutes. Instead, those two team leaders threw their riders into the chase, and for a good hour or so two groups of Tour riders chased each other around Northern France.

I guess we brought tables to the start/finish area.

I'm the guy with the horrible haircut leaning against the table, a reasonably lean 140-odd pounds, fighting weight back then. Merto is behind me in the striped shirt and long hair. Abdul is in the sunglasses, and his bike is the one leaning on the table. They still come to the races, when they can.

In 2010 we'll be doing the 18th confirmed Bethel Spring Series (thanks to that flyer up there). I hope that things get even nicer than last year. The town's already given its permission, and now, for the first time in a long time, I'm looking to increase (just a bit) the amount of stuff we give away. Hopefully I have more news in the next month or two.

See you out there.

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."