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Koksijde 2

2012-01-27T16:17:00.002-08:00

Koksijde 2

After a numbingly bizarre transition in the hotel, I awoke at 10:17 a.m., grabbed coffee, and hit the shuttle to the venue. The sun had come out as Pierre drove the Nissan diesel van to the venue on wet road. He pointed out to me how poor the bike lane – which would blow away any such thing in America – was by design.

In warm sunshine punctuated by drizzle out of clouds passing off the North Sea, I hit the ground and started to walk the course. With some sleep, my mood had elevated dramatically along with the weather conditions. Within a minute of arrival, I spotted UCI staff I knew. I bumped into American fans, and the entire experience began to bloom wonderfully. Brook Watts, Theo Kindermans and his wife, Katherine Cagle, Matt Howie (sp?), Molly Cameron, and countless other Americans swarmed the press center and course. Photographer Will Matthews and I stumbled about the course infatuated with the riders able to master this course.

The sand of Koksijde defies description. This course is laid out on a military base atop dunes. The only thing the base is used for now is rescuing beachgoers and sinking fishing boats.

The numbers in Koksijde are astounding. Organizers announced the event had sold out at 42,000…..Let me say that again….SOLD OUT.

Here are some more:

These guys have the entire venue hard fenced. That means 18 km of fencing. They ran out of fencing in all of Belgium and had to get more from the Netherlands!

Much of the fencing has been braced by secured side panels set at 90 degrees. They are concerned about crowd control and the fencing actually collapsing.

There are as many tents near the finish line as they had at Tabor and Sankt Wendel…The only difference is that this is just in the finish area. By the pits and the dunes there are four more massive tents such as those.

So with all that, today’s pre-ride was fabulous. There were probably 2,000 people here today just watching that.

For you folks handicapping at home, here’s the rub:

• Sven Nys has not been here for a few days, choosing to forego the public pre-ride
• Klaas Vanternout has been here for five weeks.
• Zdenek Stybar railed the course yesterday doing 15 hot laps.
• Caroline Mani rode today, but was obviously in pain.
• Katerina Nash rode the course for the first time this week…as in, she has never raced here before.
• Japanese riders are wildly popular. And even their fans get dragged into photo shoots and beer parties.
• Jeremy Powers and Zach MacDonald looked fine.
• Tom Meeusen will surprise people.

The pre-ride ended and I went to the rehearsal for the awards ceremony. I’m working with Mark Bollard (sp???). This guy speaks five languages and has announced for 31 years! I feel like a French guy going in to Yankee Stadium to talk a little baseball.

This guy seems nice.

The Louisville folks had their presentation for 2013. They did a nice job. Better, in my opinion, than the prior two I witnessed. I wish them luck.

More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Ko

2012-01-27T16:17:00.001-08:00

Koksijde 1

2012-01-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

Koksijde 1

Air France Hangover on the TGV
Me and Bruce
Out Go the Lights….Twice

So I’m re-opening my blog to give you all my recounts of the 2012 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.

So the departure from Boston via Air France to Paris would be uneventful. I had the unusual departure of 5.30 from Logan. This means an arrival in France of 12:30 in my body but 6:30 a.m. in France.

Having given my liver a break, I could not turn down Air France wine while I read countless European ‘cross results to prepare for announcing my third UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.

I plowed through results and action movies on the flight and touched down in what seemed like no time.

We arrived on a dark and damp tarmac and began the confusing parade of Charles De Gaulle Airport, a massive tube of humanity with countless ports of entry. Paris is a fascinating hub with massive columns of Asian people flooding up against colorfully dressed African women and heavily made up French women. How can French women get away with so much make up and pull it off?

The entire arrival heightens my senses. Every cylinder, every synapse is firing as I bathe in the French language with just enough mastery to convince everybody I actually speak French….which I don’t. So all their directions are in French which means I stupidly do things like walk right off the train platform!

I’ve discovered I’m booked on the TGV from Paris to Brussels! Fantastic adventure! Stay tuned. Next stop is Brussels and then north on a regional train to Koksijde

Brussels-Koksijde

January in Northern France and Belgium is not all that cold…With a damp mist and gray sky it penetrates every building, every coat, and every soul. I disembarked from the TGV, snared my bag, and then dragged about the Brussels Midi Station to sort out the next leg of the trip, a train to the North Sea.

Given the multitude of languages and cultures and immigrants tumbling about Europe, one would expect to see some comprehensive signage. Nah....One simply must be polite and brave and willing to ask what the hell to do. Frankly, I like it because I have those skills. But this experience would rattle the average American suburbanite.

I bumbled from the info booth to the wrong ticket booth to the correct ticket booth and got myself ticketed for 18 Euros. With 40 minutes to kill I dragged my bags across the trolley tracks, walked a block or two, got a bottle of water to offset the TransAtlantic wine on Air France, and then dug into Cruz Verde for a box of ibuprofen to offset the TransAtlantic wine on Air France.

After a lot of beer drinking over the holidays, I sent my liver to the cleaners for a few weeks to prepare for the Tim Johnson Ride on Washington. Despite a few trip ups after cross nationals, I did really well and felt great. I like not drinking.

But there was no way in hell I was going to Belgium for Cross Worlds without drinking some beer! So this is a beer drinking vacation.

So with this airline hangover, I tramped up the stairs to the train platform for the 11:14 train to Koksijde. I found one person on the platform: Bruce Fina.

Bruce and I are funeral friends. We go a long way back and will undoubtedly go a long way forward. I thoroughly enjoy his personality and passion for promotions. I could tell by the gray hairs that that the strain of pulling off the masters world championships and the 2013 elite worlds had taken its toll.

Our recent division over the calendar, when he wanted me to move Providence to accommodate the USGP moving its calendar date but I refused, has been settled going into 2013.

So we boarded the train and spent the 90 minutes talking about American ‘cross, his life in Austria, World War I battlefields, the NFL, and particularly our appreciation of the New England Patriots. I gazed across the lowland landscape with its modest, brick homes, its fabulous modern windmills, and studied the Fietsnetwerk of bike paths and lanes. We arrived and parted ways; my driver, Wilfred, greeted me and off I went to the UCI host hotel.

Wind spattered rain on the Nissan van as we splashed through Koksijde. The landscape reminded me of Cape Cod or the Outer Banks in off-season. I saw the venue and could not fathom how 50,000 people would cram into such a small area. This venue is one half the size of Stage Fort Park and they would be hosting the world.

There is one key element to Koksijde: sand. I’ll describe this more tomorrow after I walk the course.

After rolling through Koksijde, we rolled eastward to the host hotel. I arrived and checked into a simple, neat four-story hotel with a foggy view of the dunes. I had a gift bag with a bottle of brandy, a deck of cards, and some With that I plugged in my electrical adaptor purchased last year in Germany. And into that I plugged my power strip, intent on charging EVERYTHING I had.

“POOF”.

The thing shut off and the strip went dead. And I could not get a charge at all. Dead. With a dead laptop and dying phone, I got a snack in the bar and attempted to sleep….With my body protesting the nap at what it perceived to be 9 a.m. But I conked out lightly. I woke up refreshed, asked for help with the electricity thing, and waited in my room….And waited…..Finally the desk clerk arrived with a new adaptor which did not fit. Frustrated, I grabbed a pile of World Cup results and went to the restaurant.

These trips are wonderful…but also wonderfully lonely. And with a dead computer they are that much lonelier with no e-mail and no Skype. But I drank a double-double Belgian beers, ate small shrimp with the shells on, and ordered the Cassolet de Poisson…which was fantastic.

I pored over results of the Under 23 and Junior World Cups. Here goes my rant on announcing: nobody gets paid to announce the elites. The elites each spend nearly a decade on the trophy shelf of the sport. We all develop a solid sense of who they are, how they race, where they live, what they won, what they lost, etc. We announcers all brush up on the facts before we work a big event but we’re smearing more icing on the cake than most of us can eat.

At the worlds, I put a lot of effort into the Junior and the Under-23 categories. I doubt any of you have ever heard of Vojtech Nipl, but he’s an amazing young rider. These guys don’t have trading cards, look like their 12 years old, and only emerged on the scene in the last few years. I spent four hours tonight analyzing lap times of World Cups this season in these categories. I love that you recognize old names such as Van Der Poel and Frischknect in these ranks. These kids race their brains out. And announcing here fills up my library for future announcing at the elite level.

After dinner I returned to the room, saw the staff had fixed my power outage in one sector of the room. Then I decided to plug in my power strip in another outlet just to try it…..

“POOF”

Only this time, I blew out the entire third floor! Totally in the dark, I groped my way to the desk only to realize they had closed for the night. I wandered into the kitchen and with pigeon French explained the predicament. The bad news is that Belgian circuit breakers are touchy; but they go right back on! And I’m in business!

Thanks for reading. I’ll give you my course report and handicap the Saturday races tomorrow!

The Magic Bus: Homeward Bound

2011-09-30T03:28:00.000-07:00

After such an amazing week in Copenhagen there would undoubtedly be an emotional collapse. But today could bring me close to a nervous breakdown.

I’m still processing the death of my sister just two weeks earlier. I’m two weeks away from my Providence race (thankfully Laura Low, Glenn Stillwell, Tom Stevens and others are on the job). The cost of living in Copenhagen has completely broken my bank. And between the time changes and the paucity of Internet connectivity I’ve kept in touch with my wife and family by a single Skype session, two phone calls, and text messages. I was way off the back with e-mail and expected to be fired by every client I had.

Everybody in my family is emotionally scraped up. And I’ve been over here in cycling la-la land…And I would have a few "las" on my final day abroad. It's like being served too much cheesecake.

Sarah McLachlan’s “Building a Mystery” is playing over and over in my head, notably the line “you’re so beautiful; a beautiful fucked up man.”

The alarm went off at 6 a.m. and I had to spend 75 dk to get online just to check my itinerary and eat aspirin to ward off a hangover inflicted by those British folks. I saw that thankfully the flight did not leave until 1 p.m. I collapsed into bed for another two hours.

Again, I would sit alone at breakfast, starting to write this piece. But this morning I would have company at the adjacent table when Mark Cavendish’s mother and her husband (not his father) sat beside me. We had a splendid time discussing his career and they were very complimentary of the job I had done.

Actually I was in agony over a mistake I had made. After successfully peering into the mob of cyclists and seeing the Australian Michael Hepburn unravel in the rush for the sprint to decide the U-23 race and then seeing just a sleeve of a jersey in the train station of the women’s race to recognize Giorgia Bronzini I screwed up on Sunday in the big race. It’s announcing, not Tweeting, but somewhat similar. You need to think before hit send. But sometimes you cannot do so.

In the decisive crash that took down Thor Hushovd, I saw the USA jersey, Garmin helmet, and white glasses of the famous sprinter, Tyler Farrar. And made mention of that. Unfortunately what I really saw was the Garmin helmet and white glasses of the famous American roleur Andrew Talansky.

So I screwed up. But at that level, I wish I had paused and double checked. But you cannot retrieve words.

Only at the end when Farrar emerged in the sprint to finish 10th did I start to question my call.

We lingered over coffee and I savored this last morning in Copenhagen. I knew how much shit was about to hit the fan upon my return. All I could do about it, however, was get home. And for a bike nut, this trip home would be fantastic.
I got a ride to the airport with the organization’s shuttle, joining Guy Doblar, a Belgian official who served as the chief commissar, Kurt Sauer, an American official who lives in Tokyo and surprised me with his command of French and Japanese, two other officials, and the Danish driver. I sifted into the airport experience. The first element of re-entry into America came on a television, where I saw the highlights of Buffalo defeating New England with a buzzer-beating field goal. Believe it or not that proved to be a top sports story in Denmark, where there are several fans of American football.

But the big story in all the papers would be the men’s road race.

After a purchasing a hot dog in hopes of fending off this sickening hangover and anxiety disorder of my return to, I headed towards the gate. On the people mover a guy stepped in behind me. I had noticed him earlier. He had a distinct look about him, slender and fit with jeans, T-shirt and long gray hair cut well. But something about his features, which had some resemblance to Charlie Watt of The Rolling Stones, gave off intensity. He had seen some things in his life. One could tell.

“Ah, the voice!” he said, smiling to me. “You were amazing.”

I thanked him for the compliment and asked about how he liked the event. Turns out he’s Peter Dejong, chief photographer for AP. He’s covered 15 Tours de France and probably as many wars: Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq…Cycling is the one sport he adores to cover. Although he lives in Amsterdam he was headed to Paris, where his girlfriend resides.

We dug into an intense discussion on everything he had done; he took as much of an interest in me. We talked all the way down the ramp and on to the plane.

I had found him so fascinating that I never looked around the gate. I filtered down the aisle to my seat, 21D, with a kind older woman from Jutland in the middle seat, 21E. The window seat remained empty.

As others filed onto the plane, I looked up to allow a passenger to get to 21F. There was the French sprinter, Romain Feillu. Holy shit! Then I looked up to see Sylvain Chavenel a few rows up. Behind me sat Laurent Jalabert! Ja-Ja himself! Thomas Voekler had his young son with him. I was on the plane with the entire French elite men’s team! They all few coach!

I spoke politely with Feillu in my horrible French for perhaps two minutes and then let him be. I did not get my photo with any of them; I did not ask for an autograph. I never do that.

We arrived in Paris’ Charles DeGaulle Airport where camera crews were there to greet the cyclists. L’Equipe, the greatest sports paper in the world, had high praise for the French performance overall at worlds and the media responded.

I filtered out to Terminal E, pressed through customs with a pile Third World line cutters and found myself removed from cycling entirely…..poof……with nothing to do for four hours. And having been cleaned out by the Danish cost of living, I could barely afford the Orangina.

Processing all of this - the loss of my sister and the emotion of her service; the thrill of Denmark; the looming stress of our event in Providence; my own health issues (more on that in a later blog) – just braided together into a confused torpor. And I had nothing to do: no Internet, no phone, and no money….Just me and my little cart to wander about looking at things I could not afford.

And then it occurred to me that the date was Sept. 26…..I had been so wrapped up in my own stuff that I had again proven to be a finalist in the world’s worst father contest. My daughter turned 15 on Saturday without so much as a text from me. What a jerk, eh?

I nearly came unraveled.

Eventually I got home….After a bus and subway transfer I met my wife at Alewife and got the update on all the hardships of life at home, including my daughter’s loss of her left lens of her eye glasses, rendering her practically blind.

Home again. Dig in.

Thanks for reading.

Great Britain: Start to Finish

2011-09-28T03:15:00.000-07:00

This would be the big day. The elite men’s 266 km road race. Denmark is infamous for rain and gray skies. But through the entire week only the second half of the women’s time trial had been wet. For Sunday’s elite men’s race Copenhagen received the most spectacular weather of the year.

After breakfast I walked to the start area, dressed in my UCI shirt and suit coat. Peter would be at the road circuit in Rudersdal and I would handle the ceremony of the sign-in and start with help from Jens, a fine guy who handled the Danish with ease.

I arrived to find about 500 people gathered around the fences for the sign-in. But I studied some nearby cross walks and realized rivers of humanity were striding into the venue. It was 8:15.

At 8:30 I started to work the crowd and Jens slipped right in fine. Effectively I just started goofing on assorted countries and telling jokes. It’s sort of fun because I can wheel out the same jokes I’ve beaten to death in America with nobody noticing.

At 8:50 the first rider appeared: Thomas Voekler. We were on a tight time table so I spared him the interview. After a slow start I called teams to sign in and they just poured in the venue. By 9:15 there were 5,000 people in the square. The biggest crush came for the Danes of course but Hushovd, Cancellara and Cavendish drew massive cheer.

As I read off the teams, I realized Germany had built a perfect team for this race with two great closers in Danilo Hondo and Andrei Greipel, with Tony Martin and Bert Grabsch there for the leadout train.

Before they all were done I had to assemble the start. This is effectively a roll call of 200-plus riders by country and then by name. This includes Arabic, Basque, Slavic, and Flemish names. One has to simply be comfortable making mistakes and keep on rolling. The riders don’t mind too much when you butcher the pronunciation and most of them I get close.

Then I hand off the microphone and dash for the Tissot car, leaving Jens in charge. The poor guy’s microphone totally shit the bed and they had no announcing for the start.

We rolled.

I’ll leave the race reportage to the pros, but will give you a couple of insights that may have been missed on some websites.

The crowds assembled along the sidewalks as we rolled out of town for the 28 km from Copenhagen to the road circuit in Rudersdal simply blew me away. As we reached the actual circuit, however, they seemed a little sparse at first. As we approached the final turn, however, the crowds thickened to enormous density. And at the home stretch the place was packed. And those crowds would continue to come in all day. Police called the crowd 250,000! That would be nearly 100,000 more than Australia.

I jumped into the booth with Peter just as the field roared by, with a breakaway of little known riders off the front. That group would gather an eight-minute gap in two laps and then the front of the bunch went all red and blue as Great Britain went to work with Germany helping out.

After about 100 km the most significant event of the race occurred: a curb-to-curb pileup that put defending champion Thor Hushovd, Tony Martin, and American sprinter Tyler Farrar stuck in the back.

With no radios in the riders’ ears, no teams were able to respond to the inventory of crashed riders.

Hushovd was stranded with no team support and never recovered. And Martin never got back. Farrar, however, turned in an amazing performance to get back up to the main bunch and appeared on the wheel of Taylor Phinney for the sprint.

Another great ride was Ben King of the US. In his debut ride at the elite world championships, King worked with the Germans and Brits in the chase. Just 23, King is part of an American youth movement still gaining a place with the Pro Tour riders. King’s boyish looks seemed to hardly help as initially the Germans seemed to be asking him to stay out of their way. But King persisted brilliantly at the front for several laps, at one point over cooking a turn and putting a foot down. I can only fathom how a crash at the front would have been detrimental to his career.

Thereafter the race became a desperate series of attacks with stars: Johan Van Sumeran of Belgium went off and caught the survivors of the break. But British team continued to churn faster and faster, ultimately producing one of the fastest worlds in history, with an average speed over 46 kmh (about 27 mph). Only Cipollini’s Squadra Azzuri at Zolder went faster.

At one point, Nicki Sorensen of Denmark fired off the front. I delivered a Cosellesque "NOW COMES DENMARK! NOW COMES DENMARK! NO COMES DENMARK!" And the place went apeshit, with Peter picking up off that in Danish. The audible roar shook the place.

But the Dane would be retrieved. Still the host country would finish with five guys on the first page of the results, a stunning but overlooked achievement.

Thomas Voekler fired off the front to drive a three-rider break that produced great applause. The French had gone with every move, but that would be the last move.

The British retrieved Voekler, who even went solo before surrender, and started the setup for Mark Cavendish.

They were nothing but fantastic, holding Cavendish at 20th position for five hours. But in the final 3 km they curiously surrendered the front. Australia swarmed on the right; Germany punched through on the left. And suddenly Farrar appeared on the wheel of Phinney! And then Fabian Cancellara appeared.

But this would only be a flourish of the matador’s cape. As they turned to face 800 meters uphill to the finish, Cavendish dismissed the train and got on the back of a motor bike, just one rider, Geraint Thomas.

By the time they leapt off the saddles, the front of the field had no British jerseys for the first time all day. But as the bunch stretched apart, doors started to open on the right side and Cavendish punched through and drove to the line. On the far left of the field, however, rode Andre Greipel of Germany who forced photographers to make a huge gamble on Cav. The Brit paid off. Holding of Matt Goss of Australia and Greipel, who won bronze in a photo finish with Cancellara.

For Great Britain, this would be the first gold medal in the men's road race since the late Tommy Simpson did it 46 years earlier. The entire country lead the medal count with six medals. The US was shut out.

And then done. Really done. I knocked out the awards ceremony with Peter. Received some truly kind comments from people, swapped a few business cards, and moved towards the booth to retrieve my bag.

Please read the race reports elsewhere for more details. Those guys do a good job.

The sheer size of the crowd then overwhelmed me. Despite having all access badges, I could not move in the road and had to go outside the fences and climb back in to get to my booth to gather my things.

This event was like a massive air mattress slowly deflating.

After debriefing and bidding farewell to Peter Piil, I gathered my things and a beer and looked for my ride…..Uhhhhh……

I went from being the toast of the event to being absolutely orphaned.

Finally I just hopped an event van and went to the press center, where I found Philippe. We made the drive back to the hotel for that vacuous lobby procession that follows every event of such a magnitude.

There would be a drink with Peter V. (I don’t dare misspell his last name here on the fly to get this done) and a Belgian agent for television and riders. There were handshakes all around but I stayed in for dinner….again alone.

Crossing the lobby, however, a pile of British folks detained me for drinks. Conversing in English was fun. And only at the tale end of the discussion did they point out Mark Cavendish’s mother sitting at the end of the group. Turns out I was in the epi-center the world according to Cav, whom they had followed and supported since his days as a junior.

These encounters at this event never seem to end. Fantastic.

Good night Copenhagen.

Thanks for reading.

Dinner with the Piil Family

2011-09-27T06:49:00.000-07:00

Let me start with apologies. I don’t mean any disrespect in rushing my reports on the Saturday events. My schedule became crowded with obligations and I could not sit and write as I had hoped.

Let me follow up with a comment on modesty. I do not fall for the fanfare of Mario Cipollini for his accomplishments, although he earned every degree of them. What has stunned me is the humility of cycling compared to the bullshit braggadocio of crappy American athletes – high school football players who win things like state titles only to poop-the-bed of real professional athletic tests at the top level. I don’t begrudge them for that, but I tire of cycling heroes who do things such as win a stage in the Tour de France and never consider themselves worthy of much praise.

And yet here I encounter such people who have done such things yet feel as if they have accomplished nothing……..This is sad. I’ll detail this later.

This day would end with a fantastic family dinner with my new best friend from Denmark, Peter Piil. He’s my announcing colleague. Super professional and proficient in Spanish, Danish, German, and history and art and sport and travel….We’re practically soul mates.

I’ll fill you in later on meeting Paul, his 80-year-old father in law who continues to ride 12 km each way every day and remains sharp as tack and thin as a rail. The entire family comes and goes by bicycle.

Americans cannot fathom this. As people wish to leave, they do so individually. It’s really, dare I say, an American concept. But in America people are stranded by the car in which they are attached. Everybody at this table – and we had perhaps 10 people – could go in and out of the dinner party as needed because most were traveling by foot or by bike. We sat on the ninth floor of this apartment, with all of Copenhagen beneath us, smearing fois gras on toast, devouring roast beef, and enjoying fresh melon. I got an overview of Danish history – from 800 AD to World War II – and a great deal of conversation, which I dearly craved. He is not just a wonderful announcer, but a TV personality in the making who wants to avoid the hype.

He is complimenting me incessantly about how I have “inspired” him. But after discussion I learn as a television reporter Peter has done the Olympics several times, W

We had finished the day with the junior men and the elite women’s road race. The junior men’s event would see a remarkable finish with Pierre Henri Lecuisinier – I know, sounds like expensive kitchen equipment, pounding away in a late move and outlasting Martin DeGrave of Belgium and Steven Lammertink of the Netherlands.

And then we had the women’s event, an exercise in patience. This would go from being one of the cruelest slow races to one of the most savage finishes I’ve witnessed in decades of watching women’s cycling.

This thing started so poorly I had to walk around to get oxygen. This was curb-to-curb rolling about, with Judith Arndt riding dead-freaking-last for the first 80 km. I could not feel anything but pity for Emma Pooley of Great Britain, the only one to animate the event with attacks early on. But Arndt insulted her by remaining last. When I explained the term “DFL” to the Malaysian official she laughed for about 20 minutes.

Humor is in short supply in Malaysia.

After six of the dullest laps of racing ever witnessed, the attacks began. Arndt advanced. Linda Villumsen, a Danish native riding for New Zealand, tore off the front and sounded alarms. All the favorites put out the fire and then Clara Hughes of Canada countered. She opened up a massive gap quickly and held a 30-second margin with one lap to go. Farther back there would be crashes that took Evelyn Stevens out of the contest. Then came wave upon wave of leadout trains. With just two kilometers left they collected the brave Canadian. And only in the final turn, with 600 meters to go, did the Italians appear with 2010 champion Giorgia Bronzini in tow. They fired uphill to the line and put Bronzini perfectly in place to outsprint Marianne Vos of the Netherlands and Ina Teutenberg of Germany. The result nearly matched 2010, with Vos scoring her fourth consecutive silver medal in the event.

From there I headed back with Philippe to the press office and sat around with a bunch of friendly French guys. Up walks Sean Kelly, speaking perfect French with an Irish brogue (strange, eh?). Next to me is Charly Mottet, who works as a technical delegate for the UCI. And we drive back with Philippe Chevalier. I would later learn in another drive with him that he was a rider but “not a champion”…..And then he notes that he rode with Greg LeMond for Cyrile Guimard’s Renault-Gitane team. Afterwards I learn he won a stage in the Tour de France, but he modestly describes himself as “not a champion.”

Eeeesh…. The humility of it all.

I arrive to the hotel to find Peter. He drives me across town to his in-law’s apartment. En route I learn that in Denmark cars are taxed at 180 percent of their value. But as a result of that the prices of cars are so low that people will travel to Denmark, purchase a car, and ship it home at a huge savings. People that do own cars own tiny ones.

We arrive at the apartment and use an elevator that is no larger than a phone booth to get to the ninth floor. Two average Americans could not fit in this thing.

We arrive to this splendidly compact home that overlooks Copenhagen at night. There is a table set for 10. This would be the only meal I shared with another person the entire time in Copenhagen. Announcing for a straight week requires a lot of quiet time alone. That and I don’t know anybody, so the dinner invitations do not come to me.

But I adored this family as they splashed between Danish and English for their guest.

