From the Archives - Our Fiesta

Introduction

When my wife and I bought our house, in Albany, California, we probably thought it was a starter home. Well, over 24 years later, we’re still here. Thus, what we assumed could well be the first of several housewarming parties became possibly, probably our only one. Fortunately, the party was glorious, mainly because we procured the food from our favorite (and alas, now long gone) Mexican restaurant, Mario’s La Fiesta . What follows is an account of that party—or, more precisely, the food, because that’s almost all I wrote about. Please enjoy this mouth-watering account from my archives. (At least, it made my mouth water.)

[Here’s the picture we included on our invitations, which we actually printed and mailed out. No, that’s not really our house.]

Our Fiesta – April 1, 2001

[My wife] E— came up with perhaps one of the greatest ideas ever conceived by the human mind: to get the food for our housewarming party from Mario’s La Fiesta. There were gobs of details to worry about for the party (cleaning the house, having enough toilet paper, providing a wide variety of healthy-style soft drinks for the non-drinkers and four pregnant women at the party, battling the logistics of having more than a hundred beers cold at once), so it was great not to have to worry about assembling decorative trays of whores-douvres. As it was, cleaning the place took several evenings, because we didn’t want to spend all Saturday cleaning and then be too tired to entertain our guests. The yard out front had been completely infested with weeds, and completely covered in fallen leaves (the camphor trees seem to do all their shedding at this time of year), and E—happened by a small crew of gardeners working in the neighborhood, and asked them to come out and give a bid, and they did a bang-up job for $100. By six we were almost completely ready. I realized I am an amateur party-giver when I loaded about 100 pounds of ice into a giant tub, before putting in the drinks, then had a devil of a time plunging the drinks through the ice. A bottled fizzy juice thing forced in head-first must have ruptured slightly, because there was a hissing sound somewhere in the tub. But we were essentially ready.

Our first official guest, a middle-aged lady from E—’s work, arrived at 6:10, some 20 minutes early. Then, nobody arrived for a very long time, and I was starting to worry that nobody would show, when everybody seemed to show up at once. Things were so busy that I actually forgot about the food, believe it or not, until I suddenly realized I was starving. “Man, what do they give you to eat around here?” I incongruously thought, before suddenly realizing I’d completely forgotten about my 7:15 food pickup at Mario’s. Panicking, I looked at my watch: it was already 7:15, on the nose. I looked around at a large crowd of guests who didn’t have a single thing to eat: not a cracker, not a celery stick, and certainly not one of those hackneyed spinach/artichoke dips inside a hauled-out bread bowl that seem to curse every party I’ve been to since college. No, my guests—spared though they were from the insipid brie wheels and 7-layer dips and inedible highfalutin pâté-style nonsense—were starving.

I quickly found an able assistant, my former colleague P— who immediately spoke up because he has a brand-new truck, one of those massive one-and-a-half-ton pickups with crew cab. We rushed to the restaurant, making a horribly time-consuming side trip to the ATM to cash up as La Fiesta doesn’t take credit or checks. Inside the restaurant, there was general confusion because a) nobody could understand that I’d placed the order days in advance, since they assumed I was there for a standard take-out, and 2) I was in the wrong place—I needed the banquet facility around the corner.

So I was like half an hour late, and lo and behold there was a La Fiesta employee waiting out front. Kind of an older looking guy, robust but not fat, and I had the distinct impression I was in the presence of somebody important. Sure enough, it was Mario himself! Not even the son of the original Mario, but the very founder, 42 years ago, of La Fiesta! I even shook his hand! He had the solid, nonchalant confidence and cheerfulness of somebody who knows his customer will be completely satisfied.