I had no idea what to expect for food. We started with a loaf of fois gras and toast and jam. This was followed by cole slaw and roast beef and potatoes. We finished with fresh melon.

Quietly at the end of the table sat Paul. We had wine; he had good Danish beer.

Peter engaged me in a Reader’s Digest edition of Danish history, which is first written in 800 AD. The Romans never got close to these people and they did a lot of ass kicking over the years. These are the folks that put the Saxon into the Anglo-Saxon. Only then did they integrate our alphabet into theirs.

But in 1940 the Nazi’s swept in and occupied them on their way to Norway and Viktor Quisling’s attempt to match Hitler in both politics and haircut.

Paul was 10 years old then. He can recall assorted horrors of the war, notably when the Allies screwed up a bombing and destroyed a school.

The cool thing about Danish Resistance is how it involved bicycles. Every day the King of Denmark would ride about on horseback. This promenade became a daily declaration of Danish sovereignty. The citizens would escort him on bicycle. Each day became this massive bicycle celebration.

Peter and I hit if off fantastically and I dearly hope to return the favor when he and his wife, Charlotte, return to the US.

The only concern I had that night was stretching my voice the night before the elite men’s race. He drove me home in his compact Fiat through light drizzle, pointing out assorted landmarks.

I got into bed before the biggest day of my announcing career.

Thanks for reading. Two more dispatches after this!

Copenhagen Road Race 1

2011-09-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Eritean Express and the Beauty of the World Championships

So today would be the first day of road races in Copenhagen with the junior women and under-23 men. I feel like I’m running a grand Quidditch match at Hogwarts. We have to read names that are Malaysian, Vietnamese, Dutch, Russian, Latvian, Greek and Eritrean.

I love it. I love different language. I love different culture. I love the world.

To quote Joe Strummer: “I’m so bored with the U.S.A.”

After a night of bad Richard Gere movies that ran too long and Skype to home that ran too short, I awoke to an alarm. For me this is rare. I have this weird knack for waking up about five minutes prior to an alarm actually sounding.

I crave the day I sleep in, not because my schedule allows but because my body allows. I’m kind of a stressed person, I suppose.

But I nearly hit a button which would have led to me oversleeping ….. That would have been bad. I love this gig. I actually like stumbling through French. But I’m still somewhat of an outsider. People in this organization are kind to me, if not downright affectionate. But they are also equally stressed and I’m trying not to cause them additional stress. I do not get invited out; I do not get pulled over to tables; I do my job…and quite well, thank you. But I spend my nights alone in a hotel room writing this stuff.

Copenhagen sounds exotic, I know, but I’m not on vacation. I spend time researching riders. Do you know how futile it can be to find info on junior cyclists? And the Under-23 riders are just as tough. Guess what I did today before the U23 race? I spotted a French rider’s bike during the sign-in ceremony and snapped a photo of the stem.

Now most of you are thinking this thing had a Garmin or a Power-Tap or some other ridiculous device. No, this thing had the Rosetta Stone of the race. The rider had the list of numbers to watch taped to the stem.

Look, I got to watch guys such as Baden Cooke and Tom Boonen race as Under-23s. That’s on top of several great American and Canadian stars in the making. But in the moment of seeing them we are all like “Who?”

The U23 race is where to get the autographs before the lines get long. This is where announcers build up their mental data banks.

But this guy’s list gave me the info on who to watch.

The World Championships is ALL about protocol and pageantry; and I’m all about rock ‘n’ roll….So maybe it’s a bad fit. But I’m playing by their rules. And I learn a lot.

The day starts at breakfast with everybody, the officials, the UCI staff, the dignitaries, etc. busting down the door for the hotel breakfast. Then it’s off to the races held 30 km to the north of Copenhagen. I drive with Philippe of the UCI, a great guy who four years ago spoke no English but today can carry a conversation with me. My French is about 20 percent of his English…. We get along great. But like all my friendships here they are on wobbly stilts of language. English to French; English to Dutch; English to Flemish; English to Danish.

English is not superior, but it is the global default. It’s the second language of nearly every culture on the planet.

We arrive in car lathered in UCI stickers and get access everywhere; this is a far cry from 1980 and showing up with Dave Cox and Billy Rudnick in a VW Beetle with five bikes and no hotel room. That is where my cycling odyssey began 30 years back.

I unload, find my way to Lars the sound guy, get a microphone, and meet up with Peter. Then starts the pageantry.

The junior women must sign in, go to have their bikes inspected, and then assemble by nation. They are wonderful athletes but the sheer magnitude of the World-Holy-Crap-Championships flusters all. They stumble with cleats and wheels and the sheer spectacle of it all.

Peter Piil, a super announcer, rocks the sign-in next to me, calling each name. Then we dash to the start line with a French guy whispering in my ear to speed it up, to have all the riders assembled with five minutes to start, to interview that dignitary with the flag in and clear the media and be on that side of the fence or the other and I do it all with a smile to show that I am not nearly as stressed out as I truly am.

The poor junior women feel the same stress.

We get them to the line at 9:24.50 and start them at 09:30.00. I pride myself on that like a pilot.

These poor ladies roll about a kilometer and then smash into the fences, with a New Zealand rider down next to Jessica Allen of Australia, who won the world championships three days earlier. Game over. Winner gets a trip to a Danish hospital.

Racing just 70 km these women race brilliantly despite a few more crashes. This boils down to a bunch sprint with Lucy Garner winning to get Great Britain its fourth medal. Jessy Druyts breaks the drought for Belgium with a silver. And the Danes get their fourth medal with Christina Siggaard winning the bronze.

I took great joy in watching Thi That Nguyen of Vietnam (pronounced Tee-TAT Gee- YEN) attack solo and then ride to a solid finish. Kids from Asia and Africa and South America who may never get to some coveted European club can earn their berth on the start line here. And then they can prove their worth and valor by attacking as she did or by simply finishing with the bunch.

After a short break we start the U23 race, a 168 km race; 12 laps on a 14 km loop. There is the same drill with the sign-in ceremony and then the same French guy whispering in my ear that we need to start on time and “der are too times as many ridoors in these race.”

Peter and I pound out the procedure. The ceremonial starters would be Michael Plant, VP of the Atlanta Braves and a member of the UCI Management Committee (a great guy) and Tom Lund, president of the Danish Cycling Federation and the Cycle City Copenhagen program (And also a great guy). I interview Mike in English; Peter interviews Tom in Danish. We start on time.

The race unfurls in a curiously negative fashion. Although Brazil has just two guys in the race they both go up the road in separate two-rider breakaways. They are doomed.

With three laps to go they are finally recovered and a counter attack is launched. After assorted skirmishes a breakaway forms with riders from Denmark, Italy, South Africa, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, and Eritrea.

…..Upon reading this a sound of a needle scratching a record should run across your brain. Eritrea?

Do you mean war-torn, impoverished, African hell-hole of a nation, Eritrea? Yes. Eritrea has become a cycling-crazed country. They had dozens of flag waving fans at the finish line. I spotted them and tried to give them a sporting experience like never before.

They started three riders, two of which would hang in the field, one of which would end up sideways in the feed zone, but one of which Netnael Berhane, rode in mythical terms that only Homer could describe. The kid crossed a gap to a breakaway and went right to the front to take his pulls. And he never missed a pull.

As announcers we both played this up. And the Eritrean fans went nuts, banging on signs, waving flags, and dancing.

Sure, Australia and Belgium and Italy would organize the chase and retrieve this break.

But with less than one lap to go, when they were caught, Berhane was the last one to surrender the break. We love that the Spartans fought the Persians to the death. We admire the 54th Massachusetts for charging into the cannons at Fort Wagner. And we revel in Cool Hand Luke defying all the authority. But this kid from Eritrea is what makes the UCI and the Worlds a great thing.

The heavily favored Australians took control of the race with newly crowned TT champ Luke Durbridge pounding to the front to set up their ace, Michael Hepburn, for the win. But they found themselves stranded on the front. The Italians swarmed from the left; the Belgians swarmed on the right; and they still had 800 meters to go. They were characters in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, left with an impossible task.

And as the bunch swarmed to the front and made a right turn to charge uphill to the finish, Berhane of Eritrea dug in and stayed right in the wedge. Amazing.

Just like in the junior women’s race, all the cannons fired too early. The French emerged on the front with not one but two strong riders; the British found a door and pushed through. As Italy and Belgium faded, the French surged forward to finish 1-2. And the Brits put on a late charge to score their sixth medal of week.

Oh, the Americans? They did not place a rider in a single breakaway and only managed to get Jacob Raathe in 81st place. Not a single medal yet this week for America. They rode well but fell short when it counted.

And the so-called Rosetta Stone taped to the French guy’s stem? Not one of the 34 numbers listed on his stem of the “Riders to Watch” made the podium. And only one made the top 10.

These riders all spent way too much time looking at each other. They would attack, stop, and look back. I stated on the speakers during the race, Merckx, Kelly, Maertens, Hinault….those guys never looked any where but straight ahead when they attacked.

And how about the French guy who had those numbers taped to the stem? He rode to second place. As Ulysses S. Grant said in 1864 about Robert E. Lee, “stop thinking about what he is going to do to you and start thinking about what you’re going to do to him.”

The Eritrean guy got 28th. Frankly, he deserves a pro contract.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

Copenhagen: City of Cyclists

2011-09-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

City of Cyclists

“Rush hour” in Copenhagen proves that bicycles are the salvation of cities. Overall, American “mode share”, or the percentage of trips made by bike, is 1 percent. We get excited by certain cities – Portland or Boulder – where the mode share reaches between 5 and 8 percent. Witnessing that, average Americans would describe those towns as having “everybody” on bicycles. On my daily commute, I proudly can note that on the Beacon/Hampshire Street corridor in Somerville and Cambridge that the mode share in September will reach upwards of 10 percent in the world’s largest college town.

Copenhagen mode share overall is 40 percent! And there are corridors where the mode share, by my estimate, is 70 percent and the remaining mode share is 20 percent pedestrian. The remaining 10 percent is split between buses and cars.

The impact on an American visitor – even a cycling evangelist such as me – is staggering. As I walked from the hotel to the race venue at 8:30 am I encountered the morning traffic jam. The first thing an American notices is the lack of noise. Watching Copenhagen “rush” is akin to watching a skating rink. Everybody is gliding about quietly on bikes.

Quiet.

American’s used to such ridiculous vocabulary as “work out” and “exercise” and “play date” would likely assume this picture to be painted with athletic types intently pedaling about with helmets and Lycra. Throw that out.

Everybody is on heavy-duty bikes with chain guards, fenders and upright bars. They are dressed for work: men in full suits; women in heels and dresses. Nobody is sweating or breathing hard. They all whisk about without helmets or concerns. And they do all the stupid things on bikes Americans do while driving to work: texting, smoking, eating, and talking on phones. The only difference is they have a sustained heart rate of 120 bpm and we’re stuck in traffic.

Old folks press by on pedals, children spin along, parents move toddlers in basket bikes, handsome executives with chiseled looks, and statuesque women in heels. Everybody is on bikes.

And they are running not in pods of five or ten….They are riding in rivers of cyclists that defy counting. Not the thousands, not the tens of thousands, but the hundreds of thousands. Daytime, night time, rain, sun, snow…..They ride.

They ride at night. They ride in rain. They ride side-by-side. They ride hand-in-hand. They put their children on bikes. They put their children on boxes attached to bikes. They ride.

When the Arabs held us hostage in the early 1970s, America responded to its addiction to oil by putting its foreign policy on a military footing. But the Danes gave the Arabs the ultimate FU: they stopped driving. This addict simply got clean.

And today mayors from around the world – including Tom Menino of Boston and Michael Bloomberg of New York secretly steal away to look at Copenhagen for answers.

It works.

There is no expressway, parkway or highway in the center of Copenhagen. These planners looked around the world and realized that widening highways to alleviate car congestion is akin to punching more holes in your belt to alleviate obesity.

Most major corridors have three users: the cars get the center; there is a bike lane separated by a curb; then, separated by another curb, there is a walkway. This is not one or two streets but every street.

There is a train system, bus system and as importantly a bike system. Bike are parked everywhere. The race center is City Hall and by way of taking an alternative exit I found myself in the basement where employees get indoor bike parking. In my Boston office building with more than 1,000 workers I am one of perhaps six cyclists and we are left to fend for ourselves. In Copenhagen this City Hall has perhaps 300 workers and I counted more than 200 bikes in this parking rack.

So to my American friends reading this and smirking about this utopian rant, I offer a few curious beneficial byproducts to this system:

1) TRAFFIC: If you read letters to the editor about American cycling initiatives or listen to the anecdotes of Americans, you’ll hear about the frustration and anger caused by cyclists. But the core of this emotion is the frustration endured when a cyclists – paying little in the way of fees, insurance, taxes, fuel, etc. – gets to the front of the line. But American motorists need to realize that more cyclists mean less traffic and more parking spaces for them. Downtown Copenhagen has no traffic jam for motorists. Granted the fees and fuel to own and operate a car in Denmark are equally prohibitive. But when motorists do need to travel in Copenhagen it is done so without delay. I pity any American in an ambulance during rush hour.
2) BEAUTY: The weight loss industry in America is $60 billion a year while our bike business is just $6 billion. A 60-year-old Danish woman – wearing no make up while pedaling every day – is far lovelier, sexier, and more fashionable than the average 20-year-old American female trying to mask obesity with tattoos and piercings. If the Danes did away with smoking they would live and love to be 150. In America, meanwhile, we need only visit a Walmart on Saturday night to play “bingo”. Simply shout bingo when you see an American with either an air hose or a Rascal scooter. You’ll be stunned by the time you leave.
3) SAFETY: Many of my friends reading this will be incredulous about this report. Most will question the safety of urban cycling. But they cannot comprehend a life with so few cars. The indoctrination of Americans with cars starts with cartoons. Fred Flintstone got to work in the past via car; George Jetson gets to work in the future via car. Right? But if the mode share shifts slightly, great things happen. Every study ever conducted concludes that as cycling mode share increases people are safer: the motorists slow down; the pedestrians gain confidence; cyclists gain proficiency. Increasing cycling is the only thing shown to actually improve safety for all users.

So into Copenhagen lands the UCI road world championships.

Being here I took out a hotel bike twice so far. Once at 3 a.m. to alleviate jet lag. An absolute magical hour I’ll never forget.

But today, the rest day for us, I ventured out again in mid-day bike traffic. I rolled about with ease and without a helmet. There were so few cars out that I never had an agro moment.

This cycling mad country, by virtue of pedaling everywhere at 15 kph, has enormous respect for cyclists who can pedal faster than 50 kph.

Of note is that Tom Lund is the president of the Danish Cycling Federation which oversees racing and also the head of the Cycle City, which has been at the vanguard of making Copenhagen the world’s greatest cycling city. American bike advocates, fueled by the recent exploits of Tim Johnson, have learned to embrace racing to advance their cause. The racers, however, have much to learn.

Today I had a day off so I took a hotel bike and just started riding. The separated bike lanes are incredible. The entire culture is so attuned to cycling that it feels safe. Take away the cars and the rage and it feels safe…In 1996 when Copenhagen really got active about becoming the world’s greatest bike city, there were 252 serious accidents for cyclists. That number has dropped to 92 last year and 78 percent of those involved a car, meaning they were not bike accidents but car accidents.

This sounds awful to some but when you see the sheer number of cyclists, rivers of cyclists, who do so safely. Copenhagen cyclists pedal 3.2 million kilometers between every one of those accidents. A cyclist in Copenhagen is far safer than a motorist in America.

Denmark can lead by example.

This investment has paid off. American visitors I meet in the lobby are stunned by the bikes and the same quiet rush hour.

This city is the world’s best bike city by Discovery, a top five tourist spot in the world by The New York Times, and the second safest city in the world by Trip Atlas. But it is also considered the world’s best business city by Forbes Magazine. Just ask the American executives in the lobby of my hotel….Guys from Nebraska and Missouri and Kansas just stand in awe of this place.

OK, I’ll write about road racing tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Copenhagen Time Trials

2011-09-22T03:06:00.000-07:00

This would be just my second world championships as announcer. The UCI had added the juniors to the mix, so racing started Monday. Although hard to believe, the UCI had not held a world time trial championships until 1994.

And for the first time, the UCI had decided to integrate the juniors with the elite worlds. Here is out it would go: the junior women and the Under-23 riders would go on Monday; the junior men and the elite women would go on Tuesday; and the elite men would go on Wednesday.

There is the second UCI event under way here too. That is the convention of the UCI, its key committee members, its promoters, and its best officials. I was brought in when the UCI changed its official language from French to English. In the Czech Republic, I worked with a guy who spoke Czech. Then came Australia, where we did the entire thing in English. Germany had me work with Germans (but they spoke impeccable English.) And in Denmark, I got to work with Peter Piil (no relation to Jakob Piil). A real pro with nine Tours under his belt, Peter speaks perfect English and has great experience in radio and television doing all sorts of sports.

We met on Sunday afternoon for the awards rehearsal and hit it off. I had pushed through jet lag on just two hours of sleep and had little reserves.

Anybody familiar with time trials would recognize the junior women’s event. The first group would do a 13.9 kilometer loop, leaving at minute intervals. How the officials seeded this event is beyond my imagination but they pinned it right. The last rider to start, Jessica Allen of Australia, rode to a win ahead ahead of Elinor Barker of Great Britain and Mieke Kroger of Germany, who finished second and third respectively. They would launch the medal haul of those three countries.

After a lunch break, the UCI changed it up for the Under-23 race. Instead of one lap, the young elites would do two laps of a slightly longer course to complete a 35.2 kilometer race. I must admit the UCI came up with a brilliant crowd-pleasing idea to do this. They send the riders off in batches. Just as the last rider leaves the ramp, the first rider of the batch nearly completes the first lap and begins the second. And after a 20-minute break on the start ramp, the final rider of the batch has started the second lap. This enables the start of the second batch. This is repeated for five batches. The fans see a lot of action; the Shimano neutral support can support every rider; and the television cameras can cover the event.

On to this technical urban course went the Under-23 riders. The Australians came to Copenhagen sharply focused on medals and titles. Michael Hepburn rode the course with particular ferocity setting the fastest splits at ever check. Then he made a mistake, going off course and on to a sidewalk on a turn and causing tire damage. On a subsequent turn he appeared to suffer a puncture and crashed.

He leapt up, got a replacement bike, and kept pedaling to post a crushing best time of day.

This course would make a triathlete cry. There were a number of tight turns, patches with cobbles, and countless raised pedestrian crossings. Riders were given a tail wind to start but had to jackhammer against a headwind on the way back to the start-finish. Average speeds would drop 5 kph in this wind.

Then came the Danish phenom, Rasmus Quaade (don’t ask by it is pronounced Quail). With some of the sloppiest form I’ve ever witnessed at the World Championships level, Quaade stomped out a time 11 seconds faster. On the hot seat, he had to wait for Australia’s Luke Durbridge, the 2010 silver medalist. He rode a perfect ride, winning by 35 seconds.

After one day’s racing, Australia had three medals, two of them gold. And these riders had about 5,000 spectators watching.

Day two returned to the Junior womens’s course only to have the Junior men and then Elite women completing two laps for a 27.8-kilometer race. The very first bracket saw New Zealand’s James Oram post a blistering time more than a minute faster than any other rider in his bracket. And it seemed fast enough to stick. Most of the favorites fell short until the later brackets. It would be a Dane, Mads Wurtz Schmidt, who bested the time by just 4.11 seconds. With the Danish crowds in a lather, Wurtz Schmidt had to watch the entire final heat roll. One Aussie, David Edwards, seemed capable of beating him but fell short to finish third, behind Oram and Wurtz Schmidt. The crowd went bananas as Denmark scored its second medal of the week and its first gold in several years.

The elite women would go next in the exact same format and same course but in vastly different conditions. The first batch of riders had a clean course, with Canada’s Rhae-Christie Shaw setting the first fast time of 37:46. She took the hot seat and watched her teammate, Clara Hughes roll off. A two-sport Olympian, Hughes had been out of the sport for a number of seasons. She started to best her teammate at every checkpoint on the first lap.

And then it started to rain.
As the rain intensified, Hughes came in with a new fastest time of 37:44. Canada had 1-2 and the course conditions worsened.

In the penultimate bracket rode Evelyn Stevens. But the Wall Street wizard could not master the bricks in the rain. Instead New Zealand’s Linda Villumsen, born and raised in Denmark, rose to the occasion and posted the new fastest time of 27:28.

In the final bracket rode Canada’s Tara Whitten, America’s Amber Neben, and Marianne Vos of the Netherlands. But most attention went to the Germany’s Judith Arndt and defending World Champion Emma Pooley of Great Britain.

At the first time check, nobody on that list shook the standings, save for Whitten. On the leader board were three Canadian flags in the top five positions. As Neben and Vos faded, however, Arndt started to advance. She pounded out a 37:07 to bump Villumsen out of the lead and await the arrival of Pooley. Perfectly built for the hilly course in Australia, Pooley simply could not match the speed of Arndt. She finished third at 37:31, bumping Whitten off the medal stand by just two seconds.

Having started off a bit sluggish, the women’s time finished in electrifying form.

And the women received a huge crowd for their ceremony, with numbers easily exceeding 8,000 on the City Hall Plaza.

Wednesday would be for the elite men. Nobody went to work and the lunch time start drew tens of thousands of spectators around this course, extended out to a 23.2 km course on which these superstars would do two laps.

Preparing to announce the world championships is somewhat futile in that one has no idea who will be riding until the day before. Some federations – such as Italy, Gret Britain, Australia and New Zealand - put amazing focus on the worlds, but others do this event almost as an afterthought. They may have some individuals who give the event its due priority and get some medals. If a federation treats the worlds like it’s just another crit, they get the medals they deserve.

So for an announcer the drill goes like this: walk to the media center to get online. (The Marriott folks chisel their guests here just as badly as back home, not even offering wi-fi in the lobby!). Grab the start list and start researching. With events of last week, I could not do my normal preparation. Peter Piil, my colleague, saved me with a printed booklet of every riders palmares. That said, finding stuff on juniors is nearly impossible.

Then I pen in a coded set of letters and numbers next to each name in the start list giving me a quick reference sheet of talking points. I perfect this thanks to Larry Longo, with whom I have done countless call-ups at mountain bike races over the years. Bringing more than 100 guys to the line is a real challenge that trips up a lot of beginner announcers. I like to think that nobody can match us in doing a call-up.
For many riders there is nothing next to their name. Then I head to the Tissot timing booth, a cockpit of information that includes a television monitor, microphones, timing screens, and our paper work.

To our left sat Phillippe of Belgium and Beatrice of Malaysia. He speaks French and English fluently; she speaks English, Malay, Thai and a handful of other dialects. Phillippe served as the boss at the ‘cross worlds in Germany. The best officials are typically the nicest of people. They can be firm but patient. You know they are in charge.

So in this booth is this amazing kaleidoscope of language and color: Phillippe steadily speaking French and English into a radio; Peter pounding out the call in Danish; and my rantings in English. All the while, the screens are blooming in colors and information used by all to study this speed. If the road race is a poetic MS Word document, the time trial is a linear spreadsheet, an Excel document of speed.

As I prepped for the elite men’s time trial, however, I could not be anything but awestruck by the resumes of the guys in the very first bracket, seeded to be slowest. Just about every guy had been national champion; most had posted UCI wins, and several had scored the podium at the worlds at some point in their career. Almost every name had something noteworthy penned in the margins.

The early star in the men’s event would be Jesse Sergent, a 23-year-old from New Zealand who destroyed the entire first bunch with a 58:10. For non-cyclists reading this dispatch, know that a major achievement of a cyclist is to ride 40 kilometers in under an hour. This means a rider is traveling in excess of 25 mph. But these guys were riding 46.4 kilometers and going under the hour routinely.

In the second brackets Alexandr Dyachenko of Kazakhstan dualed with Nicola Castroviejo of Spain. The Kazakh took the hot seat with a time of 57:03 and stayed there until the final bracket of 15 riders lined up. Each of these guys in the final bracket had two-page resumes, a stock ticker in fine print of amazing results.

But everybody knew this race would not be about anybody but two: four-time World Champion Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland versus the upstart Tony Martin of Germany.

Everybody brought their best. Jack Bobridge, a former U23 world champion in his debut, posted the fastest splits and out-rode his American nemesis Taylor Phinney. Former world champion Bert Grabsch plowed a massive gear to also lower the split times. And England’s Bradley Wiggins whipped about the course with leg speed developed on the track.

When Martin rolled of with number 2 on his back, however, the game was on. He blew away the fastest split time at 10.8 km and kept pouring it on. Behind him, however, was an uncharacteristically flustered Cancellara, who learned with 10 minutes to start that his bike needed to be adjusted to fit UCI regulations.

Like seeing Babe Ruth in a cold sweat, I could spot immediately off the ramp that Cancellara did not have his typical form. His gear was too light; his position unstable; the bike rocking too much. Conversely, Martin’s back could be used to serve hot drinks and not a drop would be spilled. Smooth as glass.

Meanwhile the Dane, Jakob Fuglslang, rode with the country behind him, turning himself inside out in front of 30,000 spectators, delivered top-five splits. He was writing a Rocky Balboa script along the way only to have Martin pound out an Apollo Creed punch line with his subsequent numbers.

Martin rode the first lap and closed on David Millar, who had started 1:30 ahead.
During the second lap, Cancellara and Martin received their splits via radio earpieces. Martin could enter turns cautiously and explode out of them. Cancellara, however, had to take risks, bombing into corners with abandon, only to have Martin continue to add to his margin.

Finally Cancellara took too big of a risk on a cobbled corner, got the bike on a bad line, and went into the fences, barely staying upright and coming to a dead stop. Game over. He had to concede gold then; but the silver had also slipped away as Wiggins rode a perfect race to get Great Britain its third medal.