Mario saw how far away the truck was parked, and said to bring it right up front and double-park. Then we went into the banquet facility and I saw my food there, on the counter, in two huge, four-inch-deep aluminum casserole trays, next to three deep tubs of salsa (one a smoked tomato thing, one a classic salsa roja, and the other green tomatillo). My heart soared like a hawk to see so much La Fiesta food in one place at one time. At this point Mario beckoned to P— to come forward and help haul: “We’ve got a lot of food here!” Imagine my amazement when another member of the La Fiesta family approached, wheeling a large dolly with a stack at least four feet high of more giant trays of food. It was probably more food than I’ve ever seen in one place. (I’m not counting Sizzler as food.) I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

Mario’s wife Rosalinda settled up the bill. I’d ordered 30 flour tortillas, which weren’t on the menu but which Mario supposed he could provide, though he had no idea when I ordered how much they would cost. Well, they ended up charging me four dollars and change, roughly a quarter what I would have paid at Safeway. And somehow, though I’d meticulously calculated the total and the tax, the bill came out about $25 lower than expected. All in all it was an extremely reasonable sum: within fifty bucks or so of the most expensive dinner for two I’ve had with E—, and we were feeding forty-plus people.

The food absolutely filled the bed of P—’s truck, and this is one of those massive pickups that it so large, in fact, that it doesn’t deserve to exist except as a legit work truck, with the type of oversized bed that could carry the space shuttle, the lunar lander, and any modern sedan all at one time. There wasn’t even room in the bed for the salsa and the bag of chips (which was the size of a small cow), which I carried up front on my lap. I was so excited at this point I thought I was going to cry. We were just about to pull away when I remember the Agua Fresca. Agua Fresca is a lot like punch, except that it’s made from fruit instead of corn syrup and food coloring. Thus, the flavors are things like pineapple and strawberry instead of “blue” and “red.” It’s delicious stuff, and I’d ordered four gallons. So I went back, and found to my horror that I couldn’t get back in. The banquet facility is right next to People’s Park, which is so full of desperate homeless people I couldn’t blame La Fiesta for having a big locking gate out front. It was some time before I discovered the doorbell. Mario came back out, and I said, “The Agua Fresca!” He threw his hands up in the air. “Ah, the Agua Fresca!” he shouted. He turned back and went inside, yelling, “The Agua Fresca!” Everybody in the place starting running around yelling “The Agua Fresca! the Agua Fresca!” and looking for it as though it were a small animal that could run under a table and hide. Suddenly Mario found it, seeming to pull it out of thin air, though it was a massive lidded plastic pail, at least three feet tall. He loaded it up on the dolly and we rolled it out to the car. It took all my adrenaline-boosted strength to hoist it up into the crew cab. I could hear the ice cubes clattering around and I all but drooled down the front of my shirt.

[Here’s a photo of another giant order from La Fiesta, from another party years later. You get the idea.]

We drove as fast back to my house (my house!) as is prudent in a truck filled with such a precious and precarious cargo, and when we pulled up I ran into the house and yelled for assistance. At least half a dozen guests, half-crazed with hunger I imagine, streamed out the door and helped unload. It was like an army of ants carrying massive crumbs to their queen. I distinctly heard a colleague of mine ask another, “Have you ever seen Dana this happy?” It didn’t even all fit on our dining room table. The dining room was instantly thronged with people. And the food was a hit! I was in there for at least half an hour before I got anything to eat, and the burden of socializing with guests was starting to be a severe obstacle. I almost wanted to dismiss the whole party so as to get at those enchiladas verdes and chiles rellenos, the magical refried beans and the rice, the guacamole (a huge tray), and the three, count-em three, kinds of salsa.

The husband of one of E—’s friends approached me, plate-less, looking quite grave: “I will know if this is worth eating,” he said in a low voice, “after just one taste of the guacamole. If it isn’t good, nothing will be.” I practically forced a chip into his hand. (Later in the evening, his gut bloated with gas and cramp, he apologized for having doubted my choice, explaining that he’d been subjected to a dreadful hotel-catered “Mexican” buffet the previous week, the awfulness of which was heralded by milky-sour-cream-based, uniformly weak and thin ersatz guacamole. 