Martin pounded out a convincing victory with a time of 53:43. This guy rode a technical course on a windy day at an average speed of 51.8 kph. This means if you lined him up with a good regional rider, the fastest guy you ever see riding through your town, and then stopped them both after one hour, Tony Martin would be more than 13 kilometers, or about 8 miles, up the road. That puts him in another area code from the fastest guy in your town. He put 1:15 on Wiggins and 1:20 on Cancellara.

Here’s the medal count after the time trials:

Australia: 4
Great Britain: 3
Germany: 3
Denmark: 2
New Zealand: 2
Switzerland: 1

Note: nothing for the Americans, the Belgians, the French, and the Italians. Zink, zip, nada, zed. Something will have to change in the road races.

And then we are done. I eat alone. Stay alone. And prep for the road races.

Thanks for reading. Tomorrow, I’ll write a bit about Danish cuisine…..That should be a short dispatch!

My Five Rules on Death and Dying

2011-09-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

Five Rules on Death and Dying

I feel blessed to be bathed in the fluorescent light of the Amsterdam airport. Given the emotional and geographic and sensory geysers of the last two weeks this three-hour reprieve is deserved.

Pre-dawn in such places is hallowed. Traveling alone we are contained, given shape and form, by the forces of society in motion. And yet we are left alone, anonymous. I feel like the characters in Hopper’s Nighthawks; they can only guess at my regrets, tragedies, frustrations, fatigues, and desires.

And I can only guess at theirs. We have a magnetic deal on the distance we can and cannot be from one another. So we move around each other in brittle polite silence.

But I have no feelings right now. I have been scrubbed clean of thought. I am barely putting out a signal… Please and thank you are handrails of recovery.

I am en route to Copenhagen to serve for the second time as the UCI official announcer for the road world championships. A dream gig, eh?

Indeed it is and I will work hard – beginning today when I study every start list and bio - to secure this job for as long as they’ll have me.

But honestly I need this Amsterdam interlude for the personal cushion.

For as nervous as any announcer may be to call the world championships, I am coming off speaking at my sister’s funeral. That was a tougher gig.

My sister’s death last week would produce my family’s sixth funeral in ten years. They were not distant relatives but immediate, earth-shaking deaths to my family.

My speech to conclude my sister’s service had three components: thanking so many people for their support; outright plagiarism of truly gifted writers; and my five rules on what to do during times of death and dying.

Here goes:

Rule One: Ask
Rule number one is “Ask.” I find it terribly rude to allow somebody to suffer without asking for information.

So let me tell you what happened.

Less than two weeks ago, I sat on the sixth floor of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, chatting away with my sister, Kim. Although a bit loopy on meds, she used my conversation to move from grave and disoriented to upbeat and chipper. I had no illusions and recognized her slide toward death, but we had the most pleasant of chats.

The cancer that first hit her in 1984 and returned in a new form in 1986 and then a new form in 2007 and yet again in 2010 had found a new home. After her breasts, her lungs, her bone marrow, and her blood had been raided, the cancer found a new place in her brain. Her legs, her speech, her ability to even swallow were being shut off by her brain; like the fuse box in a house, the cancer had found the spot where it could flip off switch after switch after switch.

But she had always bounced back and I kind of hoped, listening to doctors, that we could get her to the holidays and who knew? Perhaps another summer of beach trips with my kids.

When I left her to travel to California for a Best Buddies event, I said “Love you…” in that sing-song way that is not intended to be the final good bye.

And she replied “Love you, too,” in the same manner.

And I bounced back – just as the door closed – “Love you more.”

Click.

Rule Two: Show Up
Rule number 2 is “Show up.” For five straight years we had been showing up for my sister in Herculean ways. We had learned a lot about medical things. But after countless pre-dawn pacing sessions at the ICU of hospitals, bidding farewell to my sister on the sixth floor – not the ICU – gave me confidence that I could start a trip that would take me to Monterey, Calif., for Best Buddies and then to Las Vegas for Interbike, and then after an eight-hour stay in Boston to visit Kim and swap out socks and underwear, I expected to head off to Copenhagen.

Off I went to the Audi Best Buddies Challenge: Hearst Castle, where I scrambled about and tried to forget about Kim for a bit. In effect, I was asking people to employ my own rule number 3 on managing death and dying: “Make no Judgment.” For what you see is not what you get. There is no correct way to grieve. Everybody seeks comfort in different ways during such circumstances.

I had been away – calling cycling events – when my father passed, my sister’s husband (which happened a week apart in September 2001) died, and when my sister passed in 2002.

When I touched down on Thursday, Sept. 8, in California, I started getting some bad text messages about Kim’s condition. The next day, like the calving of a glacier, her body simply started to collapse under the enormous pressure of all the cancer. “Success” would have meant enormous suffering just to gain another month. We made the decision to stop curative treatment and begin palliative care. She went off oxygen and on to morphine.

As I worked the Best Buddies event, doing my best to be upbeat for these riders doing this great charity event. The numbers kept coming; oxygen dropping, heart rate running at almost 140 bpm, and morphine increasing. Three times during the event, I called home to talk with my wife and children, including my brave 17-year-old son who sat loyally by Kim from Saturday morning on.

My son had learned the first two lessons well.

I could handle her passing; but talking to my children left me in puddles. Three times I withdrew from the event and hid behind buildings to simply sob uncontrollably.

Rule Three: Bite Your Tongue
My third rule on death and dying is “Bite Your Tongue.” Everybody grieves differently; everybody is a work in progress; we all seek comfort in different fashions; and there is no correct way to grieve. I had a lot of work to do that day and I did it. My work is fun and upbeat. So when it came time to announce the Friendship Criterium, where pro riders and celebrities pair up with Buddies on tandems for fun races, I asked my dear friend and colleague Larry Longo to help announce, in case I broke down.

As I got started, however, I realized my sister Kim – a teacher of teachers – needed me to knock it out of the park for these kids. So Larry and I rocked it.

Once I got to the post-ride barbecue, I settled my clients, took care of some production details, and realized my phone – after all the calls and texts – had died. Smashmouth came on. Pardon me for not grieving appropriately, but I love that band. I totally got into the show and checked out. I hate to admit if felt great dancing with the riders I knew and especially the Buddies. In hindsight, Kim would have loved that I did it.

My initial plans called for me to head to Las Vegas. But I awoke to dismantle those plans to get home, hopefully in time to see Kim before she passed. Oddly, few people save for my closest of colleagues realized my situation. I felt as alone as I have ever felt…..ever.

Throughout Sunday – as I worked phones with airlines and untangled myself from obligations with the event – I kept receiving the metrics on Kim. Her amazing little heart continued pumping at 138 bpm for the third straight day.

The best I could get out of my airline was a 6 a.m. flight out of San Francisco. This gave me a night with my dear friends, The Simpsons, in Burlingame. This included dinner with a 14-month-old boy, John Paul Simpson.

I collapsed into bed at 9:30. I awoke at 4:30 and learned by text that Kim had passed. I had missed it.

I just wanted to get home. I returned a rental car, simply leaving the key on the seat to make the flight. I fought through security, found my way to a window seat at the rear of the plane. At the last minute, a heavy woman wedged into the seat next to me. I’m typically judgmental and annoyed by heavy Americans.

As I sobbed and typed, my head turned towards the window, this lovely woman simply kept handing me tissue after tissue without asking any questions. No judgment.

I arrived and silently stumbled through the Boston transit system. As I came up the stair at Alewife Station, I found myself side by side, stride for stride, next to my nephew, Nathan. We emerged to see my brother, Gary, and sister, Beth. My wife Deb was two cars behind them with no knowledge of their presence. Somehow were all together. Nice.

Rule Four: Make Lasagna
I got home, dropped bags, and we swung by the home of my wife’s colleagues, Liz and Steve Curran. They had prepared a full dinner for my family. I truly can handle the death stuff; but these acts of kindness – often by people who don’t know the deceased but know the family – move me to tears. We received dinners every night. And time after time I am swept away with emotion.

We had a whole ham one night. Then came wonderful teriyaki bowl from my sisters colleagues at Wediko Children Services. And the lasagna from Best Buddies continues to feed the household.

My later father, a sullen WWII vet, would remain on the periphery of such events – deaths, operations, births, etc. – and simply mutter, “What are you going to do?” If the situation were a flat tire or a broken pipe or grass fire, he would be at the helm and fixing things. But in medical circumstances beyond his reach, he shut down.

Making lasagna cares for people caring for the ill or the injured. When there is nothing else to do, feed people, care for their children, and help them with their laundry. These acts are profound.

My friends at Harpoon heard of my sister’s passing and forced three cases of beer on me. Flowers arrived. Notes were sent. Comments on Facebook and e-mail and text were crucial to me.

Thank you.

Rule Five: Laugh
On behalf of my family I wish to apologize for anybody we may have ever insulted at assorted wakes, funerals, receptions, and hospitals for apparently having a good time at an inappropriate moment.

Throughout my sister’s illness, we went through wild swings in moods. But there is closeness with this experience – with friends, family and casual daily coffee-shop acquaintances – that is profound. Trust me, I broke down and wailed like some Greek widow on a number of occasions.

I actually believe it should be required. This death process with my sister started in 1984, when she was first diagnosed. The past five years have been a steady degradation of her health and quality of life for her. Having her dignity shaved away, layer by layer, has been as difficult to witness.

For the family this past five years has been a series of fire drills followed by eye-blinking meetings with medical teams followed by vacuous bedside vigils. Some were alone with Kim and blinking monitors and beeping devices; some were with her awake and chatty; and others were with family and friends.

Once in the ICU last winter, with Kim intubated on a breathing tube and unconscious, my brother, Gary, my nephew, Nicky, and myself passed the time in this gravest of locations….In this somber place we were laughing uncontrollably about something. We could not stop.
Kim’s passing was hard. I lost a business; turned down a job opportunity of a lifetime; lost countless promotions and failed to close several deals due to my time required in a hospital or a rehab facility or simply spent holding a hand or walking a beach.

But I had so much quality time with my family and witnessed the emotional growth of my children and their cousins. One could not buy such an experience or tutelage.
Kim’s service we took the opportunity to pose for a family picture. Surrounded by the sound system in the middle of the Putnam Room at the BC Alumni House, we staged for the shot. Macy Gray’s “I Try” came on.

This entire family broke into chorus, clutching one another, waving back and forth in broad smiles. Kim’s passing had made us so close to on another. These children were so strong as a result of this experience.

Afterwards many of the kids continued to dance.

And I trust that in the event of my passing folks that come together have some laughs….hopefully at my expense.

I’m now in Copenhagen, having announced the first two days of competition. I’m totally alone, surrounded by folks speaking Danish, French, German, Flemish and assorted Scandinavian dialects. It’s good that I have nobody as it protects my voice.

The emotional strength to go through this wonderful, albeit lonely, travel experience came from my family.

Today is the men’s elite time trial. I’m going to crush it.

The Burgermeister and My Dinner with Hanka

2011-01-31T13:23:00.000-08:00

Sankt Wendel Day Two

The Burger Meister and My Dinner With Hanka

SANKT WENDEL, Germany (Jan. 30, 2011) –Alone again after an amazing race, I tramped through the team area, past all the Fidea trucks and the French federation trucks, and up a hill to a school-like building where a small banner fluttered with the words “VIP.”

My announcing colleagues had told me to meet there.

Zdynek Stybar and Marianne Vos had just posted repeat victories. The Belgian fans were bouncing in their massive beer tents, content that Sven Nys and Kevin Pauwels had restored the axis of the earth with the silver and bronze medals. The sun had dropped beneath the hills towards France, but the blue sky offered another hour of winter light.

I entered the building to find two ladies staffing a table who spoke neither English nor French nor Spanish but only German.

Allow me to digress on language and culture. A few weeks back I encountered a troubling thread ignited innocently enough by an old friend from my hometown neighborhood. She expressed in her status some understandable frustration with being asked to press one for English on a phone line. I understand that English is our language in America.

But what really discouraged me were the responses she got from people that were so flame-throwing hostile that I had to respond. Things such as “THAT IS TOTAL BULLSHIT!!!!!," and "THIS IS THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, LEARN ENGLISH!!!," were in this thread.

Typically such people are so frightened to leave their own country not for fear of running into other cultures; what they fear is running into their own types.

We’ve all heard it. I happen to believe myself to be the greatest of Patriots. I have walked nearly every Civil War battlefield. I weep at monuments. I live right next to the Battle Green in Lexington. I travel to Congress every year to lobby for my cause. I also believe rock ‘n’ roll to be the finest of exports we’ve ever had.

Whether we like it or not, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and Victoria Falls happen to be in other countries. And if folks in other countries are going to drink Coca-Cola and log on to Google and wear Levis jeans, some of us actually need to leave our country to go there. And some of the braver ones actually like to travel. And I might even choose to work in another country.

I also realize a lot of folks for a lot of reasons want to live and work in America. Clearly there is a strong demand for labor here, too. Heaven forbid a white kid should ever mow a lawn, eh?

And if we’re going to fill Holiday Inns and sell Big Macs next to our national parks, they are going to come here, too.

Some folks watch protests or some speeches and assume that the world hates Americans. They kind of overreact to that emotion.

Here is the news flash for those folks who only view the world through the pinhole of Headline News: People typically ADORE Americans.

So armed with nothing more than a smile and no language, I stared down this 60-something women who looked balefully over the top of her reading glasses to deny me entrance.

I said the only word that I could muster: “Burgermeister.”

And she arose and started to escort me upstairs.

Enter Klaus Bouillion, burgermeister, or mayor of Sankt Wendel.

I have met countless mayors and senators and congressional folks. I even met a president once and attended a White House function. But Klaus put them all to shame.

I first spied him with a radio headset, snowpants, and an unzipped winter jacket, driving a quad about the venue. He never came off like a mayor. Before I knew who he was, I actually questioned why he was hanging around the stage. Later I saw him driving stakes into the ground and supervising some earth moving equipment. In the middle of my announcing, he pulled me aside and stammered at me in German for two minutes, patting me on the back the whole time. Beats me what he said, but I liked him!

For those unacquainted with what I do, I announce bicycle races. And I had been brought to Germany to announce the 2011 World Cyclo-cross Championships. Look, friends, I love the NFL. But for a live sporting event, American football does not come close to big time cyclo-cross. When you’ve tried it, come and tell me otherwise.

And this day would be one of the biggest of the big time 'cross races one could see.

So for day two I awoke to find Will Matthews, a photographer friend, at breakfast. To my surprise he was with the soft spoken Phillip, a video shooter I had met in 2004 working in Europe for OLN (Now “Versus”). Afterwards, I tramped over in the same chill, through the same gingerbread neighborhood, and arrived at the venue.

After the customary coffee and cake, we hit it for the women’s race. This proved a fantastic race with the local heroine Hanka Kupfernagel, several times world champion pounding away at the front. Then the American Katie Compton took over and dispensed with all but Marianne Vos of the Netherlands and Katerina Nash of the Czech Republic. Compton dropped Kupfernagel, but not the others. With just over one lap to go, Vos attacked, went clear and stayed away to repeat as world champion, her fourth 'cross worlds title. Compton finished second, Nash third, and Kupfernagel, for just the second time in the history of the event, finished outside of the medals in fourth.

Then came the intermission. I did some soup in the press room, had a fun interview with Dave Towle for Velo-News television and another for Chandler Delinks' video project "Cyclo-What?", and then augered into thejam-backed beer tent. There I found the Portland Cross Crusade guys on the main stage, having just completed the wedding of Doug Moak, a great stake-pounder and all-around good guy, to his new bride who was just loving enough to allow Rick Potestio to serve as the JP for a wedding in a Belgian beer tent. Hopefully Rick won’t do the divorce if that should become necessary.

Then came the big one; the elite men’s race. The sheer power of this field assembling is daunting. But the passion of the fans eclipses the caliber of these racers. There were easily 3,000 people packed into the stadium before the race started with tens of thousands more on the course, having staked out positions throughout the venue. My colleagues and I spent 30 minutes warming up the finish line crowd by effectively making fun of them.

And there stood the smiling Burgermeister, laughing at my joke that I had enjoyed my stay in their local jail. (Germans are funny; they thought I really HAD been arrested for peeing in a fountain!)

Czechs, Germans, French, Spaniards, Americans, Swiss and other fans poured in but the Belgians were out in force divided into factions. This group for Nys; that group for Pauwels; and another for Albert; and they all were jammed on the fence with drums, bells, costumes, flags….

I made it a point to ridicule the Belgians for having yet to score a medal.
I did the call up without incident and the men were off. I pounded them with Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. These fans are not used to having any music play during an event; they went bananas.

The race unfolded fantastically with about a dozen riders in a wedge at the front after one lap. Right in there rode America’s Jonathan Page. His countryman Tim Johnson rode in a second group charging forward. From the leaders broke a group of six: Zdenek Stybar of Czech Republic, Marco Fontana of Italy, Philip Walsleban of Germany, and three Belgians: Sven Nys, Kevin Pauwels and Klaas Vantournout. Nys and Stybar broke free. Both had won world titles at Sankt Wendel in 2005; Nys as an elite and Stybar as an Under-23. The story lines were fantastic as they rode a minute ahead of the others. Farther back, Page had flatted but Johnson charged forward and seemed poised for a top 10 result.

Two riders rode with such grit to warrant mention. Jose Antonio Hermida of Spain, the world mountain bike champ, lined up dead last but pounded through the traffic and up to this group in about five laps. And Francis Mourey of France spoiled his first-row start with a high-speed crash starting the third lap. He would leap up with mud and blood, and charged back to contention.

For the Americans disaster struck. Page flatted and went out of the lead group. And just as Johnson’s group whirred down the track, a rider smashed in on his left side and put a pedal into his front wheel.

Johnson went down like a stack of cans. He lay crumpled in pain on the gritty running track; I directed traffic around him but did not interrupt the medical staff. Earlier the chief official had concerns with my being on the track. But right then it came in handy. As I directed traffic around Johnson, the fans became focused with concern, pointing on to the track.

I looked over to Johnson’s bike. The front fork had a hub, but the rim had been entirely chopped off. The front wheel had collapsed beneath him.

On the track were the cut spokes as if a box of spaghetti had been broken in the supermarket. That this audience recognized the potential for a puncture impressed me.

My presence really helped when the medic jumped up to pick up the spoke, nearly darting into the path of three riders. I pulled him back by the shoulders of his coat and re-directed him to the medical task at hand. I took over the collection of the spoke when safe, handed the spoke to a spectator…..Then they all yelled for another. With each spoke I handed off – and there were nearly a dozen - the applause grew. THESE FOLKS WERE NOT CONCERNED ABOUT THE PUNCTURES!!! They wanted Tim Johnson’s spokes as souvenirs!

Stybar pulled away from Nys. With one lap to go, Mourey joined the second group in the race for the bronze medal. But as he arrived, Walsleban attacked to the delight of the Germans. But Vantournout countered and set up Pauwels for a savage follow up attack to finish third. Mourey charged to fourth; Walsleban in fifth.

Awards were held. We were done. As is customary, several fans were kind enough to come up to our fences. I signed one autograph and hugged a half-dozen drunken Belgians. People were really nice to me.

Then one fan waved me over to the fence, pointing down to the ground,and speaking in Flemish....which is kind of Dutch, but with a peanut butter sandwich in your mouth. Seeing no flag, no phone, no wallet, nothing of any value, I wondered what he wanted.

"Sven Nys," he said.

Then I spotted it: he wanted the cork popped from Sven Nys’ champagne bottle. I looked over and saw the other two corks and retrieved both for him, thereby bringing the corks from all three podium finishers. I held out my cupped hands to offer him the corks.

He panicked and in a squint, asked me imperatively “Which one Stybar???”

I looked at his panicked face….And then matter of factly pointed to the one on the right. “Stybar….That one, Stybar.”

I nodded with complete certainty. He left with joy.

And with that, the whole thing ended. A season of racing, several weeks of studying, incredible days of packing and preparation came to a vacuous close. My German co-announcers asked me to attend a VIP reception, of which I had not known. I cruised again through the press tent. Then I made lonely traipse through the raucous Belgian beer tent. Pushing a snowblower would have been easier. I followed my German friends’ instructions, walked through the team areas to discover the VIP reception.

VIP? There was not a single suit and tie in the place.

With my pantomime escort, I entered a school cafeteria where legions of police, marshalls, firefighters, and event volunteers gathered around tables. By most standards, these VIPs were not Very Important People. But more than 500 citizens of Sankt Wendel had volunteered services; by Klaus Bouillon standards these were indeed very important people. Some ambitious people get to the top by walking on the backs of people; Klaus Bouillon has been stacking up friends like cordwood.

Ironically, my German colleagues, with mastery of this native language would not get by the two women; they never arrived.

I was escorted to the guy in charge, who spoke English. He said to standby, not to worry, and we would figure it out.

Had I been frightened of the language barrier, I would have walked back to the safety of the hotel and the people I already knew. But I took a shot.

I wandered about politely, somewhat aimlessly. Then I saw him.

The Burgermeister, after running heavy equipment, recruiting sponsors, driving stakes, cooking sausages, picking up litter, and performing tasks I’ve never seen a mayor perform, appeared to me. He wore a blue apron and carried a rack of dirty dishes, when we spotted one another. His eyes lit up; his smile was like opening drapes on a sunny morning. The dishes were put down, and he waved me forward. I was given great treatment in the food line, enjoyed fantastic potatoes au gratin and schnitzel. As soon as I sat down, a beer was put on the table.

Seeing that I sat alone, the Burgermeister came and leaned on his heavy, strong arm, talking right into my ear and sufficient English.

He had a hand the size of a ham, pumping my hand with a big smile, told me I had to come over later to try the greatest sausages in the world. He then went off to greet others. In walked a small group of people with a minimum of fanfare. A long legged blond with a shiny parka stood nearby, her back to me. I had failed to cut my schnitzel well, leaving me with way too big of a piece in my mouth. As I gnawed on meat the size of a deck of cards, she whirred about , saw me , and politely asked if the seat was taken.

Without hesitation I recognized that Hanka Kupfernagel, perhaps the greatest German cyclist of the last 20 years, sat down next to me. Her boyfriend, Phil Spooner, sat across from me. We exchanged the most pleasant of pleasantries with minimal discussion on her race. Our discussion would be punctuated with the occasional gushing fan that came up for an autograph, photo, or simply to unload incredibly sugar-coated adulations on her.

Her English proved impeccable and her boyfriend, a professional race car driver from the UK, offered up splendid conversation. Hanka had to get up to make an obligatory visit to another table, but scored me a beer before leaving…..Opening the cap herself.

Phil and I continued on for a bit with discussions on driving, music, culture, history and just about anything BUT bike racing.

Then the Burgermeister, still in his blue apron, took the microphone. In my severely limited German I heard him thank all the townspeople group by group. I took out my camera in hopes of capturing an image of him to post later.

As I fuddled with the phone camera, the Burgermeister started another thank you. In the German I heard the words “meister,” “speaker,” and “American” and he suddenly switched to English, paid me the highest compliments as the “world famous speaker from America.”

And the place gave me a tepid, standing ovation.

Such grace given to a man who had crashed their party moved me.

With that we all sat down and I enjoyed a phenomenal hour with Hanka, speaking about her life growing up in East Germany, her boyfriend’s career racing 24-hour events, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, the economics of the EU, and the re-unification of Germany during her lifetime. She would be a fabulous dinner guest with or without her cycling pedigree.

Without a photo or autograph (something I strictly forbid myself from ever doing), I packed up and tramped back through the Gingerbread neighborhood, remarking on its topographic and climatic similarities to my native Western Pennsylvania. A platinum sky escorted me back to the hotel. I caught up on e-mail, joined some Americans in the bar, and then joined the UCI for dinner afterwards. Again the conversation swung from French to English to Dutch. I found I could vaguely follow the French, especially when Enrico Carpani, a charming Swiss press officer for the UCI who is fluent in Swiss, Italian, French, and English, provided his vivid hand gestures.

I have come to realize that languages are much like jigsaw puzzles. What at first is a jumbled mess becomes an elegant pattern that our brains organically start to process. A word, like a puzzle piece, so obscure at first suddenly calls out to your brain …its shape, its color, its pattern, its rhythm, its position – suddenly makes sense.

Having apparently pleased the UCI, we began discussions for next year. “It would be good if you learned some French, eh?,” Melanie Leveau said.

“I’m on it,” I replied.

After a nightcap with photographer Will Matthews, I clocked out to sleep.

I awoke, grabbed breakfast, and caught a ride to Frankfurt. In the front seat rode a member of the UCI management committee en route to Spain. Our driver spoke English. He worked for the Burgermeister.

I pulled out two business cards. On the back of one I wrote a note to the Burgermeister inviting him to the states and pledging to do my best to return the hospitality to him.

All I can hope is that if the Burgermeister does travel to America, he does not reach out an open hand to our citizens, hoping only to discern the difference between a dime and a quarter (neither of which have been stamped with their numerical values) and encounter the mean-spirited individuals I had to deal with on Facebook.