Eventually I made my way to the table and had, over three or four trips, what in aggregate could be called the Super Mario platter—at least three each of rellenos and enchiladas, with rice and beans and tortillas accompanying each round. I ate more La Fiesta that night than I ever have in a single sitting. It may have been because I was standing up, thus giving more room in my gut. Plus, it’s very hard to cut a chile relleno with one hand (the other hand was holding the plate), so I ate at least one of them in a single bite.

Ten years ago, had we the inclination and the means to throw such a party, I imagine it would have ended at three or four AM or whenever we ran out of booze. Instead, the last guests left at 2:40 AM, which was actually 1:40 AM except we lost an hour at 2:00 AM (when daylight savings began). Many of the guests had assumed it was BYOB, and we ended up with more than half, perhaps even two thirds, of the beer un-drunk. We never even opened the tequila, and barely tapped the vodka. The bowl of spiked Agua Fresca was only half gone at the end, though the total of un-spiked Agua Fresca left over was only about 2-1/2 quarts. When I think about it, I realize it was more popular than the booze! Part of that was the pregnant women at the party, but then again all of their husbands should have been drinking for three. I guess my generation is slowing down. As for me, I spent a lot of time in bed on Sunday, not because I drank a lot (I didn’t) but because I had eaten so much. Kind of a lard hangover.

The leftovers? A vast amount. I think when you order large takeout from Mario’s, they pay little attention the quantity you actually ordered and just give you gobs of food. Maybe they round up to the nearest hundred items (I’d ordered four dozen of each). I can’t wait for my next excuse to throw a party.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow: 2024 Tour de France Stage 15

Introduction

As you should know already from my last post, this year’s Tour de France has been pretty exciting. Two weeks in, the GC is still fairly tight. Today I provide my no-holds-barred, biased and barbed blow-by-blow report of what they’re saying is this year’s hardest stage.

Tour de France Stage 15 – Loudenvielle to Plateau de Beille

As I join the action, the riders are on the Col d’Agnes, a Category 1 climb, and about 40 miles from the finish. There’s a breakaway that has broken up a bit such that we’ve got three riders in the lead, a couple of chasers 39 seconds behind them, a couple more 32 seconds behind that, and then the GC group at 3:45. The GC group is down to 20 riders, and now I have to step away because my cat has just done something indescribably stinky in her cat box.

Okay, I’m back. The leaders are Laurens De Plus (Ineos Granadiers), Enric Mas (Movistar Team), and Jai Hindley (Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe). “Laurens de Plus is a deceptively good rider,” the commentator Phil Liggett declares. So … what does that mean exactly? He’s good, but nobody can tell? He’s good but you can’t trust him? It’s a mystery.

The Olympic road race champion Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) was in the original breakaway but missed the attack of the three leaders and is now chasing. Back in the GC group, Visma-Lease a Bike has only two riders supporting Jonas Vingegaard, their star rider who sits a couple minutes behind the maillot jaune, Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates), in the GC.

And now Carapaz has caught the leaders with 62 kilometers (about 38 miles) left in the race.

I’m watching the race on Peacock, and earlier they showed footage of one of their commentators sitting in an inflatable baby pool with several drunken Frenchmen. It was so corny, and the sight of his pale, hairy middle-aged chest was so disturbing, I almost threw up in my mouth. Who contrived this silly stunt? How could it have seemed like a good idea? But here’s a silver lining: it’s really hard to get photos of this coverage (since Peacock blocks screen grabs) so I don’t have a photo for you. Consider yourself lucky.

My cat has taken up residence in my lap. I’ve forgiven her for the cat box episode.

Wilco Kelderman (Visma-Rent a Bike) leads the GC group over the summit as Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) zips up for the descent.

The commentator Tejay van Gardaren just used the phrase “eat out this advantage.” I’m quite sure he didn’t say “eke out this advantage,” which also wouldn’t have made much sense in the context. I’m not sure what Tejay’s relationship is to language, but it looks pretty rocky from here.