Tale of Two Races; Juniors and Under-23

2011-01-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

SANKT WENDEL, Germany (January 29, 2011) – I got to announce two amazing races today at the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Germany. Although held on the same course on the same day, they unfolded so differently that they may have been held on Mars and Venus.
I won’t bore you with race details as my friends on the news sites can do a better job. But I’ll give you some behind the scenes stuff.
I could not sleep last night; staying awake until 2:30 a.m. When I awoke, still groggy, I stumbled to breakfast with some UCI folks. What is amazing is that the conversation flows from French to Dutch to Flemish to English without much of a hitch.
With that I dressed and made the walk, alone, through the crisp January air through a gingerbread neighborhood. In being here, I have not been in an automobile since being dropped off. This is a walking town, nestled into the hills on the Western edge of the Black Forest.
I arrived to the venue about 9 a.m. under clear blue skies and a frozen course. I made my rounds, gathered some start lists, and chatted with some journalist friends, Charles Pelkey, Rob Powers, and Jan (sorry, Jan forgot your last name!) a great photographer from Canada. We also have Lynn Lamoreaux and Christine Vardaros over here.
From there I met my German counterpart ….counterparts! Turns out we had two guys working with me, Sven Simon and Jens Meiskowicz (sp?). These guys were great, and they were both fluent in English.
Before long, it’s on: junior men. These poor kids warmed up on a corrugated frozen course, making tire selections accordingly. On the first lap, they went over the barriers and this berm, about three meters tall that crossed the course at 45 degree. But in the 30 minutes before the race the sun had softened this stuff into a peanut butter. When the field hit this thing they tumbled like bowling pins. They got up and went back at it, with continued crashing that rattled the young brains of these racers.
Most of the favorites, the Belgians and Dutch in particular, were just unable to recover. Off the front went Clement Venturini of France who danced on the course where others stumbled. Most Americans speak about Belgium, which dominates the elite men and packs the venue with fans. But the French actually have perhaps the best overall national program at the worlds. Venturini got such a large gap that on the final lap he crashed and tangled his bike in the fencing. He had enough time to detangle the machine and ride comfortably to a finish.
What really impressed was that Venturini’s teammates, twin brothers Loic and Fabien Doubey, pounded away to finish the sweep of the podium.
Boom. Done. Awards, and then a 90-minute break during which time people flood into the massive beer tents and start dancing to horrid sing along disco that becomes infectious. It’s great if you’re with a crowd; but being alone I walk through and stay on task.

I walked about, chatted with some friends, and then examined the berm causing all the problems. I could not walk up the thing without hanging on to the fence posts. This greasy mud surely would wreak havoc on the second race…..

Alas when the U23s started, we expected mayhem. Instead the entire field, save for some clumsy Belgians who routinely tried – and failed – to find a line up the right edge – bombed right over the berm. This shocked everybody. They were like a charging infantry going up against an fort deemed impregnable only to clear the wall and discover they had no other orders….This race had surges but the group rode as a massive juggernaut with as many as 40 guys in the front group. The American Danny Summerhill rode brilliantly, with his nose right up in the wedge in a position to win. Only he punctured and came out.
Another great ride came from Valentin Scherz of Switzerland, who led with two laps to go. Americans adore this young man as he spends his first three months choosing to race in the States.
With those two laps to go, there I called out to my German colleagues that the name of the person who would win this race would be a name we had not mentioned. It became a race of patience; a battle of the one who kept his powder dry longest would be able to fire best last.
The mud had grown thick and heavy; the pits were busy every lap.
In the junior event all of the favorites were splattered about the course in confusion; their winner, Venturini, had placed 18th in the French national championships! That’s like Detroit winning the Super Bowl.
Although many of the favorites were gone in the u23 race, the powerful teams flourished. With one to go the Belgian carried their blue flag forward. Wietse Bosmans launched a firm attack. The Dutch went into pursuit, led by Mike Teunnissen. And quietly, a lone Czech rider, Karel Hnik, went along. Suddenly they had a gap. And across came the top-ranked rider, Lars Van Der Har – who won the World Cup without winning a single event – firmly on the pedals.
Van Den Har made contact at the high point of the course and descended like skier to the track hitting the clean surface with 10 bike lengths. Dutch gold, Teunnissen makes it for Dutch silver, and Hnik brings the first medal for the proud Czechs.
Everybody floods into the beer tents for sloppy parties that make New Orleans seem like an Arizona shuffleboard game.
Me? I walk back to the hotel, endure an international promoters meeting,where I got confirmation that my event, the Providence Cyclo-cross Festival - having received the highest marks by the UCI - would be recognized as Category 1 for 2011. And we would be partnered with our friends at Gloucester one week prior, also receiving a long overdue Category 1 status.

I will dearly need support from all my friends as the promoters of the USGP have decided to move off their date to move on to our date for their Fort Collins, Colo.

We have big plans to be revealed in the coming weeks.

I had dinner, went back to the room, and read about Upton's Charge at Spotsylvania....Where amid the gravest of consequences, he had been told by everybody that his strategy for overtaking an entrenched fortress would NEVER work.

Well, go read about Upton.

The Belgians are coming tomorrow. Be very afraid. This place with have five times the crowd……As an announcer, I’ve been very tame so far at every World Championships done to date. That changes Sunday.
Thanks for reading.

Sankt Wendel Course Preview

2011-01-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

Sankt Wendel Course Preview
SANKT WENDEL, Germany (Jan. 28, 2011) – I just returned from the venue where I had to the awards rehearsal. This is my third world championships as an announcer and I’m getting it down. I have two sound guys, Roland and Jean Rene, who are French. Between my French, Spanish and English, we’re going to get along just fine.
I also walked the entire course. I try to do this before every race I announce.
This course may be perhaps the best “racers” course I’ve ever seen. The holeshot will not be as important as most ‘cross race as there are several places where a strong rider can advance and make up for a mistake or two. There are three power sections, grinding uphill grades on relatively smooth surfaces, where there will be a selection. There are a few technical sections, but given the weather conditions those should have a nominal impact on the race. There are several crowd-pleasing, white knuckle drop-offs all of which dump riders into sweeping turns.
In talking to Meredith Miller, who should excel on this course, the tire pressure will be kept low – we’re talking 23 psi – to keep her gripped to the course on those downhill turns. Also with us was Danny Summerhill, who planned to ride the course with a pair of Typhoons. There is a lot of talk of file treads as the course drained from super sloppy on Thursday to considerably drier and faster today. And forecasts call for sunshine.
Although frightening to watch, these drop-offs should be handled without incident for most of the fields. But the juniors, who go first, will have the course with its frozen ruts causing the most problem. Expect some blood on the first two laps of their race.
This course was designed for a January race and an expectation of racing on snow. But that is not the case, so we’ll get a high-speed, tactical race that could go down to a sprint on the running track.
Katie Compton will be great on this course. She could win with two mechanicals and a crash, given her form. But Hanka Kupfernagel will be on her best form racing in front of her German crowds.
The juniors are a bit of a lottery. But I’ll study results all night to get some handicapping done. Likewise the U23s have some parity, but we could see a great ride by Danny Summerhill on this course.
In the elite men? This course will favor the strongest team and that will be the Belgians. Will they show the respect to Sven Nys and ride in support? Clearly the strongest pair have been Kevin Pauwels and Niels Albert. I like Pauwels on this course. Zdenek Stybar with his injured knee will have to ride smart to win here, but he could do so. Remember he won a U23 title on this course.
The Dutch will not have Lars Boom. The Americans do not have Ryan Trebon on the start list.
Thanks for reading. Gotta fly.

From Plumbing to Presidents; Lexington to St. Wendel

2011-01-28T03:01:00.000-08:00

SANKT WENDEL, Germany, Jan. 27, 2011- Greetings from the Autobahn. I’m traveling at 200 kph inside an Alfa Romeo wagon. I’m traveling from Frankfurt to Sankt Wendel.

Although it is 7 a.m. the sun will not appear for another hour. Few realize how for north most of Europe is on the planet. When the melting ice caps push the Gulf Stream to the south, these guys will be hit with some incredible winters.

But for now there is no snow here. And the temperatures are relatively mild, given what I left in Boston 8 hours earlier.

I apologize for not filing a blog for some time. This is for two reasons: absolutely chaotic life; and really not a whole lot to write about….other than chaotic life.
I don’t wish to bore people with irrelevant pontifications on matters. But this weekend will get some readers as I’m traveling to Germany to serve as the UCI’s official announcer for the World Cyclo-cross Championships.

I must tell you of the complexities of actually getting here. Although I had a lot of the juggling act shared by many folks in my current station in life this past month has proven particularly difficult.

I will let you know it ends up with torches at dawn.

I have the overarching stresses of debt, homeownership, and working my own consulting business which I suppose could be called successful as in a time of 10 percent unemployment I’m pinned down with paying work. But there are also the challenges of marriage and parenthood. We have three kids and each presents a wonderful set of hurdles to our lives each day, especially my 14-year-old daughter Emmy as of late. I’ve learned why folks tattoo LOVE on one hand and HATE on the other. I do adore her.

I suppose the hard times started in November when a woman turned left in front of me on my bike, leaving with a destroyed left thumb. Surgeons had to put all the tendons, ligaments and bone back together. This left me in a cast and sling for six weeks. There is considerable pain in the thumb and I’ve had to endure the inability to open jars, button pants, tie shoes, and control exactly which part of my body and clothing is in the path of my urinary stream…..Especially in portable toilets in winter with a lot of clothing.

Add to this that our first floor heat has not worked this winter. With a wood stove, we can survive just fine….we thought. Just after the New Year holiday all shit went down. For starters we love our kids so much we simply blew way too much money on their holiday experience. Then the exhaust fell off the car. This makes us the loudest family in Lexington and shall be so until a few pay checks hit. Two days later my laptop died, along with much of the data stored inside. A week later our dryer crapped out.

Overall of this we have my sister Kim. After displaying fatigue over the holidays, she discovered severe bruising on her body in early January. She is a survivor of breast cancer, lung cancer, and myeloma. So such issues raise big time concerns. So on January 14 she made the sad trek to Dana Farber Cancer Institute for a painful bone marrow biopsy, with my wife, Deb, holding her hand.

She has yet to leave that hospital.

They admitted her with a diagnosis of plasma cell leukemia. And her condition nosedived. After four days at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with each of us taking turns being by her side, they rushed her into ICU and decided to intubate her. This means unconscious with a breathing tube. This also means one might not come back; something this family has witnessed. Panting and delirious, she waited until as many of her siblings could arrive. She got three of us: Patty, my wife, Debbie, and then after pounding through traffic, myself. Her sister, Beth, became mired in traffic on I-93 and could not get there in time. They bid goodbye on a cell phone, sheets of tears ran down Kim’s face.

And then she went under.

I fully expected her to die. Her condition had become nearly hopeless. And I questioned traveling to Germany. My wonderful family, starting with my wife, insisted that I go, realizing the importance of the trip.

Throughout this we experienced a deepening, darkening winter in New England. We’ve already received double the average snowfall. And as I readied for this trip we experienced cold weather not felt in New England in six years. In dealing with my sister, I neglected to let the faucet drip as the temperatures plummeted to 11 below.

On Monday morning the baseboard water pipe exploded beneath the stool of my son, Madison, interrupting his enjoyment of Lucky Stars. So we shut off the downstairs heat water….OK, we can live with that. Besides the weather promised a thaw.
Indeed. We received an amazing thaw in two ways the next day.

In the late afternoon of Tuesday my phone started to jingle with text messages. My sister seemed to thaw back to life….Every ten minutes I received a text from my sister, Patty, who was at Kim’s bedside.

”….Eyes are open….”.

“….They lowered the sedation….”

“….She’s breathing on her own….”

“….Numbers look good…”

And then the phone started to jingle with texts from my wife.

“…THERE’S WATER IN THE CLOSET, A PIPE BURST!”

“….They’re going to extubate her….”

“…WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME?...”

“The tube is out, she’s sitting up.”

“….NOW THE KITCHEN HAS WATER”

“They’re pulling the other tubes out.”

“THERE IS WATER EVERYWHERE!!!”

“Kim says ‘HI.’”

The OFF button on the phone seemed a good option.

I hustled home and dug into the amateur plumbing competition. We had three ruptured pipes. In digging out all my supplies, I did an inventory, ran to Lowe’s before they closed at 10 p.m. I got most of the way through, with my wife re-connecting the dishwasher supply (she’s great at these moments, a beautiful woman who can also figure out shit like this.) We did not attempt the baseboard, but chose to attack the closet as shutting that off had cut off the bathroom water supply. After all the wall demolition, cutting, sanding, flux, etc. I discovered my torches simply sucked….(Don’t get a torch with an ignition button on the nozzle). I had a wild yellow flame that nearly ignited the entire house when I tried to work.

So at 7:30 a.m. I appeared at the Ace Hardware like Dustin Hoffman appeared at the church in The Graduate. I got a new torch, raced home with the blaring muffler, and with a sharp, blue tongue of flame, knocked out the repair, installing not one but two sleeves perfectly!

Sadly, I have rarely solid feelings of competence in any thing that I do save for announcing or promoting bike races. But fixing a pipe like that just filled with me manful pride.

Then, having yet to have a shower , I dashed to the bus to travel to the office, put in a full day, with a brief connection with my sister, and then…..

LUFTHANSA Flight 143 to Frankfurt…..

Ok, folks. Some people whine about flying…..After the two months I just survived, with two working thumbs, bags packed, a Civil War book, and a delicate aroma of soldering paste, I got on this plane. Movies, blankets, wine, dinner…..Quit yer complaining folks. I knew my family had indoor plumbing. I could sleep.

I awoke 29 miles outside of Frankfurt. We hit the deck. The airport shops were closed at that hour of 6 a.m. and I still had no adaptor for my electronics. I met Urs, my driver, who spoke no English. We tore off to Sankt Wendel, completing a Sesame Street education on German.

Upon arrival they dumped me into a Gesthaus that did not match up on my itinerary. But I showered, slept a few arrivals, and then tackled the town. Although cold, I managed with a wool trainier, cashmere blazer, hat and no gloves. I walked about 2 km to the accreditation office, met Simon Burney, a friend. I learned I was not in the correct hotel, walked 2 km back to the hotel, packed and transferred to the Angel Hotel, the host HQ for the event. There I got a snappy UCI scarf for the event and checked in to room 007…..Relax, no stunning blondes awaited me in the room.

I got online briefly to send a limited dispatch home. No phone this trip; just Skype. But the batteries were going fast on the laptop. So I went on safari for an adaptor.

The first shop wanted to cut my cord and re-wire the whole thing. He told me the nearest place get an adaptor was in Saarbrucken, which I think is in Austria.

“Nein, bitte.”

The kid at the T-Mobile Store spoke English and directed me to Alpha Tecc, a superstore.

“Yes it is beyond the train station…”

So with my snappy blazer and dress shoes I started walking.The whole place is like a scene from the The Bourne Identity, gray and cool skies with grim characters trudging to and from work. At the train station the first three folks could not, or would not, help the chirpy American who spoke no German. (You get a little sensitive about the whole World War II thing…) Finally a guy kindly directed me towards the store I needed. I started walking.

The town center gave way to housing. The speed of the cars increased along with the distance between intersections. After 10 minutes of walking I found another guy, and put my note in front of him with the Alpha Tecca name. He nodded affirmatively, and directed me to continue …..”swei kilometers.”

I had to digest what he said. Was that seven kilometers?

I froze….No wait, that’s two kilometers. So I started clicking away with the dress shoes. I got to the equivalent of a Best Buy, found what I needed, and started heading back.

When I travel I love walking. But this was pushing it.

After walking more than 10 km that day in my church shoes, I got back to the hotel, encountered Brook and Mia Watts, stuck in the lobby as other Americans filtered in. Bruce Fina, Joan Hanscom, Betsy and Gregg (of Louisville)filtered into the lobby.

All chatted and then the UCI Honchos came in. I found myself having beers with Pat McQuaid, Michael Plant, and Bill Peterson, along with Brook and Mia. We continued to dinner, with McQuaid defecting to another party.

Cyclists love to gripe about everything in cycling politics. Well, there I sat next to the UCI president, a member of the UCI board and the president of the USA Cycling board. We have some solid discussions on all sorts of subjects, including doping. We must develop these relationships should they serve us any purpose.

Schnitzel, beer, and then Skype back home.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned.

Why Larry Longo Rocks

2010-10-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

“J-School” is this thing folks once attended to learn how to write before people adopted such literary tools as “OMG” and “LOL” as a means of communicating. I went to one; I got a masters’ degree; I worked for 10 years as a reporter; I ran my own magazine (right into the ground, I should add) for 14 years.

A lot of people say nice things about my announcing, but they don't realize how much time I spent reading and writing. Those things come in handy when speaking.

While in journalism school I had to read a book entitled The Literary Journalist. One of the most coveted and dog-eared pieces on my shelf, this book was a collection of great magazine writing. Every author proved fantastic.

So in collecting the pieces they polled all of these all-star writers on who they believed to be the finest writer alive in our language. Several of them said without question Tom Wolfe. So then the interviewer decided to go ask Tom Wolfe who he considered to be the finest writer.

Without hesitation Wolfe responded: John McPhee.

So a lot of folks as of late have said really kind things to me about race announcing. This I find hard to believe because whenever I bark at a race I do nothing but chronicle all the mistakes I make. (Trust me, there are several.)

As one of the promoters of this month’s Providence Cyclo-cross Festival I knew one thing: I did not want to have to announce my own race.

You see, an announcer is like an obstetrician. We don’t do all the hard work; we don’t have the labor pains; we don’t conceive the thing in a fit of passion; and we certainly don’t have to pay for the bills after the thing is delivered. But when it is crunch time, we arrive relaxed, adjust a few things, respond to any emergencies, provide a bit of coaching, and hopefully deliver a cleaned up bundle of joy.

We’re relaxed; it’s not our baby.

So when I found out I had to go to Australia as the guest of the UCI, I had to find my own replacement for Gloucester and that helped me fund the selection of just about any announcer I wanted.

There are loads of great announcers. I like most of ‘em and consider several to be good friends. And I would hire several of them in a heartbeat.

But I chose California’s Larry Longo.

I could not figure out why I liked him so much until after I hired him. As I ran another feverish errand across the venue on Sunday at Providence I heard Larry's voice. (That I could hear him so well is a testament to the great Glenn Stillwell, but more on him and our secret at Providence later.)

“…..So we can call it Cyclocross Singles…..Bachelorette Number One, what’s your name?”

He had gone off the script, off the event schedule, and casually engaged other staffers and exhibitors and sponsors in this piquant dialogue that was fun. Larry keeps your ear. Few announcers do that.

Dave Chauner taught me when you promote a sporting event you are essentially building a stool that stands on four legs: spectators, sponsors, media, and participants. And an announcer has to inform, educate and entertain all four of those elements.

And most announcers do a good job of that. And let’s face it, we all have our own favorites based on our own selective criteria.

Larry Longo realizes there is a fifth leg to the stool: the staff.

He’s easy going, relaxed, and like a good obstetrician assures them all that the baby’s going to come out just fine. And when a staff relaxes, they perform better. Working alongside of Larry at crits, mountain bike events, road races, and now ‘cross events, I’ve never once seen Larry get the officials or the marshals or the medical staff or the organizers ruffled or aggravated.

He sands down everybody’s rough edges.

Only when serving as a promoter do you realize the importance of that element of the job. And know this, being laid back does not mean being lackadaisical. Larry’s as prepared and educated as he needs to be for every day’s work.

He can whip a crowd up, but he can also calm them down. And he keeps you listening all the time... for his jokes, his observations, his way of kindly mocking a staffer, or wishing Mitch Wippern happy birthday EVERY DAY that Mitch Wippern ever worked with Larry. All of it on the microphone.

If you get the chance; hire him. If you want to learn the craft, learn from him.
Thanks for reading.

Patience Pays Off

2010-10-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

Patience Pays Off

I did not file yesterday as I had to head right the start of the men’s race.
By now you probably know that Georgina Bronzini of Italy and Thor Hushovd of Norway each won their respective world road titles. The coverage should indicate the ferocity with which each successive field raced. But this course rewarded patience. The rider we mentioned the least would be the favorite.

My job was to simply start ‘em on time. But there is considerable fanfare before each event, all of which is subject to the regimen imposed by the UCI. But it works.

The women’s race was held entirely in Geelong. At noon I start the team
introductions one hour before start. Then you do it all again at the start line, calling every rider to the line. A real pro, Rik did a great job of either speeding it up or slowing it down according to the schedule.

The women raced very negatively at first but finished with utter savagery on the road circuit. What we learned on this difficult circuit was that patience paid off. The rider who waits would win. Emma Pooley destroyed herself, only to see her compatriot Nicole Cooke leave with Germany’s Judith Arndt with 6 km to go. They would be caught on the homestretch by the bunch to be swarmed by the field led by an Italian leadout train. Bronzini came through, with Dutchwoman Marianne Vos winning her fourth consecutive silver medal ahead of Emily Johannsen of Sweden, whose helmet bounced off a spectator leaning over the fences with 50 meters to go.

But the bigger victory was the event itself. The rematch of the AFL Grand Final drew most of the attention with the Magpies crushing the Saints. Regardless there was easily 50,000 spectators out for the event.

I finished off the day, as always, alone. I got a beer at a bar surrounded by Magpie fans resplendent in black-and-white attire. I then opted for a quiet sushi bar for a snack.

I had an 8 p.m. dinner meeting with the marketing department of the UCI. I waited in the bar, alone, until drawn to a table where the other UCI staff gathered. They all spoke French until I found a guy from South Africa.

I finally got out to dinner with Middat, Nicole and Tobias. We spoke English. Although there were a lot of discussion topics, the outcome is this: they booked me for the ‘Cross Worlds in Germany AND the 2011 Road Worlds in Copenhagen. Cool, huh?
I finally stayed awake until 11 p.m.!

Towards all that stuff, I must say that patience pays off. I have never tried to sell myself to promoters. I have never tried to undercut another announcer or take a job from my brothers or sisters in this profession. I've been patient. I'm prouder of that than I am of actually securing such prestigious gigs as these.

When I woke, I found Rik in the lobby. He would join me at the start in Melbourne. We made the drive to Melbourne, a beautiful, gritty city with amazing architecture. It’s a blend of Victorian charm and Bauhaus zeal.

When we arrived there were maybe a few thousand people bounding about like charged electrons. We figured out what we had to do and went to work. We were at Federation Square. There would be a team presentation on a stage followed by the start about 300 meters away on a bridge.

I did comedy and Rik and I tried to do some race handicapping to fill the 15 minutes before the teams were to arrive. Just having the PA running drew in the crowds. The number probably crested at 1,000, and that was just for the presentation. About 5,000 people were on the bridge for the start.

Per usual, the teams fail to arrive on time and when they do, confusion reigns. The Americans were one of the first to arrive. I enjoyed seeing the guys I knew, Ted King and Christian Vande Velde are two of the nicest pros you could ever meet. They were relaxed and at ease. We got a few teams up and down and then waited a painful three or four minute between teams. Then they ALL came at us, Latvians, Poles, Colombians, Swedes….

Mark Cavendish, Thor Hushovd, and especially the Aussies with Cadel Evans drew
At one point Michael Albassini of Switzerland stormed up on the stage, stammering, “There is no rule zat we have to do these. We have no time. Thees is stupid….”

Rik, myself and the official said nothing, nothing.

“FUCK off,” he said… Running up during another team’s photo op and signing the board …and continuing to curse us as he left the stage and he rode away.

Then Fabian Cancellara rolled up, with a sheepish Albassini in tow. The man they called Spartacus, a true class act, made this donkey return to the stage for the photo. He said nothing this time when he passed by me on the stage.

Sports are show business. The sooner riders realize that, the better. And patience is typically rewarded.

We rolled them up again for the start, where the great Phil Anderson helped Pat McQuaid do the start duties.

The riders would go over the massive West Gate Bridge and roll 85 k to Geelong to start 10 laps on the circuit.

We drove to the circuit, turned up the hi-fi, and worked the finish stretch. In short, we signaled the start of the race for these fans who had staked out fence-side seats hours earlier.

Read the coverage. A great race unfolded with underdogs, local heroes, Rocky Balboas and Apollo Creeds all racing brilliantly.

Despite unbelievable heroics from Cadel Evans, a late breakaway was caught by the 40-rider field, survivors of unbelievable savagery that sent most of the sprinters to the DNF list. Save for one: Thor Hushovd, who never felt the wind in his face until 100 meters to go.

Boom. Done.

The Americans were dreadful. But if you study the event you’ll realize that Italy sent riders and directors to Australia twice to profile the circuit and study the event. Although unsuccessful, they were in every major move with big numbers. They were able to select the right time for the job. They finished with several riders.

Other teams show up as an afterthought and the results show.

And then it’s done. I walked back, actually stopping to have my picture taken with fans and even signing two autographs. What fun and flattery.

Headed home I young lady from Geelong named Bethany intercepted me. She ran a local community radio program on cycling. I had gotten her into the media box to get an interview with Cancellara.

She owed me a beer so I took her up on it. From there I would encounter other UCI folks in the lobby.

I never got out. No sites. No tourism. No clubbing.

But I did fasten down some friendships with some important folks. And I’ll improve the relations when I travel to Germany and Denmark in 2011. But I hope to have some family along next time.

Game over. Thanks for reading.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

2010-10-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

I have found a few Americans over here. Mike “Mikey Havoc” Sayers is working for the American team along with Jim Miller, both good guys but super busy and staying somewhere else for lodging. Then there are the riders, but they too are so pegged and freaked out, that even during the team introductions, I appear to them like some character in Alice In Wonderland.

Adam Howes could not believe his eyes when he came on stage to see me.

"I'm in over my head on this one," I whispered when I saw him.

"Me too," he replied. Great kid.

But finding Ted Essenfeld and his family has been great. He’s a NewEngland bike guy serving in the Navy as a lieutenant. He married Ski, an Aussie gal from Darwin and Perth (far away from Melbourne), who talked her into going home for a month. They have two great little kids and got to hold a one-year-old infant last night, which is an amazing human connection in this environment. Many of you remember Ted for his son, Ryder, who wiped out Tim Johnson en route to the podium last year in Providence.

We got to have dinner together last night at some place called Hog’s Breath. Imagine Bugaboo Creek and you’re close.

I loved it. But I did have to concern myself with sleep and my voice. Despite being convinced I had I stayed out WAY past my bed time of 8, I arrived to the room at 7:30 (19:30). I had one more bad beer downstairs and then collapsed at 8:30. One would think with the whole British Empire thing, one could find a decent IPA in this town. That’s not to be.

Only through viral means did I realize Geelong has a bit of an inferiority complex. People look down on this place compared to Melbourne. I have yet to even go to Melbourne. But it’s clean, kind, and quaint with fantastic Victorian architecture.
The leading cause of death with tourists such as me is getting whacked by a car, as they drive on the left side of the road and we tend to look the wrong way before stepping off the curb.

So here’s the drill: wake up, check e-mail, write blog, shop around alone, get start list, cliean up, go to the venue, announce, eat, sleep, and repeat. I found some sleep meds last night at a “Chemist” store and added a pack of “Throaties” lozenges. Thankfully Ski, a native Aussie, guided me through the process.

My hotel has Graham Watson, Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, the Spanish team including Luis Leon Sanchez, the Polish team, and some others.

I know you must all think this is like some cycling Valhalla. In many ways it is. This event has just so many layers of stuff. There must be five miles of hard fencing on this 15 k course. There are TVs everywhere. I cannot fathom the tenting bill alone, which would dwarf the entire budget of most US races. It’s a massive arena for cycling. They’ve built bridges just for this race. They’ve removed rotaries (a.k.a roundabouts). They’ve re-paved and re-painted the entire course.
But then there are some things you cannot fathom they do without….. I cannot find water! There is no food while you’re working. And I don’t have a schedule of what I’m supposed to do. I go to the office every day and receive my instructions in a hybrid of French and English.

Yesterday at 11:15 I learned I would do a team presentation at 12. This would be cool.

Everything is super formal and structured. And like I always say, the first casualty of battle is the plan. When the officials don’t show up at 12 you cannot start the team presentation.

I did them all with just one glitch. All you do is look to the left to see you have and then go. I have no help and no order. I accidentally looked over and called Japan to the stage when in fact they were the team from Hong Kong (who rode brilliantly I might add).

But I nailed the names of just about everybody - Lithuanians, Norwegians, and even the one kid from Eritrea – without a hitch. But starting late I had to speed up the process, with teams going up and down the stairs at the same time, jostling for pens to sign the board, and freaking out about riding the biggest race of their life.
The race itself played out fantastically, albeit negatively. Everybody is so geeked out because of the magnitude of the result. There were some fantastic attacks and breakaways, not the least of which was Ben King of America going at the gun with a chase by Ben King of Australia. Both would be caught but they were brilliant.

The ride of three young men really impressed me:

Daniel Teklahaymanot of Eritrea. Riding alone, this kid from the poorest of poor countries, not only finished with the bunch, he threw down a handful of impressive attacks late in the race.

Tony Gallopin of France. He went three times in the last two laps and nearly made them stick. A real engine, Gallopin could be the next great French classics star.

Moreno Moser of Italy. The nephew of Francesco Moser, he showed amazing strength and speed in his solo move that nearly succeeded.

But the race was a controlled affair designed to bring the race to a bunch sprint with Michael Matthews of Australia where he needed to be. He won by several bike lengths. The crowd went bananas.

A tie for third with Taylor Phinney of the US and Jeremy Boivin of Canada could not be broken even with the best of Tissot timing going to the very pixel on the camera. They shared bronze.

The chant “AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE” was heard during the medal ceremony, with the return “OY, OY, OY!!!”.

Great stuff.

Ok, so it’s off to the women’s race now. The crowds will be super small today because the Grand Final of the AFL (Australian Rules Football) will be today. A marketing mistake you ask? No. The game was last weekend but they played to a tie. In their rules, they simply wait a week to play again. It’s the Magpies versus the Saints.

We’ll see.

Thanks for reading.

Some Theories on Announcing

2010-09-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

Sleep is the ultimate elixir.

The mood is elevated and the stress is coming down thanks to patching together some sleep last night.

Yesterday, with Cancellara winning his fourth world time trial title, it finally hit me the stunning grandeur of this experience. I think it hit me when I saw fans hanging on fences to get a glimpse of the man they call “Spartacus.”

For so long, I’ve lived by the mantra of “it’s only a bike race” to calm myself when announcing.

Anxious to simply get working, I hit the office about 8:30 yesterday, grabbed a start list and started studying as much as I could. My crew call was for noon, with the race set to start at 1 (or 13:00).

I got there at 10 a.m. and found Bill and Greg, our sound guys. They simply had the feeds running on the television monitors and already a crowd of about 500 folks were around the finish line. I had burned some CDs.

The first thing about my announcing attitudes is that I learned as much from Joe Strummer as I learned from Phil Liggett. When The Clash played the Harvard Square Theater, Strummer arrived to discover a movie theater totally inappropriate for his show. Her personally removed the first 11 rows of seats and put them in the alley. After the show, he personally put them back.

The lesson is that you do what needs to be done. And you need to be comprehensive about what makes the production work. As a result I’ve been on ice-over trusses, up in trees, under stages, and up high in ladders. I’ve suffered hits to the head, cuts, bruises, some mild electric shocks and nearly suffered a self-immolation on Lemon Hill trying to fix a generator.

You see the day before I noticed they had no music playing. None.

So I asked Bill what the rules were for music or such.

“They didn’t tell me anything, really,” he said, appearing somewhat bewildered.
“So we can do what we want?” I asked.

He just smiled.

This venue has probably 100 speakers. More speakers are quieter but you can really impact a crowd. I realized I needed not one, but two wireless microphones. One at the finish, one at the start, to make it all work.

Working with Bill, I put on a bed of music and started testing the wireless mics for their range. I also started live conversations with every course marshal, stage worker, security guard and timing official. In short, I was getting passports from everybody who works so hard to make this event happen. When the crowds thickened up, these guys all gave me carte blanche.

My colleague is Rik Fulcher, a really pro announcer who knows loads of material on cycling. He’s THE announcer in Australia, which is a cycling mad country.

He arrived on time and started writing down bio info on everybody to race. When I told him I would prefer to be in the street, he offered some resistance, noting he would not be able to hear me. I looked to a pair of headphones and said I’d be right back.

Bill smiled and said, he could put the feed right into those phones. I returned and said, you’ll be able to hear me in there.

Rik had the splits, the scoreboard, the television feed, and the bios. I had a start list. Together we made a great pair.

But WAY too many announcers believe it's about WHAT you say. Like it's some high-speed trivia pursuit contest. Trust me, there is always some guy in the crowd who knows more than you. Our job is to inform, educate, and then entertain, and in that order. Many can do the first two elements better than I.

So I choose to make it about HOW you say it. How much inflection you can bring to it. The announcer licenses the audience to respond accordingly.

Us talking about the television feed over the PA meant we would be simply duplicating what the television guys were doing. In short, we were putting ourselves out of a job. So while Rik handled the inside stuff, I could talk about stuff NOT on the cameras. And I could do what I love to do: work the crowd. I goofed on accents, I made fun of Australian rules football (Magpies versus Saints in the Grand Final Saturday, mind you) and I ridiculed their lack of enthusiasm….Until it all changed.

You also have to make them like you before they will listen to you. A simple voice over the speakers simply becomes a sound, like the adult squawking in Charlie Brown cartoons.

Eye contact with the crowd is extremely important. Working with kids, with families, with riders, with directors - especially when you can make some grouchy East European team boss wink and smile - changes the tenor of the relationship. The crowd then hangs on your every word. Then you can ask them do things. Like .... freakin' get excited.

So those are a few of my theories on announcing...Just a few. I'm holding some secrets back.

The way this time trial worked is like nothing else I’ve ever seen….and despite the UCI’s peculiar ability to sanitize most events, this format proved fantastic for the fans. The riders started about 300 meters from up the hill from the finish, leaving at two minute intervals, and completing two laps on a 22.4 k circuit. This is where it got cool. They sent them off in batches of 10. After the first 10 left they would not start the next batch until the top of the hour, leaving at 13:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00 hours.

Confused? So was I.

Then it became beautifully apparent. The guys came through to start the second lap. After the last guy went through, the next batch of ten would start. So as I was calling the start ramp, Rik was calling the finishes. The thing worked miraculously for as I could work the crowds on the arrival of so many great riders – Sylvain Cavanal, Bert Grabsch, Michael Rogers, David Zabriskie, et al - before the cameras got there.

So as I Rogers roared to a best time of day finish, Cancellara entered the stage with the magnificence of a lion. The whole thing electrified the crowds.

So you know how the racing went; read Velo News or another site of your choosing. Millar rode the ride of his life but Cancellara simply crushed the event to win his fourth world title.

Rik and I pulled off a pretty production, despite the fact I made about three major mistakes. Just the mis-calls that happen and nobody seemed to mind…it’s just this stage is so big. There were probably 30,000 people there for a Thursday afternoon time trial.

Walking around the podium ceremony and ensuing scrum with fans and media, I finally registered just how big of a deal the world championships could be. At one point, as I am conditioned to do in America, I thought there had to be a guy somewhere that could beat Cancellara.

“Like where?,” I asked myself. “Jupiter?”

This is the best of the best on the entire planet. And then I realized why fans hung on the fences simply to get a glimpse, a photo, an autograph of Cancellara. Cycling, my underground renegade sport, actually had a serious crowd control problem.

And I had this freakin’ all-access badge to cut through all the gates and security. And because of my passport established earlier, I simply walked through with a smile.

I was expected at a UCI gala in Melbourne. But the ride for the event never materialized.

Honestly, I was delighted on behalf of my body and my voice to skip the thing.
Despite going face down into the pillows last night at 8 (or should I say 20:00?) into a deep slumber, I awoke at 11:30 (23:30) to sheer terror.

I have so many nagging details of my life – namely Providence, which is next weekend – which are making it difficult to shut off the engines of my brain. And my body is totally confused between a three-hour time change to Las Vegas, then back two hours to Wisconsin, then the18-hour time change to Australia that is has simply decided to sit down like some mule and refuse to move of the Eastern Daylight Savings Time. I sat up for four drowsy hours, having no sleep meds, booze, or any chemical means to shut things down.

Finally, about 2 in the morning, I got it under control and went back down. I awoke at 5:30, having put together two patches of 3.5 hours. Not enough….but enough.
This whole thing seems glamorous, but it honestly is not.

Today, with the U23 road race, I’ll bring it down a notch.

But just a notch….

END

Geelongings in Australia

2010-09-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

Geelongings….

First off, let’s get this straight. Australia can be a cold place. I am looking out over the Pacific Ocean, having seen the sky melt from ink to purple to pink to blue…. And I’m convinced that I should be in a state of delight.
I write this from a Sheraton on the harbor of Geelong, which is bike crazy about the UCI World Road Championships where I’m serving as the UCI’s official announcer. Beats me why a bunch of folks who speak French want to fly a guy from Boston to Australia to talk about bikes. But they did and I’m honored.
Outside it’s about 45 degrees, but warming under the sun. Inside there’s a great buffet. Graham Watson is sitting at the table next to me.
And this is all so very, very, incredible. They gave me an “infinity” badge….meaning I get a little emblem on it that is not a numeral but the sideways eight…We’re talking all-freaking access.
Let me get to the candy to keep you reading.
This is my life since Sept. 20:
Fly to Las Vegas, room at the Palazzo large enough to hold a small criterium, and getting to call a thrilling edition of ‘Cross Vegas. After working the floor for three days, I fly to Madison, Wisc., chatting with Swiss pro Christian Heule and Velo-News editor Neal Rogers on the way. Room at McGovern’s (too small to hold my suitcase, let alone me and Will Matthews and I) in Sun Prairie, Wisc., an adorable town. I call two of the seminal cross races in U.S. history with Tim Johnson and Jeremy Powers simply crushing a world class field in the opening rounds of the Greenware USGP. After a night in Chicago with Chris Dimmick and his wife, Laura, I board a flight to Australia.
Have I not dropped enough names and places for you? It gets better.
I arrived yesterday in Melbourne after 24 hours of flying – which is hard to fathom but true - only to be whisked away by Colin Paul, a great fellow, in a UCI-badged Skoda to Geelong, about 70 k away.
Australia is stunning. Imagine putting the Netherlands in California. And despite all the men looking like total rugby bad-asses, everybody is so kind.
So why am I lonely and cold and depressed?
For starters there is the simple element that every parent can understand: hungry, angry, lonely, and tired.
“What?,” you ask…..”Richard Fries, tired and lonely?”
I arrived to find not a soul who knows me. Most of the organizers speak French. I go to the finish line to start announcing but the place is in a state of fenced-off lock-down. This massive garrison is bracing for an onslaught of 500,000 cycling fans. But for this Wednesday time trial a crowd of maybe 6,000 had gelled along the start-finish stretch.
After receiving six different instructions on where to go, I walk 10 blocks back down the hill – right where Colin had dropped me off initially – to find the office. I finally charm my way past a few desks and get my accreditation. Finally I stumble back up the 10 blocks to get to the announcing booth.
Throughout all this I’m listening to a pair of Australian voices with minimal inflection. I know we think of these folks by way of the ‘Croc Hunter and Crocodile Dundee…but there was none of that. And there is no music. It’s like an event in Oz but you have no idea where the hell the Wizard is actually standing…we only hear the voice.
I finally get access to the cage around the booth. The effort cost me 90 minutes.
When the door swings open to the Tissot timing box the visual is akin to the bridge of the death star in Star Wars. (Makes me wonder how Ted Bowles on his own could start, finish, and accurately time the entire Florida state time trial championships with nothing more than a folding chair, orange cone, clipboard and bullhorn. (Of course he did have Jean Bowles by his side.)
What first impacted my senses, however, was the assault on my olfactory senses. Never have I been hit by a communal case of halitosis such as this. Twelve men and one UCI female had been in this tin box for several hours.
Not one said hello. And nobody wanted to speak English.
Remember that I said “lonely.”
Finally I spotted a friendly face, a young man from the UCI who actually liked my announcing at the ‘Cross Worlds. He smiled widely and showed me to the announcer.
I wound my way through all this electronic spaghetti and computer screens to find Rick Fulcher. His knowledge of cycling is encyclopedic. And we have this massive amount of data on three screens – splits, bios, and the live television feed – to complement the digital boards and Jumbotrons on the street.
I sat down just in time announce the last half of the Under-23 men, including the arrival of Taylor Phinney.
Despite my best efforts to pronounce the name “TAY-lor” the Aussies – via live, TV, and radio – the name keeps coming out of their mouths as “TY-lor.”
Boom. He sets the fastest time, knocking an Aussie, Luke Durbridge, out of the lead. He fends off a German, Marcel Kittel, who ended up in third. Phinney wins his third rainbow jersey , providing all American cycling fans with an immediate replacement for Lance Armstrong.
But in the booth, the experienced seemed sterile for me. About the only thing I could draw satisfaction from was that I saw Wittel riding – and without any splits or bios declared him one of the fastest kids on the course. And he was.
Part of cycling is to appreciate the basic element of riding well. Like watching Tiger Woods swing a golf club or Kobe Bryant stroke a jumper. There is far too little appreciation – and articulation – of what makes a rider smooth. We are too focused on power measurement and heart rates and gear ratios.
Tomorrow I’m going to talk a little bit about my beliefs on announcing, some of which are why I’m here.
We knock out the U23 podium – a meticulously formal affair – and take a break. From there we launch into the women’s event. They alter the course for the women. Where the u23 men did two laps on a 15.9 k circuit, the gals did a single lap of 22.8 k.
Again we spout off a lot of data but I get to talk about Evelyn Stephens, who won Fitchburg in her rookie year of elite racing. She blasted out the fastest time only to be knocked down a spot by the legendary Jeannie Longo of France. But the big guns fired with Emma Pooley of Great Britain going a lot faster. Amber Neben got close, but New Zealand’s Linda Villumsen bested her to sit in second. The final rider to start, Judith Arndt of Germany, would push her down by two seconds to snare the silver.
Whereas the Aussie announcer did the u23 podium, I got to do the women’s ceremony.
Then it’s done. And I’m alone: alone for dinner; alone in a room; alone and tired. And it’s cold.
So I collapse into bed at 7 p.m. I might as well be in Columbus, Ohio. I’m without my home; my coffee shop; my family. I’m homeless.
My phone starts ringing at 1 a.m. by some East Coast folks who know not where I’m at. And with that I’m awake, haunting the lobby and catching up on my e-mail – just about all of which is bad news – and setting my teeth on writing this horrible blog entry.
Finally the lobby blooms to life with all that if fabulous about cycling. Italian, Dutch, and French mix with the Aussie English.
A UCI marketing person takes pity on me and spends a few minutes at my table. I discuss my breaking from tradition, putting on some music, and getting out of that booth with the “publique”.
“I think that’s what they want,” she replies.
Game on.
I’ll tighten up the blog entry tomorrow. I’ll let you know what happens. I promise.
And I owe you some reportage from the ‘cross scene too.
Thanks for indulging me.

Why Boston Rocks

2010-04-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

For years, America’s bicycle advocates and Bicycling Magazine have scolded Boston as being one of America’s worst cycling cities. We were lumped in with such horror shows as Tampa, Dallas or Miami.

Those brickbats helped to spawn many recent changes. But Boston never deserved to be in the same category as Tampa (where, by the way, I attended college). Boston has stunning advantages over several other cities, including some that are often placed on pedestals as examples of bike havens.

The initiatives of Mayor Thomas Menino and the effervescent Nicole Freedman are to be applauded. I’m a big fan of bike lanes, signage, racks, etc. Not that I needed them but they create a stamp of approval for citizens. I state repeatedly that bike lanes do not gain cyclists road share as much as they gain cyclists mind share.

They have put in 15 miles of bike lanes in Boston, which nicely complements the network of lanes and rail trails in neighboring communities. And the work of MassBike, securing access for cyclists on the local transit system (albeit somewhat restrictive) has yielded great returns. And the recent bike summit in which the top department heads of Metro Boston took their lumps and pledged to improve the cycling environment proved a brave endeavor.

With just a bit more of a nudge, a new study out confirmed for me that Boston could become the Copenhagen of America. While the podium for that competition is currently held by Portland, Minneapolis and San Francisco, I foresee Boston moving to the top in just 10 years.

Many traditional bike advocates will smugly chuckle at my prediction. They would dust off the top spot on the podium for such locales as Chicago, Denver, or Sacramento, where great headlines have been written, before ever considering Boston.

Those cities currently holding Bike Friendly status deserve the applause: Philadelphia, Portland, New York, Boulder, etc. But in 2009 such places as Naperville, Ill., Columbus, Ohio, and Irvine, Calif., and received bronze status as Bike Friendly cities.

Having visited each of those towns, I will tell you that none of them are all that bike friendly. These are sprawling locations with most of its socio-economic pulse beating out of strip malls along arteries wide and fast and clogged with customers of Wendy’s, Best Buy, Home Depot, and Cracker Barrel.

The sum is often a lot less than the parts. I do not state this to tear down these designations nor to discourage those trying to win them, but I must challenge the criteria. Part of the criteria could be the end result of those efforts: what percentage of the population is actually cycling.

I am reminded of some of the horrible tree forts we once constructed as boys. Adding more nails and some scrap lumber did not make up for a poorly designed or executed base of the fort. We cannot simply apply a checklist of items – a bike lane, some racks, a rail-trail, etc. - and attach that to a fundamentally flawed design and label that as “bike friendly.” Frankly, Irvine, California, with its freeways and malls and high-speed limits should NEVER be given such status so long as a cyclist cannot comfortably access the majority of its commercial outlets.

My gut belief in this was borne out recently by the Alliance for Biking and Walking Benchmark 2010 study. It’s a powerful study you can see here: Alliance for Biking and Walking 2010 Benchmark Study

Despite its oft vilified lack of facilities, Boston comes in at number 15 with 1 percent of all trips being done on a bike. And yes, Boston out-pedals New York City, which has made massive advances to its bike infrastructure. So guess who is not in the top 10? Those cities we’ve been celebrating such as Columbus, Irvine, Naperville, and Louisville.

And those Sun Belt nightmares of Dallas, Tampa, Miami and Houston are the bottom of the barrel.

What makes a city truly bike friendly? A lot of people on bikes! Louisville, Ky., is a city I visit often and must compliment for its efforts to improve cycling. They have bronze medal status as a Bike Friendly Community. But they rank 37th on the list with just 0.3 percent ridership.

So what keeps Bostonians riding? Consider these factors:

1. Not much of a college town. Suffolk County alone has 24 colleges and universities. College kids ride bikes. Boston is the world's largest college town. With or without bike lanes, more bikes make it safer and less hostile for more bikes.

2. The T. A critical component to making a city bike friendly is to give the bike commuter a Plan B in the form of a transit system. In our case, this would be Plan T, as in the MBTA. This is perhaps the finest transit system in America and recently they’ve allowed bikes on their trains and buses. This means darkness or foul weather can be overcome.

3. Compact design. When searching for an environmentally benign urban design, a lot of planners point to New England in the 1600s. As one of America’s oldest cities, Boston was built well before the automobile. Boston was built for walking. A bicycle can quickly get a person to any neighborhood in short order using any number of secondary or tertiary routes.

4. Getting somewhere. By bike in Boston one can actually GET somewhere. Too much emphasis is placed on cycling only for recreation. Florida’s Withlacoochee Trail, a splendid 44-mile path is one example, of where bike paths are not needed. It starts and ends nowhere. In Boston a cyclist can get to and from work, clubs, museums, restaurants, pubs, and schools far more conveniently than by car.

5. Bike culture. So much of American bike culture, dating back to Col. Pope’s manufacturing, came out of the Boston area. And much continues to come out of the Boston metro market in terms of shops, events, advocacy, clubs, and industry.

So what fills me with such confidence in our ability to become the Copenhagen of America?

It’s the OTHER half of the study, the walking part. While Boston is number 15 in biking, it is number one for walking. And when you combine Boston’s bikes with its pedestrians it is again number one, with 14.3 percent of the population walking or cycling to get around. And those gritty Northeast cities often shunned by those cyclists in the Pacific or Mountain time zones totally rock the stats. Boston, Washington and New York City have three of the top four slots. Philly is also in the top 10.

When you view the combination of walking and cycling, the list of cities NOT in the top 10 prove astounding. Those not even CLOSE to Boston include all of these communities deemed to be Bike Friendly Communities:
Chicago
Denver
Sacramento
Long Beach
Columbus
Austin
Louisville

Me saying these Bicycle Friendly communities may NOT be all that bike friendly is akin to saying the emperor has no clothes! But if the true measure is how many people per capita are actually riding the list changes dramatically. As Boston has received little more than brickbats, many of those cities have gotten a lot of bouquets by leaders of bike advocacy.

While San Francisco and Portland will continue to lead the way, Boston will likely gain tremendous ground in short order. And the Sun Belt cities will undoubtedly continue to struggle. Converting a city of pedestrians into a bike friendly community is a far simpler task than trying to overhaul a city where cars are overwhelmingly dominant, transit is non-existent, and bikes are seen as curious toys for weekends.

Should Mayor Menino and his associates follow through on just some of the initiatives outlined last week, we should be enjoying that podium presentation by the year 2020.

Thanks for reading.

The Fatty

2010-04-05T05:21:00.000-07:00

The Fatty and the Bike

Spotting him from a distance, I felt like that wildlife scientist who rediscovers Elsa, the lioness they once saved and then returned to the wild.
For I believe I had a small role in saving somebody. But in truth, the bicycle had saved him.
Actually I heard him first, loudly calling out “If you want, honey, I can adjust that derailleur!” And then I spotted him in his familiar day-glow green T-shirt on this fantastic April Saturday. And a few feet away stood his wife. Also in day glow green. I served witness to a mating ritual of sorts. And I glowed.
We could hardly describe him as “buff”. But this would be the first time I saw him standing in a single layer of clothing from the side. A large man, he stood about six-feet, four-inches tall and held about 220 pounds on that frame. He stood large, but not fat.
I live in the affluent suburb of Lexington, three towns out from Boston, and positioned on the nation’s busiest bike path, The Minuteman. With three kids, I had done a fair portion of the school pick-ups. With all the nannies and au pairs and stay-at-home moms, we fathers tend to notice one another.
My first reaction to him more than eight years earlier, I must confess, had been smug indifference and superiority. He was, well, a fatty.
He likely tipped the scales then well above 300 pounds. We enjoy writing such people off, don’t we? Admit it. “At least I’m not THAT guy,” we can say to ourselves on our lowest day.
His boy, a few grades behind my eldest son, would become a fatty too. With my pompous jackass attitude, I could recall thoughts of how he had brought that condition on himself with bad food, video games and sedentary behavior.
He wore his hair long, parted on the side so it hung over his eyes, requiring constant swipes of his hand and swings of his neck. And his boy, a miniature replica of the father, had the same hair and gestures. The tenderness of a ritual, however, burned empathy into my impression. This father and son would walk home together, both heads down, in a silent sad procession. The father cradled his arm around the boy’s shoulder for what I imagined to be a daily restoration of his son’s soul. The classroom of isolation and taunts and teases; the schoolyard and daily reminders of all things a fatty kid cannot do.
This would be all I would know of him … or so I thought.
One winter night two years ago I joined my friend and client Anthony Gallino of California Giant Berry Farms for a night out in Boston. I took my West Coast friend to Boston’s North End for dinner at the The Daily Catch. We drank wine and slurped down pasta, with my back to the window and Hanover Street. About 10 p.m. we arose to leave and I turned to see the street covered in three inches of wet snow. The snow fell in a pounding, wet carpet with flakes the size of communion wafers. The storm had hit heavier and harder and about two hours earlier than I expected.
“Whoa,” I said. “I gotta ride home in this!” The Californian implored me to take a cab, insisting such a ride would be impossible. But per usual, my household finances prevented that. I escorted him back to his hotel, took a subway to my office, and then suited up for what I thought would certainly be a sucky ride. Getting ready for a night time ride in snow is like Mike Nelson suiting for an episode of Sea Hunt.
By the time I threw my leg over the bike, the depth of the snow had accumulated to six inches with more coming. From Boston to Lexington is a climb of 300 vertical feet over 15 miles, meaning there would be more snow up there in 30 minutes. I splattered out into the empty city with just myself and the taxis and the plows.
When I went over the Longfellow Bridge into Cambridge, the derailleurs and brakes had become snow-cones. Riding nearly blind, I had dragged my Oakley’s down to the bridge of my nose to allow some air to defog the lenses. I removed them all together once but the deluge, even with a hat and brim, blinded me.
Despite all this apparent hardship, the ride began to improve. I felt better. With the roads evacuated I felt no danger from cars. And the neon and fluorescent signs of Kendall, Inman and Porter squares lit the way sufficiently. By the time I reached North Cambridge this ride had become a spectacular outing. I rolled ghostlike through a city in bunkers, a lone blinking red light pressing through this corridor.
I reached the main intersection in Arlington set to begin the final assault to Lexington. As I waited at the light I spotted the lines. Fresh bicycle tracks drew northward. Another rider rode just ahead.
I pressed on the pedals and within minutes could see the blinking red light on the horizon. I reeled this rider in near Arlington Heights. Although I easily pressed by him, I felt I had to say something on that horrific night.
“Not so bad, eh,” I called out laughing as I pressed by.
I spotted his day glow jacket. He rode aboard a Jamis cyclo-cross bike converted for commuting with racks and lights and a fender.
Then I realized his identity. The Fatty would be the only other cyclist I saw that night. The snow and splash and the boogers glistened on his face, giving the appearance of uncontrollable weeping and rage and determination.
That I rode my bike that night is of no consequence. That HE rode the bike that night is an unimaginable act of courage. I would see him later that winter and in some of the shittiest weather and the darkest of nights. I could blow by him at will but I would always make a supportive comment. I chose to leave our relationship that way.
He made that ride one of the greatest commutes of my life in 30 years. One never knows when one will have a fantastic ride. Often it will start in the worst of conditions.
Spring eventually broke that season, much like it did this past weekend in New England. After four months of serving as monastic beltway for the hardest of commuters, the bike path bloomed again with bright jerseys and tank tops and headphones and sun glasses. I rode home one evening through the fair-weather flower of humanity. There were tri-guys on their bars; bare-chested skaters, tightly clad women, and the rest of the spectrum of humanity drawn to this wonderful facility.
And then I saw the Fatty.
He labored silently forward on his Jamis. Neither the fastest, nor the fittest, and no longer the fattest, he plodded along without any trophy for having gone through the winter. I drew up to him near an intersection where a coagulation of narcissists formed. With dozens of health club escapees paused at this intersection, I put my hand on his back, and loudly said for all to hear: “NONE OF THESE FOLKS WERE OUT HERE IN JANUARY WITH YOU AND ME, EH?!?!?!”
I winked and rolled by.
This man, who perhaps had not a single athletic trophy on his mantle, picked his chin up, drew his shoulders back, and replied loud enough for all to hear, “AINT THAT THE TRUTH, BROTHER!!!!”
And I rolled on.
I’ve seen him from time to time, always peppering the pass with a nice comment….
“Looking skinny!”
“Every day, every day!”
“The tough guys ride in January.”
But we’ve never met. Even this weekend, when he spotted me studying him, I simply tipped my hat and walked back home. Although I felt like some mystical Clint Eastwood character, I confess that HE had become my inspiration for so many things.
I could not help but recall that the weight loss industry in America takes in more than $40 billion every year. And most of their nonsense fails. But the little bike industry, bringing in about $6 billion every year, can outperform that industry for improving the health of our nation, one fatty at a time. This one bike path and some lanes had done that for him; and these facilities can do that for thousands and thousands of others.
Even the worst of the Rascal-driving fatties in the Walmart can be saved by the bicycle. For proof you need only read the amazing story of Scott Cutshall. In 2005 this young father weighed 501 pounds and decided to change his life. On his first ride he managed to pedal 1.9 miles….It took him three hours.
The short story is here:
http://gearjunkie.com/large-fella-on-a-bike
He also ran his own blog: http://istanbultea.typepad.com/
The mantra of the blog became this “Ride every day, no matter what they say.”
His blog became a centerpiece of inspiration for heavy cyclists everywhere. Recently he stopped posting on the blog. But he provided a final weight: 170 pounds.
If cyclists want to truly capture the hearts and minds of Americans, I believe we should not simply discuss the Tour de France, greenhouse gases, foreign oil, or the correctness of sustainabilty. We should simply discuss weight loss. That's what so many Americans are desperate to do. And we can do it one Fatty at a time.
Thanks for reading.

Ronde de Rosey: Stop Calling Me "Serious"

2010-03-26T14:44:00.001-07:00

My Most Enjoyable Ride of Late

Preamble: I’m NOT a “Serious” Cyclist

Sorry this took so long to post. Crazy week.

By now, many of you have heard about this thing the Ronde de Rosey. Before I describe my experience I have to state how much I have come to hate being called a “serious” cyclist. Too often I go to things called “fun” rides and everybody is pissed off or suffering or miserable or broken down. And if you offer somebody advice they sneer and say, “Look, I’m not really a serious cyclist like you.”

Funny, I didn't think I was all that serious.

Folks need not confuse being competent with being serious. If anything, this competence makes us more joyful. I think of this when I watched the film Man On Wire, about Philip Petit, who walked the tight rope between the World Trade Center towers. He simply had a ball doing what looked so hard.

But he did it with joy!

This competence proved most joyful at this ride.

If you will endure my report and get to the end, you’ll see a link to Natasha McKittrick’s photos of this event. They’re real good. Some others are on my Facebook page or you can read the blogs of others on my page. Chip Baker (who has helped me with my blog, thank you) writes a great account and Rosey has some equally entertaining materials.

The one thing that stands out about the pictures is that everybody is smiling!Even guys fixing flats are having fun!

The Ronde de Rosey
OK I’ll start with a confession. On the day I was born Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. In short, this means I’m eligible to race the 50-plus category this season. And given the outcome of my riding on Sunday in the Ronde de Rosey, a five-hour, 65-mile cyclo-cross epic in the burbs and bogs of Boston’s “MetroWest” region, I may just pull a license to race.

This whole episode has given cause for hyperbole. I believed this to be one of the greatest 10 rides of my life. Mind you I’ve been riding a lot for more than 30 years.

I believe I am allowed some degree of hyperbole due to my age. Men hit this age and suddenly every experience – athletic, professional, personal, and emotional – receives extra importance as it may be their last great whatever. You fill in the blank. It’s why tough men hit 50 and weep uncontrollably at elementary school plays.

On March 21 I did the inaugural Ronde de Rosey. This was a 65-mile outlaw race organized by a guy named Scott Rosenthal and I must say it proved to be the most fantastic ride I've done in a long while. I can say his name because nobody got hurt or lost, well, all that badly.

This thing would be a cyclo-cross tour. Teams of 3-7 riders were sent off in waves every five minutes, loosely handicapped so the fastest guys went last. Each squadron was given a cue sheet and forced to take a no-whining pledge. In short, you charged down the road and every 5-10 miles you were routed into assorted trails, boardwalks, conservation lands, aqueducts, etc. You had to figure shit out. Check out the photos and you’ll see all sorts of problems being repaired on the fly. Again, this event was NOT for beginners.

Here’s another confession. I really just talk the talk; most of these guys on the ride know me only as an announcer. Few have ever seen me ride, let alone compete. And five hours on a borrowed ‘cross bike would not be easy. To worsen things, I stood for three hours the night before at the Equinox Fund Raiser and had too much to drink. My legs felt like concrete at the start and I predicted bad things at the end of this ride.

As the first few waves rolled off, I only had a single goal. Catch the guy riding the thing on a single speed and wearing suspenders.

I'm an off-road sissy, but this thing proved nothing short of FANTASTIC. We were calf-deep in water several times. There were extended stretches of flooded, muddy abandoned rail beds. This event proved a testament of gratitude for all the hard work done by Conservation Commissions, railroad engineers, public works crews, groundskeepers, and Scout troops who built boardwalks and cleared and marked trails.

We would ride as a unit on the road, mashing about on ‘cross tires on the road and then – where the legions of motorists saw nothing but the cyclist saw something else – dive between two glacial boulders that mark a trail head and dissolve into a wooded trail network.

Island Hopping

The first few trails were patches of woods before we turned in Newton into Cutler Park. We had to sign in. “Go out, do a lap of the island, and come back the way you came” said the marshal.

“Island?” In fourth grade I learned that meant surrounded by water. Sure enough we came to a long boardwalk submerged by recent rains. We roared around the island and when we returned, Team Hupcake Express had passed every team; this included the guy with suspenders. But as we left we saw the real fast guys entering the park, guys like Cort Cramer, Peter Sullivan, Peter Bradshaw, and Pete Smith, all elite level ‘crossers.

We had to get on it hard. The collection of trails were secret ribbons – sometimes right up against Interstate highways – that few people glazed over in automobiles realize even exist.

I just lit up with joy surfing on the Weston rail bed – an abandoned line that those folks refuse to convert into a bike path for fear of some scruffy element coming in to town – and dashed through the final 200 yards in a foot of water. Rosey met us there and confirmed our fear; we were the leaders.

As a promoter the beauty of this event is that we made zero traffic impact on anybody. No motorists ever realized a cycling event unraveled in their neighborhoods and on their roads.

The highlight of the day would be the group of us splattering onto the pavement, dripping wet from the knees down, speckled with mud, and overtaking a road poser – this is written by a true roadie, mind you – as we entered Concord. Having been overtaken by six mud-splattered crossers with 50 psi in the tires, this ninny chose to attack us on a downhill. Only Chip Baker’s calm demeanor kept my sword in the scabbard.

Riding with the “Hupcake Express” as a guest, I assumed I would be a deterrent to their progress. But as it turned out, each of the five starters brought a unique skill set to this potluck of pain. Ronnie, a former BMX racer, set the trails; Chipster would be the navigator; Mark, a former hockey player, could pound on the roads; Eli would be the ‘roleur” or all-arounder who glued the thing together. We stole Rich from a hapless group of guys on road bikes to serve as our own Mark Trail of singletrack sections. And I would kick in and drive the pace inside of Route 128 in the urban environment. This would be like the Oceans Eleven, the MI Force, of cycling on this event.

Our squad only had to overcome a single puncture in Wellesley College. And the Chipster went over the front once in Cutler Park. (I’ve never seen a guy smile while he’s crashing.) But the he-man of the day would be Eli. In the fourth hour of riding, and clearly a bit bonked, he took a digger off a board walk. What would have been a simple dab on a trail would be a five foot drop into slop. He bounced up, announced the entire episode had been planned for my in-flight entertainment, and re-mounted.

Only afterwards did this he-man confess that two weeks earlier he had separated the same shoulder on which he just augured into the dirt. And on Tuesday I learned doctors had him in a sling.

A Test and a Triumph

In the fourth hour Colin Reuter and company caught us. But he admitted to dumping half his team, some navigational discrepancies, and then announced in Lexington Center that he had to stop for food.

When he pulled off, we drilled it.

Pounding down Massachusetts Avenue, all of us spattered in mud, we ground into an unusual headwind, drawing some unique stairs from the preppies and hippies. Guys on bikes would roll up to us at stop lights, look up and down, and just have to ask: “Where the hell have guys been?”

With this route as my daily commute, I took the flag for the regiment and brought the guys right through all the Harvard Square traffic, occasionally dropping back to check on Eli, and over the river into Boston.

Triumphant, we spun up to the host tavern, The Washington Square Tavern, to discover nobody else ahead of us.

Beers and tall tales followed. Just check out the pics here:

http://www.pedalpowerphotography.com/velo/cx/2010/rdr/index.php

I would like to propose we consider doing a similar ride on Monday, Oct. 11, Columbus Day, after our cross event in Roger Williams Park event, starting and ending in the park. I may ask for a good entry fee with proceeds going to the Bikes Belong Foundation, totally earmarked for a grant to support the East Coast Greenway Alliance’s work in New England.

We can do the whole thing in Rhode Island.

Comments sought.

Bike Lane Bliss: The Rift

2010-03-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Bike Lane Bliss: The Great Rift

NOTE: This blog entry is the first of five straight days of blogging on bicycle advocacy, as I head to the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC. This is my third trip to this most encouraging of events in American cycling.

BOSTON, Mass. (March 8, 2010) - Anybody who has ever laughed at Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian,” would have to chuckle over the locally vicious divide in our world of bicycle advocacy. This infighting is comically similar to the fratricidal hatred between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea.

This past week I discovered an online debate about my local advocacy group, MassBike, having the audacity to take a position to officially support the development of bike facilities and bicycle specific infrastructure.

I realize the reader is twisting up their heads like Nipper, the dog in the RCA ads. Seems kinda like the bleeding obvious stance for a bike advocacy group to take, right?

Wrong. And here is what frustrates so many truly enthusiastic cyclists about advocacy. People who may be lifelong commuters, bike industry leaders,

The world of bicycle advocacy divides into two basic camps: “Vehicular cyclists” and - if I may take the liberty of creating a label – “Infrastructure cyclists.”

This past week MassBike posted on its site a decision to stand on the “Infrastructure” side of the aisle. You can read it here: http://www.massbike.org/2010/02/26/massbike-believes-in-bicycle-infrastructure/

As innocuous as this statement reads, I found the venomous comments to be most revealing.

This rift is also why I developed this blog.

Let me give a broad overview of this rift. Vehicular cyclists argue that bikes should simply be part of the flow of vehicles on our roadways, subject to the same rules as automobiles, and deserving of the same rights. The Infrastructure cyclists argue that cyclists should ALSO have facilities – bike lanes, bike paths, bike boulevards – dedicated to cycling.

Look folks, right now just one percent of all trips in America are done by bike. To return to the Monty Python metaphor, I feel the real issue is with The Romans. We need to address how the 99 percent of the population perceives bicycling and stop quibbling.

I happen to believe that both sides are right and all of them are wrong. In my own 30-plus years of cycling, I’ve always subscribed to the basic tenant of the vehicular argument. What helps is that I raced for 20 years and have no trouble operating smoothly and safely within the mix of automobile traffic. I do not confine my riding to a prescribed lane, especially where that lane features the danger of doors, delivery trucks, and distracted pedestrians on their phones.

That said, I’m also a father of three and reside nearby a popular bike path, The Minuteman. I also commute daily through Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston where I routinely ride in designated bike lanes and see a growing number of beginner commuters employing those facilities. And these beginners include my older sister, who became an urban commuter well in to her 50s.

Overall, however, I believe the locus of most American bike advocacy is wrong. Not because they aren’t good people, or devoted cyclists, or smart. The vast majority of bike advocates are hard working folks doing a thankless and important job.

This does not mean I give up on them. I believe every cyclist should be involved in advocacy. I’m certainly not giving up on bike advocacy. I just want them to adjust their aim. I believe change is marketed more than it is legislated.

That said, I honestly believe that the best thing to do for American cycling would be to put many of our established bike advocates in charge of marketing automobiles.

I’m not joking. Having sat on a few boards and enjoyed a lot of advocacy discussions and meetings, I have come to believe that advocacy leaders would be well served to read a bit less NHTSA data and watch an occasional episode of Mad Men.

You see, I don’t believe we have a problem in engineering; I believe we have a problem in marketing.

One of the greatest mistakes of cycling advocacy may be its constant emphasis on safety. There’s a basic principle of marketing: safety equals fear. If you’re constantly discussing how to make your product safer, you’re constantly telling people that your product is dangerous. When Volvo introduced the three-point seatbelt in the early 1950s, Detroit car companies resisted that product’s introduction in American models. They were not concerned about cost; they did not discount their efficacy. But they did not wish to give the impression that their product was dangerous.

Any bike commuter who has ridden an office elevator can recite all the times people have questioned them about the safety of their enterprise. Then those same skeptics of cycling confidently march to the parking lot and partake in an exercise that kills more than 40,000 people each year in America.

They have been brainwashed to believe that cars are safe and bikes are dangerous.

But carmakers do not aim for the minds of the market, they aim for the heart. They use sex, status, speed, power, and convenience to sell their product. Only after Ralph Nader did they start to occasionally advertise the safety of their product, but were cautious to only show their product in clean labs with dummies inside sterile cockpits to convince customers these products were safe.

Those guys are brilliant. Here they have a product that is deadly, ruins the environment, destroys the quality of communities, economically cripples families, fosters an addiction to foreign oil, and spawns global warfare. And they have people lining up to buy more. If 40,000 people died in plane crashes every year, the entire fleet would be grounded.

Here is the bicycle, arguably the most perfect of all inventions. This product is environmentally benign, improves communities, is proven as means of weight loss, improves one’s sex life, saves households thousands of dollars, and requires no fossil fuels to operate. These guys have the fountain of youth to sell and all they can do is bicker about how to use the product correctly.

What’s the most important thing a cyclist can get to make a bike ride safer?

Lights?
Helmets?
Reflective straps?
Horns?
Whistles?
Mace?
Paint?
Signs?
Lanes?
Body armor?

No. It’s another cyclist.

Even if it’s an incorrect cyclist, it’s another cyclist. Every cyclist carves out a little bit of the collective attention span on the roads to look out for cyclists. Multiply that by 100 and your entire traffic grid slows down and starts paying attention.

I believe in bike paths and bike lanes and boxes and such, not because they get us road share, but because they get us mind share. They’re constantly reinforcing the notion to pedestrians, motorists and cyclists that bikes are part of the transportation grid.

Are there mistakes in engineering? You betcha. In the development of highways for automobiles all sorts of mistakes were made – and some with tragic consequences – in the process of constantly improving the system.

But demand preceded supply. Nobody went out and advocated and engineered and constructed our Interstate highway system and THEN encouraged folks to drive. They built that amazing system – love it or hate it, the Interstate system is a spectacular achievement – because the cars and drivers had overwhelmed the existing system of roads.

My bike path, the Minuteman, provides a good example of how vehicular cyclists do not appreciate rules of marketing. When first constructed, this rail trail drew some concerns that cyclists would be exiled from roads. The motoring public, the argument went, would not tolerate cyclists riding along the parallel route, Massachusetts Avenue.

What happened, however, was a derivative of the gas station principle in marketing. We assume that the market is a given size and if there is a single gas station at a crossroads, the creation of a second gas station at that crossroads would split the market in halve. When in reality the original gas station sees an increase in their business.

The same held true with my bike path. The cycling traffic on Massachusetts Avenue actually increased, despite the fact that the Minuteman Bikeways saw traffic blossom to an amazing 10,000 users per day.

Are the users on that path a touch wobbly? Yes, but every cyclist is a work in progress. Today’s wobbly beginner is tomorrow’s hardened commuter.

One of the most amazing facts about cycling, borne out by a recent study of traffic safety in the Netherlands, is that as more people take to cycling the entire system becomes safer. And not only do more cyclist make it safer for more cycling, they make it safer for EVERYBODY, including motorists, pedestrians and transit users. That’s opposite of what putting more cars on the road creates, which is a more deadly system for every user.

And although I’m grouchy about the conduct of advocates, I’m deeply grateful to all of them for the hard work done over the past 30 years to get us a small degree of respect on the American roadways and trails.

By practice, I’m a vehicular cyclist. By preaching, I’m an infrastructure cyclist. By observing, however, I’m a marketing guy. We need to sell cycling as sexy, as fun, as healthy, as economical, as quick, as independent, as convenient.

But to date, cycling advocacy has been like an army – if you’ll pardon the military metaphor – operating strictly with infantry. I’m not saying we stop worrying about transportation policy and engineering. But we’re operating without any of the artillery of marketing and the cavalry of lobbying that the folks who built a car culture used to win.

Of Fistfights and Flowers

2010-03-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

Bike Lane Bliss:
Of Fistfights and Flowers

What has perplexed me for years is that the same person who would hold a door for me at a coffee shop is the same person who would maniacally drive into me for causing them less delay than I created in the line at Starbucks.
And yet consider this inventory of hardware:
· One Craftsman 9/16 box wrench
· One empty Southern Comfort bottle
· Countless lit cigarettes
· One Lipton ice tea plastic bottle half full of tobacco spittle
· One cup of beer
· One heavy gauge steel chain with engine hook attached
All this has been tossed at me by motorists. Nothing has ever caused bodily injury. But it certainly wounds one’s pride. And I must say that the vast majority of that inventory came at me before Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France.
And the roadside scuffles have been too numerous to list. Most of the altercations are simply shouting episodes with empty threats. On a few occasions carloads of young men have emptied out of cars and attacked groups with whom I’ve ridden.
I would be lying if I did not confess to particular joy while catching one such driver, who had swerved, honked and not-so-politely instructed me where to go. Finding him mired in beach traffic, I drew up to the man’s car with his girlfriend next to him and got my helmet fully inside the passenger side window to ask what he wanted to say, giving the middle-aged guy a Flomax moment right there.
But upon reflection, I realized that win, lose or draw, I achieved little from those altercations. And the residual impact would be a negative regard for every cyclist those people encounter thereafter. The result of all those altercations between cyclists and motorists fostered the creation of the Facebook page “There’s a Perfectly Good Path Right Next to the Road You Stupid Cyclists.” Right or wrong, that page had nearly 40,000 “friends.” (The group urging Facebook to remove the page, mind you, had 46,000 friends).
To be a cyclist in America requires enormous patience with people. One has to draw a lot of lessons from folks like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. There is one key difference. Those folks did not choose to be subjugated to discrimination and cruelty; they were simply born into a bad situation. Cyclists choose to be minorities. And if the horns and epithets and projectiles of anger prove to be too much, they can simply quit cycling.
For nearly 30 years I had ridden bikes with a brazen defiance. With a bit more speed and a lot more confidence than most cyclists, I never display cowardice while riding in traffic. I hate day-glow green. That is not to say I have no judgment. Yes, I wear a helmet. And yes, I ride with full-on lights at night and have reflective straps. But I also don’t festoon myself in so much reflective garb and accessories so as to advertise fear.
It’s a fine line between riding in a deliberate, confident fashion and riding in an arrogant and aggressive style.
Really decent people have been known to fly off the handle when motoring behind cyclists. Consider the case of Michael Bryant, a former Ontario attorney general once touted as a front runner to serve as Ontario’s premier. This guy made prosecution of road rage a cause célèbre during his service as the top law enforcement man in that Canadian province. And then last summer he snapped on a cyclist, striking the guy and then purposefully dragging this young father repeatedly into lamp posts and obstacles, and then leaving him to die.
So what unlocks that mentality? What turns a mild-mannered professional into this homicidal maniac?
Conversely, what changes that seething person behind the wheel of a 3,500-pound weapon, into the same jovial person willing to politely wait for the potato salad at a company picnic?
One day I discovered the answer.
Upon riding home from my Boston office I had cause to get my wife some flowers. After picking up a bouquet, I hopped back on the bike and pedaled north on Massachusetts Avenue in Lexington, a broad roadway made famous in April of 1775. Cradling the flowers in my left arm, I kept to the right and out of the way of rush hour traffic. As traffic stacked up to turn left, I felt a car press up behind me, swerving right to continue straight. The engine revved and then shut down, apparently due to my presence in the roadway. I could feel the irritation of the driver behind me and braced for yet another conflict. I refused to change my line; I refused to be intimidated. I was just a guy trying to get home.
The car swerved to reveal a Subaru Forester with a suburban mom wearing an exasperated look. In the back seat sat a small girl with her window half down. She pointed to my colors and my bike and smiled upon spying my flowers.
The mother’s entire expression rinsed into a warm grin and something about the flowers connected me to something human. The flowers told the world I had somebody at home and a nice personality.
She backed off the accelerator and calmly passed by, even offering a little wave of support as every motorist behind passed me with a smile.
I have read that in designing spaces to control large crowds – such as town squares and stadiums –flower beds are always respected and never trampled on.
I saw that in an instant with that driver.
Realizing I cannot always ride with a bouquet of flowers, I had cause to reflect on how can I, as a cyclist, create that reaction with others.
So I have developed 10 basic and somewhat broad rules that have since served me well. I will touch on each in future blogs but for now I find that when I break these rules, bad things happen. My rules for riding include:
1. Be Nice
2. Be Deliberate
3. Use the Magic Word (And it is not “please”)
4. See and Be Seen
5. Say Nothing Mean
6. Please and Thank You
7. Yield Down
8. Pay it Backwards and Forwards
9. Have Compassion
10. Forgive
To read the list takes less than a minute - to fully integrate these rules into one’s cycling requires a lifetime of practice.
I’ve been cycling for nearly 30 years when – by accident – the power of those flowers revealed themselves to me. Like Thomas Merton’s revelation, I had been given this gift. And like Merton, these lessons blend elements of Christianity and Buddhism. But unlike Merton, I choose to pray on a bike on Sundays.

Bike Lane Bliss: Intro

2010-02-12T14:24:00.000-08:00

Bike Lane Bliss: Introduction

I’m Richard Fries. I’m a cyclist.
This means more than 40 years as a racer, tourist, advocate, publisher, historian, commuter, journalist, announcer, and now, blogger. (And a woeful mechanic I might add.) I ride year round in pretty much all weather. And yes, I have a car, a house, and a sort of normal life, too.
This blog will hopefully be random. I think about a lot of things but from the vantage point of a cyclist.
But having watched a lot of bad cyclists somehow get accredited to teach others how to ride, I felt something had to be said. This blog will not be intended to dismantle the teachings of 'effective cycling' and 'vehicular cyclists' and other experts. Its just that I see a lot of folks who are quoted in newsapers and television interviews on the subject of cycling doing some of the most curious things in traffic. This book is not about replacing those teachings, but enhancing those teachings.

Although you’ll get a smattering of elements on history and politics and personal anecdotes, there will be two primary themes: travel logs from me as I work as a race announcer and cyclist; and a sort of zen guide to urban cycling.
Towards the latter, this blog is intended to be a first draft of a book designed to help people love bicycle commuting. I’m trying to let people realize I do not ride my bike to and from work every day because it’s the correct thing to do. I love, indeed crave and require, that time of each day when I ride through the congested and seemingly daunting streets of Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington and Lexington. And when I got my latest job offer in the heart of Boston, I saw the commute in the city actually as a plus, not a minus.
Where others find fear, I have found bliss.
I hope that these words expedite somebody else’s development as a cycling commuter. But when one finds that bliss between two automobiles traveling at 28 mph one finds a release from all sorts of fears that prevent us from enjoying other things in life.
There are certainly some skills that I will write about. And there are observations of what to study in those canyons of steel and glass. And yes, there will be “things” to discuss in chapters on equipment and clothing, so you suburbanites can read on comfortably knowing you might be able to buy something to speed up the process. But this is not a step-by-step, how-to blog. There are plenty of great bike shops to help you there.
But the overarching lesson is the simple Buddhist phrase: “Be here now.”
As one cycles in a city, one makes a lot of observations of others inside of automobiles. We cannot help but recognize just how much of their life is abuzz with distractions. There can be mobiles phones, texting, Top 40 radio, hot coffee, cold drinks, Yorkshire terriers, Greek salads, dashboard gauges, fellow passengers, eyeliners, one shoe off, crying children and the occasional squirt of cream filling from inside a donut.
If the cyclist makes a mistake, the cyclist gets hurt. If the motorist makes a mistake, the cyclist gets hurt. So guess who pays extra attention? But having to be hyper aware IS the gift. I want others to recognize the gift. To overcome that fear is liberation.
The payoff in urban cycling is achieving that meditative state of being relaxed yet vigilant. The stress is being processed with rhythmic breathing. The balance is achieved between the physics of the bike and the wheels and the body as engine.
I’m not trying to frighten readers. The average year round commuter hits the ground about once every eight years. And most of those are minor. Although much of what I do may startle some, I can assure you that as I approach my 50th birthday with three children, a wife, and a mortgage, I would not do this if I perceived it as risky.
The urban cyclist is stripped down to the simplest and most elegant of machines, the bicycle. The urban cyclist must be hyper aware of the surroundings. Study the seasoned Manhattan bike messenger who may shock us riding confidently with a fixed gear, no helmet, and often no brakes. But look again: that rider will not have headphones. Rarely will there be a cell phone on their ear and only in a safe place. That rider is coolly studying the entire flow of the landscape. That rider will have 260 degree picture of awareness. That rider understands the importance of paying 100 percent attention to the surroundings.
Few Americans – some of them extremely smart people - ever achieve that degree of awareness….ever. Study the health club and find folks “running” on treadmills while plugged into CNN. They have divorced their bodies from their brains and their souls. Rarely do I find an American all in one place at one moment.
These writings come mostly from observations made in my life as a cyclist. Others come from my cycling heroes such as Scott Chamberlain, Alan Rodzinksy, Gene Oberpiller, Chris Iglehart, and a legion of impresarios too numerous to list. But for the literary types out there, I hope you’ll recognize that I am applying several elements taught in the books by Eugen Herrigel (Zen and the Art of Archery), Timothy Gallwey (The Inner Game of Tennis), John R. Stilgoe (Outside Lies Magic), and Richard Louv’s (Last Child in the Woods). I also have applied stuff learned from Joseph Campbell and Robert Bly.
And, oh yeah, I like Star Wars movies.
Please read, comment, forward, etc. But all I ask is that before motorists make any comments here, they would be well served to try riding a bike the city to comprehend the experience.
Thanks for reading.

Coin-op Purgatory

2010-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Coin-op Purgatory

LEXINGTON, Mass. (Feb. 6, 2010) - Greetings from the Lexington Laundry Village. A coin-operated purgatory seemingly designed to correct any visions of grandeur from a week prior. I deserve this.
Laundromats - like bus stops and motor vehicle registries and court houses - serve a purpose to shave away at a person's sense of dignity.
This is a gray Feburary day. And not just the skies: From the salt of winter, the "black" top is gray; the "red" brick is gray; and even the fire engine that just passed has been powdered gray. And my eyes just fell on some guy's XL men's briefs dropped on the asphalt...they too are gray.

Nobody opens a laundromat because they love to help people get clean clothes. They open laundromats to make money without having to work. There is no wi-fi; there are not even power outlets. This dispatch is being typed only after I scoured the place for an outlet. (This is a skill I've developed with nearly 20 years of event work.) They tried to hide the power outlet near the ceiling, so my laptop is presently being fueled from a heavenward cord.

And folks in laundromats are not pretty. We're all here in various states of desperation and frustration. And we're all dressed rather poorly. It's not like singles troll for love in laundromats - unless one is on a college campus - as these folks are in a destitute demographic. What's odd is the mechanical silence; nobody talks. It's hard to strike up a conversation while carrying your fudge-striped undies across the room.

My re-entry home from the Czech Republic has been less than celebratory.

My poor wife had been stranded by me with a case of bronchitis and a car that would not start in near-zero temperatures. My plan to attend the Cyclocrossworld.com party was aborted after we learned our 13-year-old daughter, Emmy, had been fending off a 39-year-old online stalker in a virtual reality site called There.com. We got the police involved and spent 90 minutes in the station.

I got the car started but the washing machine broke. Even my day today started with Ginger, our dog, barfing on the rug. Eeesh...

And for added fun I had a disciplinary hearing for my job at Best Buddies International to discuss my "behavior." I cannot discuss the details due to confidentiality but it did reveal that somebody in my work environment simply did not like me.

I've never experienced such a thing; why would they not like ME?

Again, I deserve this. The Czech Republic - where EVERYBODY liked me and the cars worked and the laundry was done - is simply not real.

So I got through that, enjoyed a great event that I helped plan for Thursday night but I missed Madison's pinewood derby due to my poor aptitude in scheduling. And then after some bouncing about Friday for work, I find myself here in the Lexington Laundry Village. The new car battery and the washing machine fix should just about wipe out our checking account.

So this blog of mine was sparked to life to write about a trip to the 'cross worlds. But the true impetus of this blog came as a result of the incessant talking to myself while living by bike.

Heretofore, we'll move on to those observations.

I'll try to spice it up, from here, you know, write about sex or something. Thanks for reading.

Racing Day 2: Giants to Midgets

2010-02-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

Tabor Day 4
Race Day 2

From Giants to Midgets

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (Jan. 31, 2010) - "Hey, pssst, pssst....You want a Japanese midget in a cage?"

We had walked by about a dozen guys hawking sex workers and strippers as we walked through Prague Center with about a dozen Americans, looking like good targets for these guys. But I have to admit the offer of a Japanese midget in a cage caught my ear.
"What?" we collectively asked.
"Japanese midget in a cage," he repeated. "You can kick it."
As if that would whet my appetite for this product more.
We kept walking totally confused.
It had been the strangest, most comical cherry on top of a sundae of extravagant experiences during the weekend. Witnessing perhaps the great 'cross event of my life had me on a high. This whole midget thing kind of popped that bubble.
I arrived at the venue for the big day, the elite women followed by the elite men. I emptied out of the van driven by Beat Wabel, the Swiss star who won the World Champion in Munich more than 20 years ago.
I must admit to being nervous, but eager, to announce for the giants of this sport that I love.
After checking in to the office, I started the process of preparing for the call-ups, updating research, and codifying each rider's palmares into a few key symbols, letters and numbers. At 8:40 a.m. I heard the music come up. Frank, our sound guy, obviously had arrived. A pleasant fellow, he had been cut from the cloth seemingly used to make all sound guys. Long hair, beard, and bags under his eyes from working late nights in clubs. And they tend to prefer hair band music. I opened the office door to hear "I'm looking for the hotty with the million dollar body...." He would play Nickelback and Bon Jovi all morning while I worked, repeating about four songs over and over and over.

I've learned to simply let sound guys be sound guys. With Frank alone in the booth I stepped in reviewed the music I had prepared for the day. I asked to push the music up to its highest level. He did. I put a piece of blue tape on the mixer at that level and instructed him to push it there when I gave the cue. I returned to the office for my work. Then on came Jindrich. Mornings with Jindrich had become something a kin to visiting Treblinka.....A monotone, authoritative voice instructing the prisoners "Work will set you free." The entire Soviet bloc housing surrounding us kinda just creeeped me out at first. Then I came to recognize that Jindrich was simply being the pro announcer; he was reading the PA tags. So we got it down. He read the sponsor tags; I read the sponsor tags. He re-capped the Saturday races; I re-capped the Saturday races. He did the pre-race line up; I did the pre-race line up.

We had about 90 minutes until the start and I had everything in place. So I ran up to the town to take money out of a bank machine. I streamed back in to venue with spectators. They poured in jangling with bells; fluttering with flags; honking with horns; and banging on drums. The whole place converged with a buzz.

Upon my return we went right into the show. Laura Van Gilder had confessed to being nervous on this snow and ice. Katerina Nash was visibly tense, with all the Czech Republic expecting a win. The event is truly stunning for those of used to being a modest fringe sport. In the Czech Republic, 'cross - and not just cycling, but cyclo-cross - is truly a big time sport. The crowds paraded into the venue with huge Katerina Nash banners and Zdenek Stybar photos.
I spent several weeks preparing for this moment, studying results, watching Sporza, and researching rider bios. The junior and under-23 categories were a bit tough to work as there is very little material on them to study. But for this day I had prepared for months, if not years.

And then it's there.

"Elite women, report to staging!"
Thankfully Frank had figured out the gig by now. He drove up the music and the crowds, like iron filings to a magnet, drew towards the staging area. There is nothing in my opinion quite like the start of a big 'cross race. Mechanics, soigneurs, officials, riders, coaches, and media all converge into this one location. For a November New England race the start line can get mighty crowded. For the world championships it is an amazing crush of people.
We lined em up, got em off, and went to work on the call. In the first-lap traffic, Katerina tumbled hard. She leapt back up but the Orange Line had left the station: Marianne Vos, Daphny Van Den Brand and Sanne Van Paasen were gone. Across came Hanka Kupfernagel. Katie Compton, sadly, went right out the back with her legs knotted in cramps. Truly a tragic story of sport.
Katerina, drawing on the support of the crowd, came back up to Van Passen and moved into fourth. But every time she challenged Van Den Brand for third she would bobble or dab or fall. She clearly rode as strongly as any body in that race, but 'cross is a game of mistakes, mishaps and mechanicals. And while Marianne Vos danced about cleanly on this course, Nash simply had too many demerits that day.
Vos won ahead of Kupfernagel and Van Den Brand. Jindrich and I knocked out the podium. I had my own bobble there but nobody noticed.
During the break I made my way down to the concession stand. I bought three T-shirts, two mugs and a pack of stickers. I handed the guy 2,000 Czech Krona, expecting him to ask for more. He gave me 1,300 back. I had gotten all that stuff for about $8. In hindsight, I wish I had bought the entire lot of stuff! I could have sold it all in a day back home.
I got some lunch, checked in on the dancing at the beer tent, saw the Cross Crusade boys, and then made my way back to the office.
So here's a confession. I really do not think I'm all that good of an announcer. I don't have a great voice. I don't show up with reams and reams of research on riders. I don't study websites and magazines every day. And quite honestly I don't spend all that much time with bike riders due to my competing interests of my family and other friends. I will say this: I'm a quick study. I had spent a long time prepping for this race. Once the race is under way, an announcer pretty much sticks to the roster and adds a bit of analysis and when possible, a touch of color for spice. Many of the greatest announcers from whom I learn are NOT cycling guys but from other sports. One of the hardest things to teach is something I learned from the guy who announced Hank Aaron's record home run. He called it and then let it go. Just let it breathe. Good advice.
Part of what I have tried to do as of late is talk less, especially before the event. My Czech colleague just kept pounding on the mic before the race. I feel it creates the Charlie Brown effect; you know, the squawking horn of the teacher. Just noise and inflection but no content.
For what they would pay me to call the World championships - the flight, the hotel, the fee, the meals - I truly feel I earned it in just 17 minutes.
I truly believe less is more. Ever since I was a boy, I have loved watching great athletes in that precious hour before competition. And I try not to talk.
The lunch time band ended. I had Frank hit it hard with "The Things You Say" by Cicada. Then Jindrich did the sponsor thing, the preview thing, and then it hit me. I would be talking about 'cross in front of 35,000 people and probably 10,000 of them knew more about the subject than I.
I left the announcing booth at 1:20, with the race to start at 2 p.m. Jindrich would keep talking; Frank went back to Nickelback. I pissed about three times, ate some cookies, and then did the calculations based on the music I had given Frank.
Six minutes to go.
I had checked the sound, walked up and down the stretch. I had drilled Frank to keep the sound up high. With the final race, he got it.
Three minutes to go.
I fist bumped Frank; winked at Jindrich; and grabbed the wireless.
One minute to go.
I took a drink of water and left the booth. At 1:43, Frank pulled down the sound entirely and I gave the hard call to staging. Then Frank brought up Fat Boy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now" really hot. The place went electric.
This is where I like to let it go. I took a moment just to watch his massive crowd just move to this music. I am told they rarely have any music at European 'cross. The whole scene simply pulsed with this music and this pressurized atmosphere. I bathed in that moment. The giants all moved into the pen and the Czech official, Miroslav Janout, gave the signal. With that, I gave a brief introduction, and Frank swapped the music to the call up song. For this, I had chosen a cut by Hardfloor. I get great music from a lot of sources, including Dan Ferguson of the Bay Area, my son, Grant, Joan Hanscom, and continue to use stuff from the best sound guy I ever had, the late John Pavlat. Living in the world's largest college town, Boston, also helps. But this cut came from one of my best sources, Merlyn Townley, the ace mechanic. He has great access to the trance scene which I use a lot.
With that thumping, I took a breath, then earned it. I would call all 66 riders to the line, starting with Zdenek Stybar and ending with Pekatch Dror of Israel. The names were Flemish, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Hungarian, Japanese and even Mongolian. And the announcer cannot stop to read. I learned from Larry Longo how to codify all the palmares, the career highlights, in tiny symbols next to the rider's names. It looks like cuneiform at first glance. For example, next to Stybar was "WC2xu23cz." That means World Cup winner, two-time Under23 World Champion, current Czech national champion. Those symbols were next to about 25 names. The others, sadly, only get their number, name, and country called.
Once staged, I cram along the fence to return to the front of field, stopping to tell Jonathan Page that I would talk to him in one hour on the podium. He smiled.

After the crowd work, clearing the media, I have to shut up for the final, wonderful, 30 seconds.
"They're off, they're, they're off!!!!

With that, Frank tapped the deck for The Hives "Hate to Say I Told You So." Giving this song to Frank could be akin to giving cocaine to a lab rat. He would play that about six times during the race. I kind of liked that.
After the start, Jindrich took the first half lap. And he totally pinned it. The locals said they never heard him so excited.
The race was nothing less than brilliant. Stybar led early. Then went into the second pit with a flat. He would emerge with a new bike in 12th. From there, the Czech team went to work. Radomir Simunek, the son of the Czech legend of the same name, went to the front and kept the Belgians in check. He went just hard enough to keep them from attacking. Martin Zlamalik drifted back to help pace Stybar back up to the front. Martin Bina lingered at the back of the lead group, paying attention to the Belgians in front and looking for Stybar coming back from behind. The Belgians all rode as individuals. And why not? They are each millionaire athletes with web sites, contracts, fan clubs, and clothing lines. The Czechs all rode for Stybar. The friendly Swiss star Christian Heule, who raced in the states in September, went to the front and led for two laps. But then Stybar, in two big moves, returned to the front. Simunek had done his work and he faded. Stybar surged. Despite a few mishaps, he just pulled away leaving Klaas Vanternout and Sven Nys in his wake. Up to them came Martin Bina. French rider Francis Mourey - like the entire French team that weekend - rode brilliantly but stayed out of the bar fight between the Belgians and the Czechs. To the thrill of the crowd, Stybar rode to a solo win. Vanternout rolled off to finish second. And the legendary Nys, with a reputation for his acrobatics, stumbled, bumbled and tumbled on the course. He and Bina swappped savage attacks and counter attacks on the final lap and brought the fight to the pavement with Nys winning the sprint.
The crowds went bananas for their beloved "Stee-bee". The cameras could not see him through all the massive flags on the finishing stretch. I let Jindrich take the finish call completely in Czech. He went three minutes HARD on the mic. It was great.
Podium. Anthem. Done.
Done.

Three months of excitement and preparation and anticipation...Done.
I had a few beers in the beer tent and returned to the office. It's a massive void after something so big. I texted home that I was done. From there I had some final fireworks ahead. Dinner with the Americans in Prague.
We found our way to Bruce Fina's car and piled in. From there we drove to the American team hotel in Tabor. We exchanged the post race pleasantries, sympathy for Katie Compton, empathy for Laura Van Gilder, wounded in an icy scrape of a crash, and installed pillars of suport for a number of young riders accustomed to podium finishes back home. The elites had out performed the junior and Under-23 riders. Meredith Miller would be the highest placed American with her 12th in the women's event. Amy Dombroski (14th) and Mo Bruno Roy (25th) put three Americans in the top 25. The elite men were sold with three riders in the top 30: Tim Johnson in 14th, Jamey Driscoll in 19th,and Jonathan Page in 30th.
From there we whisked our selves to my hotel; Dan and I packed out. And we drove to Prague in two vehicles. The winter darkness closed in around us. After an unremarkable drive on the autopista we dropped into Prague. The darkness obscured the geography. Initially the city unfurled as any other European capital. We arrived at the Hotel Perla and dropped our bags off. Then the group gathered for a walk to dinner. Around one corner the city's charm simply cracked open like an oyster laden with pearls. Every building led to another amazing building to another amazing street. All the Americans, with Dan, a Brit, and Joachim Parbo, the Dane, in tow, filled into a room. We must have been 20 strong. The food of the Czech Republic is unremarkable. But the beer flowed and there were toasts all night.
And walking home through Old Town we were besieged by the flyer-wielding guys offering strippers and sex workers and such. That included the Japanese midget in the cage...we collectively realized he may have mixed up "kiss" and "lick" to arrive at "kick". Hoping that would move us to learn more. I could not fathom there would be sufficient demand for a Japanese midget in a cage ... let alone the even more demand subgroup of the demographic looking to kick it.
We laughed for blocks until arriving at home.
I shared a rooom with Dan. The were two beds, shoved together, but we were so exhausted we did not complain. As I lay in bed, with a full wall mirror in this classic European hotel room and this classic European city, I came to realize how much I had missed my wife who was to have come along but we failed on the money end to make it happen. The "North Bend" debacle in concert with the lack of a bonus conspired against us.
I passed into a coma.
In the morning I awoke for breakfast and joined Joachim Parbo for breakfast. Bruce, Joan and Dan joined. Then Dan and I hit out for a two-hour whirlwind tour of Prague. Having been to Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Brussels, and other cities in Europe, I can say Prague tops them all for stunning architecture.
As we ripped back for the cab to the airport, I could not help notice that the same guys were still out putting leaflets into people's hands. Only now they were hawking classical music and opera.
I headed home feeling as if I had been gone a month. The flight home is never as remarkable and as electrifying as the flight away. Especially to Europe.
Thanks for reading.
The last day had started with giants and had ended with midgets. To what I would return I could not say.

Racing Day 1

2010-01-30T22:44:00.000-08:00

Tabor Day 3

Race Day 1

TABOR, Czech Republic (Jan. 30,2010) - To date my experience in the Czech Republic had been beneath slate gray skies, witnessing a population that had surrendered to their surroundings. For days they had chipped and brushed and shoveled at the snow with about as much resolve as one could muster for factory work.
For Saturday's racing, however, blue skies blessed this stark place. The race venue, seemingly touched by overnight elves, has become a tiny Mardi Gras amid this Soviet Bloc Lego-esque architecture. Inflatable arches, banners, and most imporantly fantastic people dressed far more wildly than any NFL fans I had seen to date.
The tramped into the venue in pods of four to 20 members, all dressed in costume with bells, flags, horns, and face paint.
The Belgians opened the beer tent at 8 a.m.
I had some work left to do, so I cracked into the tasque. Final research and study on the riders. The juniors are always the hardest because every year we get a new crate of puppies with very little history. These guys do not have websites or fan clubs or Wikipedia entries yet. The pre race favorite was the World cup winner David Van Der Poel, son of Adri the Great. The orange crush, the Dutch had a powerful squad with three riders on the front row.
With the start at 11, we started to announce at 10. Jindrich just wound up like Czech Diesel and started talking. He's quite fabulous. I had no idea just what he was saying, but he would go on for three minutes and then throw it to me. Once I just said "Yeah, what he said." And shut off the microphone and winked at him. The Americans in the stands laughed.
I liked seeing David Miller and Andy Taos in the stands having so much fun.
I had worked really hard on the music and had it going. Frank had a tough job. Before Jindrich would talk he would turn to Frank and say (and this my guess) "OK I'm about to talk, turn the music off."
These guys have no music going when they announce.

So I had to really push to keep it on.
But when it came time for call-up, the deal was that I would be the only voice. So I prepared Frank well. There would be the trademark hard call to staging and then boom. Loud music. I walked down the finish stretch the start stage. And despite all the horns and costumes and the bells, this crowd proved to be really tame compared to the "Chips and Dips" of New Jersey or the Hot Tubbers of Portland. I actually had to demonstrate how to bang on the fence panels.
The call-up is super technical with every rider having his bike checked, tires measured, and number (buried beneath a coat) verified. I could not go slow enough. I suppose it did not help that only one of the five officials had a start list.

In this time I hope have the music just pounding but Frank, like a nervous teen-ager with his dad's Corvette, simply would not step on it.
The race finally got off (on time for the television guys, mind you) and then I just parked in the booth and worked with Jindrich. He's quite good. We sat in a small, metal hut at the finish line and just watched television. I suppose it's OK. But if I get the nod to do it in Louisville (I'll write on that later), I'll be watching live and leaving another fellow in the TV booth.
The juniors race proved fantastic with Tomas Paprstka (try saying that three-times fast) pounding away from the Dutchies and Belgians. Only Julian Alaphilippe of France - in his rookie season of racing 'cross - could claw his way to the leader on the final lap. Just about everybody had hit the deck on the ice and the snow. The crashes were either ridiculous Chevy Chase scenes or fantastically fast wipe outs. In a sprint finish, the Czech kid took it by a wheel and the place exploded.
After the first race and ceremony the entire crowd just pounded down to the beer tents where they had this fantastic Beatles tribute band. Just solid good fun with all the Czech's dancing and celebrating.
I returned up top, fixed an electrical problem, prepared for the Under 23 event. For these boys, the sun had shone for a few hours and the course transformed from snow and ice into slush and mud, like fudgecicles on a sunny day.
The undeniable favorite would be Thomas Meeusen of Belgium, winner of the World Cup series and two of those races in the series. He had chosen to compete in the elite division for the Belgian title instead of his own category and scored a stunning third place. Alas, the Belgians are not machines.
A different Belgian, Gianni Vermeersch, opened with a huge blast. But Pawel Sczepaniak (say that one, over and over) charged away with Marek Konwa, both of Poland, surged ahead. Then from the third row came the other Sczepaniak brother, Kacper. It became Polska, Polska and Polska in 1-2-3. Meeusen, who had been billed as the most acrobatic of all the racers we would see that weekend, flopped about a like a trout on the dock. He had a few shining laps but each effort would fade. With four to go I saw his chin on his chest and realized he would not be world champion. Konwa faded, the Sczepaniaks surged to finish 1-2, the first time in 'cross worlds history that brothers finished together. An amazing effort by French rider Arnaud Jouffroy, who pounded from sixth to third in the final two laps, rounded out the podium. Of note, no Belgians had touched the podium after two races. And the Americans had dissolved entirely, not getting even close to the top 10 in either race.
Afterwards I milled about, watcing the Poles dancing and drinking. I had a beer with the Keoughs, truly one of the nicest people in all of 'cross, and then returned to the office. Dinner again with Simon and Dan at the same restaurant. And then bed. Dullsville, eh?
But I did make plans for Prague the following night.

Tomorrow the elite and Prague.

Of note is how excited people are to learn that Worlds will be in Kentucky in 2013. I have enormous respect and affection for Bruce Fina and Joan Hanscom and will do all I can for them. I will blog on that in the coming days.

Thanks for reading.

Places, Everybody

2010-01-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

Places, Everybody

TABOR, Czech Republic (Jan. 29, 2010) - So in the interest of the readers I'm going to keep this dispatch short. Frankly I'm embarrassed with the length of my blogs as of late. Rather dreary travel logs will lose you by the time we hit race days.
Friday would be a fascinating day for me but not much to read about. I awoke early, enjoyed the breakfast, and then hitched a ride to the venue to arrive at 8 a.m.
Once there I found a course buried in snow. While I never saw an effort to match the construction of the Great Pyramids, I never failed to see a local with a shovel moving snow.
Arriving for a 9 a.m. meeting, I tramped around on what I deemed a completely unrideable course. The whole place had been covered with 6 inches of snow. Turns had been pressed into blocks of ice. But everywhere the locals were shoveling, brushing, scraping, chipping, and working on the venue. This meant for both spectators and riders.
And touring the beer tents and VIP tents, I felt the approach of an army.
At 9 a.m. I headed into the meeting and came face to face with my announcing colleague, Jindrich Pulman. He spoke not a word of English. But he had been announcing 'cross races in Czech since 1972. Friendly, with a powerful voice, Jindrich would counter my English with his Czech.
We both would rely on a woman named Susanna, who spoke German (?), as our production assistant. Our sound guy was Frank, a pony-tailed fellow drawn straight from a Simpson's episode. Frank spoke a bit of English and I could feel his urge to just play Guns and Roses real loud.
We held a formal rehearsal, complete with podium girls and music and sound, to review the awards ceremony precisely as scripted by the UCI. This suddenly revealed to me just how far over my head I had wandered. We would bounce from Czech to English back and forth with presenters and flowers and anthems and dignitaries.
But after four runs, we had it nailed.
From there I had some time to burn music for Frank before I had a starting meeting with the chief commissaire, Martin Swinkjels of the Netherlands. This guy had found the perfect balance between being placid and authoritative. one simply did not question anything he ordered. We reviewed the starting call-up protocol. This really frightened me as I would do the entire call up solo in English. That means I alone would butcher names in Flemish, Spanish, Italian, Mongolian (no shit), Japanes and assorted Slavic dialects.
Afterwards I burned music, chatted with riders, and did research, research and research on riders I did not know.
At nightfall, I returned to the hotel with the officials and then joined Simon Burney and Dan Ellmore. I had gained a friendship with these guys during the U.S.G.P. These Brits have become two of the biggest advocates of US 'cross.Their Schlamm clothing line has been a hit with our crew and I can personally thank Simon for this gig. Hence we dined in Tabor Center, the three of us whacking our melons on the low arches in the old place. And owing so much to Simon, I picked up the tab. Now that is newsworthy.
Not much of a day. But I braced myself for the racing to come.
Thanks for reading.

Meating New Friends; Adapters, Beer and More Stinky Cheese

2010-01-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

Prague-Tabor

Meating Some New Friends

TABOR, Czech Republic (Jan. 28, 2010) - Touchdown at Prague to find nobody there to even give a shit about stamping my passport. One just walks into this country!

The doors parted to reveal that reception line of drivers all holding name cards. I must confess to secretly hoping I would finally have a person there with my name on the card. It's kinda like being chosen on Let's Make a Deal."
Instead I found a delightful young czech lady, Teresa, holding a CX World's poster. I was one of several being chosen on that day.

She was pleasant enough but we had to wait 30 minutes for the car due to some snow. I marched around in search of the elusive adapter to no avail. Instead I hit a bank machine and pulled out 500 Czech Krona. Beats the shit out of me how much money I had in my hands. So I made it over to the Starbucks, where everybody seemed delighted to speak English and got a tall coffee for just under 100 CK. Hence I realized that I had pulled out about $10.

I returned to the rendezvous where we met up the UCI Press Officer, a Swiss gentleman named Ricco. We were escorted to a bright yellow Hyundai van where we were introduced to a gentleman whose name spilled out of his mouth like a pile of so much loose change, just consonants everywhere.

I hopped into the back with Ricco only to have Teresa shut the door and return to the airport. This left me and Ricco awkwardly in the back. And we were off for a drive through the snowy grit on the outskirts of Prague without ever seeing a single spire of the great Prague architecture. Within 10 minutes we found ourselves on white rolling plains that might as well have been Pennsylvania. Actually the similarities between the Czech Republic and Pa are noteworthy.

Always looking to make conversation, I asked our driver, a weathered man appearing to be in his late 50s, just what had changed since the fall of Communism more than 20 years earlier....He tilted his head and raised a nostril and held up the palm of his right hand......

In this vaccuum of time I studied all the billboards for car ads, storefronts, and a new glass buildings with Accenture's corporate logo in lights.
"No-thing really," he said.

And returned to driving.
About 30 minutes passed with some chatter between Ricco and I before I asked our driver for which food is the Czech Republic known. Although he had a good command of English the question confused him.
Ricco, who could speak about four languages well, helped me out by asking "Specialty....Food...Czech Republica."

You see, crossing into different languages can some times be like using Google. You just plug different words into the search engine without a whole lot of concern for prepositions, tense, form, etc. And then you see what you get.

"Ahhhh..." the driver said, again the nostril and the chin and the palm came up.

In that vaccuum I saw assorted pizza delivery trucks roll by and some KFC billboards.

"MEAT....ya...MEAT."

Half expecting something such as Paella, I returned to the window. Nearly two hours after leaving Prague we rumbled off the Autopista and within a few turns were in Tabor. Having been told of this town's stark existence, I found the Hotel Dvorak to be a stunning venue. I would stay in a building that once housed a brewery, anchored by a tower that has to be at least 500 years old.
I dumped my bags into Room 103, spending a few minutes to familiarize myself with the light buttons and plumbing fixtures and closets. Foreign travel is great for just shaking up your senses.
Then I hit out on to the streets, hoping to find an adapter for my plugs.
"Everybody speaks English," I had been told. To that point, Teresa, the Starbucks crew, and the driver were practically fluent in English. With that confidence I stomped up the narrow cobbled streets, bathed in the fantastic, compact architecture of this town that once sparked the Hussite Revolution. The buildings, dating back to the 1200s were simply too fantastic to describe. I shall need to post photos.
I found my way to a "Billa" supermarket. After trying to find an adapter, I found a staffer...No English. The next one; no English.
Nobody spoke English....Not a bit.
I found a young lady who said, frightened, "a leetle bit." So I wound up the search engine.
"Adapter....Electronik"?
"Ah....there left 200 meters"
Fantastic!
I made it to the smallstore and went through the same pantomine with a clerk. "Ahhh!" She climbed a ladder and found one. The cost? About $6.
With that I sucked in the town, stopping at some store fronts, one of which was a tribute to Milos Fisera, a Tabor rider who won the worlds in 1982.
I returned to the Billa and grabbed four different varieties of beer and some fantastic smelly cheese, crackers and water. Total? About $8.
At this point the text went off. Melanie Leveau, my liaison, invited me to the World Cup award ceremony. She told me to be in the lobby at 7.
OK.
I returned, drained a Pilsner Urquell, used my Starbucks card as a knife on cheese, and then made the lobby. There I found a handful of people waiting for rides. I can pick out UCI people a mile away. But through the din of Czech, Flemish, Dutch, French and German, I heard an American voice. I chirped my way into a mini-van with about eight others and found myself next to the American. He was Mike Plante, the man who promoted the Tour DuPont and has guided much of the development of American professional cycling. This would be the first of many great contacts made.
We arrived to the race venue. True to reports, this venue is situated amidst stark Soviet Bloc apartments. In Arctic conditions, we crunched across the snow and down a metal staircase to a massive VIP tent. Finding this was like reaching a Mandan village along the Missouri in January, 1802. We entered the blank white tent to a blast of warmth and glowing light. The 10,000 square foot tent had hard wood floors, plants, linens, tables, a massive buffet a man greeting us with champagne in flutes. Fantastic.
As I processed through I found Simon Burney, the tall, smiling Brit who wrote the book that guided much of the development of cyclo-cross in English speaking nations.
"Let's get you a seat up front," he said.
I met Melanie finally and Peter van den Abeele, who hired me for this gig. "Are you ready to be the presenter tonight?" said Peter.
"Uhhh......What?" I replied.
Melanie nodded along with the joke.
Finally I drained my champagne and said, "Four more of these and I will be ready."
I sat in the second row, behind the riders who would be honored.
The curious thing about great cyclists is that unlike American pro athletes are typically massive specimens, cyclists in street clothes make a modest impression. Then the who's who started with Simon quizzing me. Adri Van Der Poele, Beat Wabel, Danny De Bie...all legends...milled about. Then the ceremony started. The junior world cup podium was great as it featured the winner, David Van Der Poel, who is the son of Adri. What shocked me was to learn he was the grandson of Raymond Poulidor!
with each podium I got to learn about the riders and study their mannerisms. One can see why Niels Albert can be seen as arrogant. And how Sven Nys is such a popular man. The three "Dutchie" women, Van Paasen, Vos and Van Den Brand were splendidly understated. But the electricity of the night and of that room crackled around one man, Zdenek Stybar, who won the World Cup. This young Czech star has to be one of the most handsome men I've ever seen.
After the presentation, I ate some rabbit, some ham, some thing else, and something else!

All wonderful. And finally, I got to bed and slept like the dead.

Thanks for reading. Later I hope to post the story from the first day at the venue.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles: DC-Boston-Zurich-Prague

2010-01-29T02:48:00.000-08:00

Trains, buses, planes, trains, buses, car and beyond…

WASHINGTON, DC (Jan. 27, 2010; 4:57 a.m.) - I have had this date circled for a long time. Tonight I’ll be off to Prague. I’m sitting in the Liaison Hotel lobby waiting for the Metro to get running and the Starbucks to open for business. Then it’s off to BWI and then home and then back to Logan for tonight’s flight.

Since yesterday’s blog posting I’ve received some really nice comments. Thanks for all the support. Just so folks know, I’ve scraped together enough pocket dough to survive until payday. My lone piece of advice from years of doing this is to travel with a water bottle at all times.

Seriously, people have been wonderfully kind and supportive of me. Too often, folks find funny ways to be mean or mean ways to be funny whenever folks have great opportunities. Typically those folks are hurting inside. I’ve not heard any of that.

We had an amazing event last night at Gallaudet University. Today Best Buddies and Special Olympics delegates will surge on to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to support the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Act. Last night served as a pep rally of sorts.

But I awoke at 4 a.m. and started the transition to my passion for cyclo-cross and cycling. But I also have this enormous passion for travel. At its basic form, cycling is transit. Any person who has endured a trip alongside of me knows how attentive I am to transportation infrastructure and culture.

Americans are infatuated with the “middle” transit: primarily the airplane or the automobile. But the first and last few miles are what truly intrigue me. I have used mass transit all over the place, including once figuring out the bus system of Managua, Nicaragua. In 2004 when I went to Europe five times for OLN, I managed to turn in a $42 expense report which covered transit from Geneva to Sion to cover the Tour of Romandy. They were confused by the report because most of their on-air talent routinely turned in hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in cost to renting cars, fueling cars, parking cars, insuring cars, using taxis, etc. I just walked off a train and found the hotel.

Although a strong advocate for bicycles – especially in cities – I feel that bikes work best when augmented with great mass transit. I get somewhat frustrated when cycling mags heap a ton of praise on communities that are isolated as being so bike friendly. To truly be bike friendly communities need to have a lot of intermodal options that enable people to actually get where they “need” to go, not just “want” to go. Of note is that even though Boston is routinely shat upon as not being that bike friendly, it has a higher cycling usage rate than a lot of so-called bike friendly communities. Why? For starters it is the world’s largest college town. Boston also has a compact design that pre-dates automobiles. But a major reason is that Boston has some of the best mass transit in America.

So here is my trip log for Jan. 27-28, 2010!

So let’s start with Washington DC.

This is one of the greatest transportation cities in America. And they have some amazing bike facilities thanks to the hard work of the group WABA. But during a walk home with my colleague Hilary, she described witnessing a car smack a cyclist the day before. And two years prior she saw a cyclist killed when struck by a car.

DC has great bike lanes, rail trails, tow paths and bike specific paths. Although I personally love to ride in this city, I find it somewhat daunting at night. The roads are super wide. One would think that could make it safer for cycling. But the opposite is true. Wide roads encourage drivers to speed. I thought of this while walking with Hilary. Narrow roads choke the speed down below 30 mph. In DC I saw a lot of cars screaming by at 50-plus mph. And with a ton of out-of-towners driving in the District, there are some truly bone-headed moves being pulled.

But the city is a great walking city. I emerged from the Hotel Liaison at 6 a.m., turned right, turned right again and walked two blocks to Union Station, a magnificent temple to American rail. One can get Amtrak, Maryland Area Rail Commuter lines, or the Metro subway. I took the Metro for about $2.30, changed lines at Fort Totten, and took the green line to Greenbelt. There I waited for the B30 Metrobus to the Baltimore-Washington International. While waiting I discovered a bank of about 14 bike lockers at the bus stations. These are the fully enclosed, weatherproofed bike lockers. They’re all being used. Once on the bus, I had an enjoyable 35-minute bus ride to BWI. My tickets to BWI cost half of the rate charged to Ronald Reagan Airport in the District. But Reagan (aka DCA is the only airport in America to which you can ride your bike entirely.

At BWI I hopped Jet Blue to Boston’s Logan Airport (another airport to which one can ride provided one uses the MBTA Blue Line to get to the airport ring road).

Then I land at Logan. From there, I use the newly developed Silver Line, which connects to the Red Line. I take that to Alewife, where I connect with the 62 bus to Lexington Center. I have ridden my bike to Alewife, where they have pretty good bike lockers for the thousands of commuters who pedal down the Minuteman Rail Trail to Alewife Station, especially in the warmer season.

From home, I swapped bags and got some much needed time with my wife and family before departing again. I arrived home about noon and would have to leave again at 7 p.m.

By nature traveling is an anxious experience. I try extra hard to keep that anxiety at bay. Here I am about to leave for five days and I am short-tempered with Grant, my wonderful 15-year-old son who has just worked so hard to salvage his grades. He's brilliant but fell behind on homework. The make up process required an arduous 3 week effort. I felt bad.

I look forward to more travels with him. He's become a best friend.

Deb drives me to Alewife. It's a painful separation as too much of my marriage to this wonderful woman has been saying good by at this subway station.

Then it's back to red line, silver line and Logan Airport.

I climb on board Swiss Air 73 without much fanfare. I LOVE the European flights. I got good at them in 2004 when I did a lot of work in Europe with OLN. I settle in and we get airborne. Out comes the cart, two mini-bottles of wine, a Benadryl, dinner, and I watch The Matrix from the beginning (which I had never seen). After 20 minutes of that I am out.

I awoke to sunlight in the cabin. I had piled on a solid 5 hours of sleep thanks to an eye mask, neck pillow, and my wife's Christmas present, a pair of Sony Noise Canceling head phones. (By now, you get a clue as to what a jerk I am, eh?)

From there came the Zurich Airport and hunger during the transfer. I searched hopelessly for an American-Czech electrical adapter. I boarded the flight frustrated and afraid that I could not bore people with blogs and insult Eastern Europeans with my music without that adapter.

After a brief flight I touched down in Prague. We'll pick it up there next.

Thanks for reading. Tabor is next.

Gorgonzola a Go Go

2010-01-26T06:39:00.000-08:00

Gorgonzola a Go-Go: When Cheese Goes Terribly Wrong

WASHINGTON, DC (Jan. 26, 2010 2:59 a.m.) – I awoke about 12 minutes ago in a strange place, staring at a strange clock, and thirsty. I’m rather stressed as of late and waking up in a recently abandoned teen-age girl’s bedroom puts a confusing spin on matters.

So I opted to start writing. I figured Europe is six hours ahead of me so better off winding up the ol’ body clock a few day’s early.

In reflection on my state of affairs, however, today’s lesson has to be the Buddhist mantra of be here now. Americanized, that lesson is pay attention to what the fuck you’re doing.

My day started at my Lexington home before dawn where I logged on to my bank account to discover an unanticipated charge had wiped out our checking account, leaving me with a negative balance on the day I would start a whirlwind week that would bring me to Washington DC and then on to the Czech Republic.

What to do? Start by packing a lunch.

Deb and I knew things were tight. My “North Bend” debacle (see Facebook) had wiped out any hopes of Deb joining me in Europe. But this financial skid has proven tougher than expected. So we shopped for the week’s worth of groceries with precision and I packed food for my trip. My bag would include four apples, one can of mixed nuts (more on Brazil nuts later), two egg salad sandwiches (not advised), two packets of Ramen, and one leftover spinach salad featuring Gorgonzola cheese that I had made Friday morning.

But the banking revelation made things even more frantic. You see, between having a failed business and a horrible Bank of America mortgage (“Don’t worry, you’ll refinance in six months” all my friends in real estate said back in October of 2006, just about the time mortgage brokers were pouring lighter fluid all over their files before fleeing the country) and myriad family medical crises, we’re plain broke.

We’re coming back, steady and strong mind you, but with three voracious children there come these fantastic stressful pinions of poverty. And they are typically timed right when I am about to travel. Results include a freaking stressed out husband and father and a sleepless soon-to-be-left-home-broke wife and mother. We mutter about our bosses under our breath; smolder about our creditors; grumble about taxes; and then yell at our children.

And that’s when we step on dog shit in the front yard.
Fine image of domestic bliss, eh?

So I raided the wallet of my 8-year-old son for five dollars (that does wonders for a person’s self esteem, right there) pillaged the kitchen basket for a few more dollars, and then dumped over the change bottle for some quarters and dimes. I would boldly travel to DC – and perhaps onward to the Czech Republic - with a pile of change totaling $11.70.

My right coat pocket weighed about four pounds.

Transit Gods took pity on me this day. I walked to my bus stop in Lexington Center to find flush-cheeked commuters staring blankly to the North, waiting for the 76 bus. I see these humiliated individuals during my commutes to work. Trust me folks, bicycle commuting only looks hard in January. Waiting for a bus during a New England winter is truly impressive.

For me, however, there would be no wait. The bus arrived just as I stepped up. I hit my flight with no problem. And upon arriving at Baltimore-Washington International (to which flights are one third as expensive as Reagan or Dulles) I found the DC bus stop just as the thing pulled up!

I used some of my dimes here for the $3.10 fare bringing the weight of my right pocket down to a manageable two pounds.

At this point I foraged for food. Traveling with a single back pack had proven a disaster for my lunch. All those apples and egg salad sandwiches and containers and spinach and Gorgonzola had smashed about inside my Ortlieb Waterproof bag. When I unraveled the top of the bag, an odor hit my face like a dye pack hitting a bank robber.

“That has to be the Gorgonzola,” I thought… I quickly tried to roll up the top of the bag to contain the damage.

But this was like Union Carbide in Bhopal. The aroma spread through the bus like that black cloud going through Egypt in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. I half expected every first born on the bus to drop into convulsive fits; the stuff smelled that badly.

More than 20 years had passed since my last bus-cheese incident. In 1985 I crashed at about 50 mph on a descent during a race in Spain. Given some time off to let my mangled elbow heal, I traveled to France and the Netherlands. Returning to Spain by way of Paris, I opted to act in a very Frenchy manner and purchased a baguette and large wheel of Camembert. After about 14 hours of summer train travel, my half-eaten Camembert took on a lot of rustic charm. But anybody who knows me, and appreciates traveling without a lot of money, knows that I refuse to throw away food unless absolutely necessary. So on the final bus journey on the winding roads through the Basque Country, my bag slid loose in the overhead racks sending my warm Camembert cheese sailing forward three rows and down onto the freshly coiffed beehive hairdo of a middle-aged woman. Talk about an international incident: a jackass American dumps French Cheese on the head of a Basque woman, and then tries to apologize in bad Spanish. I actually hoped for an ETA bombing to go off on that bus at that moment. It probably would have smelled better.

We got to the fresh air of Greenbelt Station and all nine occupants gasped for the door like occupants of a long submerged bathyscaph. Greenbelt Station is situated curiously amid USDA research fields outside of DC. This reminded me of the book The Hot Zone, which describes a biological outbreak from a government lab located nearby that nearly wiped out civilization. I thought about dropping off my bag for the government agencies to check out.

Instead I entered the station with my bio hazard bag. There I used more of my change for the $2.35 ticket for ride to Farragut West station.

I emerged on the streets of Washington where moist, warm air greeted me. Keeping my bag sealed tight, I walked two blocks, bathed in a vibe of a city that had pulled off winter coats and hats and put out sidewalk tables and chairs for this event. Everybody bloomed like crocus for the day, knowing full well that we’d retract soon enough for the remainder of the winter.

After two blocks I found my way to the Special Olympics office, where on the 12th floor worked my colleague, Hilary Stephens. We pounded out about three hours of crazy work in preparation for the Capitol Hill Day event. I’m here to ensure my client, CSC, gets their money’s worth out of a lobbying effort on behalf of Special Olympics and Best Buddies.

We walked a few blocks in the dusk and then got on the Metro to complete the transfer to Hilary’s home near DuPont Circle. Upon entering the station, I had to ask “How much?” Inside of downtown DC the fares are $1.75 for just about every trip taken.

“Oh, just get like $5 on it; you’ll be using it,” said Hilary.

This is where pride derails everything. I did not have the spine to let Hilary know the $5 bill going into the machine was my last paper money. But I would need that fare to get back to Greenbelt on Wednesday morning. But as of that moment I lacked the $3.10 bus fare to get from Greenbelt to BWI.

We’re going to have to figure something out.

We arrived at Hilary’s home, a fantastic 1920s era house in the Woodley Park neighborhood. The whole place is filled with homes designed by an Armenian architect who survived the horrors of World War I, including service at Gallipoli.

Inside I encountered her husband, Ty, a bottle of Malbec, flank steak, and asparagus. After dinner Hilary took me for a walk in the neighborhood to show me the National Cathedral, a magnificent building that took the entire lives of stonemasons to construct. This is the same Cathedral Dan Brown writes of in The Lost Symbol. I returned at dawn to show you some pictures.

Only when we retired for the evening did I find myself in the room of Ty and Hilary’s recently graduated daughter, Mia. There I finally emptied the Ortlieb on the bed.

There I had recognized not one, but two plastic containers. This rattled my inventory of things.

In my busy ramp up for travel to the Czech Republic, I had studiously packed my big bag for that Grand Depart, but had given little heed to my little back pack being used for the DC prologue. Like an archaeological dump, I had hurriedly dumped computers and underwear and socks and books and this bag of food into the bag without bothering to check its contents.

In short, I had been so consumed with the big trip that I had neglected to pay attention to the little trip right in front of me. For at the bottom of that bag sat a rotting empty food container from Friday which had just enough biological matter to fester into an aromatic IED that had gone off in the bus.

Ahem….Be here now.

Thanks for reading. I’ll figure out the return trip and ensuing travels and report back.

Czech My Bags

2010-01-23T04:17:00.000-08:00

I'm getting organized for my trip to the Czech Republic, where I'll announce the World Cyclo-cross Championships. I must say I love the dichotomy of my life. Ya see, I have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kinda thing going on....

I work for Anthony Kennedy Shriver - as in JFK's nephew - to market his charity bike rides the Audi Best Buddies Challenges.

I find myself in a suit and tie a lot, mingling with corporate leaders, bankers, politicians, celebrities, etc. And I like it. A lot of men will publicly decry such situations, claiming they cannot wait to take off the tie.

I like wearing suits. I like being in those rooms. Those people are at that level of wealth and notoriety because they're smart and intense and dynamic.

But I also find myself like some character in a Thomas Pynchon novel, racing out of those parties and right into a car with bikes, wheels, and wool-clad people eating bland food out of plastic containers.

I once went from a 12-hour span from being at a black tie function with champagne to standing waste-deep in a wood-fired hot tub in Portland with a beer. Wonderful on both ends of the spectrum.

We have an office in a downtown Boston law firm, Seyfarth Shaw. They are fantastic people living fine lives. But they must think I'm from Neptune. I'm a year round commuter; that's the first thing hard to accept. But they've come to like me.....Sort of like some elf they keep around. So I wear the nice clothes and see them in the lunch room, where it came up that one staffer would be traveling this week....

"Oh, how nice. Where?"

"A cruise... in the Caribbean."

"Oh, how nice."

"I'm going away next week, too"

"Oh, some place warm I hope..."

"No, the Czech Republic....I think it was 4 below zero yesterday"

.....It took a second to register....It's just a whole lot to swallow for some folks.....Language, culture, travel, and trying to recall just where the fuck is Czechoslovakia?

"Why are you going there?"

Then you talk about the 'cross worlds.

I love the confusion between fear and envy.

Right in this dichotomy is where I find myself most alive. And increasingly I find more and more successful executives feeling that sense. You see, so many people aspire to be on that cruise ship. You get endless buffet, open bar, classic rock, and comfortable deck chairs.

Increasingly I find those interesting folks who have elbowed, punched, kicked and eye-gouged their way up the ladder are simply bored at the Country Club. Hence they sign up for charity bike rides....Because administrative assistants cannot ride the bike for them. What's most fun is when I see some of those top executives taking it even farther....Some even line up for 'cross races! I know several.

So I'll first travel to Washington DC on Monday, where I'll help coordinate the Capitol Hill Day event, a coordinated effort between Special Olympics and Best Buddies to secure passage of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Act. That's Dr. Jekyll.

Then I'll come home Wednesday morning, take off the suit and tie, and grab my bag for the Czech Republic. That's Mr. Hyde.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

behold, the blog

2010-01-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

So to stave off all the voices in my head, I've opted to start a blog.

What spurred this is my approaching trip to the Czech Republic, where I will be the announcer at the UCI World Cyclo-cross Championships. I figured a blog would be a good way for me to communicate the experience.

That said, I've meant to start a blog for some time, with particular encouragement from my lovely wife, Deb. So on this January day from a modest table in a modest home in a modest town in a modest New England community, I've launched my blog.

As I travel - both outwardly and inwardly - I hope to present my observations and a few scraps of evidence on a number of subjects. Much of what I write will be from the vantage point of cycling. You see, I try to live a lot by bicycle. Few individuals can do this without gaining a unique perspective on matters.

I have come to genuinely appreciate the ability to write a concise and piquant "status" update. With that in mind, this blog may prove a modest elaboration on that you find on my Facebook and Twitter pages.

In short, I'll try to keep it short.

Stay tuned, a trip to Prague and Tabor is coming up.