“He wisely takes a gel bar there,” Phil says of De Plus. I wonder if Phil has looked closely at the consumables available to the riders? There are certainly bars, and gels, but I’ve never yet heard of a “gel bar.” Maybe Phil needs to pay more attention to the constant ads for The Feed that Peacock keeps showing. And I need to pay less, obviously, since it’s pretty sad that I’m even aware of them. I have a grudge against The Feed. I was led to believe that as a high school mountain bike coach I could get some free product, but it was a scam … though I abandoned the “registration” process midway through, The Feed now spams the crap out of me and I had to set up an email filter. Bastards. Don’t go for the “free water bottle” offer … your inbox may never recover.

It’s a long way to the final climb so I’ll fill you in on what’s happened so far in this Tour. Even though Vingegaard has won the last two Tours, he came in as a big question mark because he had a brutal crash this spring and was in the hospital for like ten days, and until a few weeks ago nobody was sure he’d even start the Tour. Pogacar, on the other hand, has been on fire all season, destroying his so-called rivals in the Giro d’Italia. I was starting to worry that this was going to be a totally boring Tour, but then Pogacar got COVID not long before the Tour started. So it looked like there might be some drama. So far, it’s been pretty good. Pogacar won the fourth stage, taking 37 seconds out of Vinegaard, but at least the Dane seemed to be on reasonably good form (as opposed to former winner Egan Bernal of the Ineos Granadiers who never really recovered from a bad crash a few years back, and lost 2:42 on this first mountain stage). Pogacar had a great Stage 7 time trial, taking another 25 seconds out of Vingegaard and 22 seconds out of another GC rival, Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe). Meanwhile, Evenepoel has been riding well, winning the time trial. In Stage 11, Vingegaard managed a stage win but didn’t take any time back from Pogacar, though he did distance Evenepoel by 25 seconds. In Stage 12, Roglic crashed hard and had to abandon the Tour, alas. Then, yesterday, Pogacar took another stage win and 39 more seconds out of Vingegaard, who at least took 31 seconds off Evenepoel to move into second overall. Vingegaard now wears the polka-dotted KOM jersey though it actually belongs to Pogacar.

Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) has clawed his way back to the breakaway, making it five. But their lead is down to just 2:41 over the very strong GC group, and I think this break is probably doomed. I have to confess, it’s always slightly annoying when I’ve devoted some energy describing the breakaway, naming its participants, etc., all for nothing. Now you’re laughing at me and saying, “Poor baby! These guys are slaying themselves for a chance at glory, but your poor fingers hurt from all that typing?” Well, yeah. And remember, these guys are getting paid. I’m just here as a public service … and you might be the only person ever to lay eyes on this text. What a waste, all around.

Now the same commentator who had sat in an inflatable pool earlier has put his shirt back on and is interviewing some random Slovenian fan.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you like Tadej Pogacar so much?

RANDO: You’re pronouncing his name wrong.

INTERVIEWER: It’s not TAD-ay Po-GOTCH-ah?

RANDO: No. It’s Tad-AY Po-GOTCH-arh.

INTERVIEWER: Sorry.

RANDO: [huffs]

INTERVIEWER: So why do you like him so much, even though you said you’re not much of a sports fan?

RANDO: Because he’s so young but already so accomplished. He’s at the top of the leader board for a reason.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that actually passes for insight?

RANDO: No, I never said I knew anything about sport. I was just minding my own business here when you came and stuck a mic in my face.

INTERVIEWER: Do you want to sit in the baby pool with me later?

RANDO: Please just leave me alone, you’re kind of creeping me out.

Okay, I have to admit something. I didn’t even try to give you an accurate transcript of that interview. My job is to entertain, and although that’s ostensibly the job of the commentators as well, they don’t always deliver. This is the trouble with live journalism … the footage they get, which deserves to end up on the cutting room floor, is just shoved at you like cafeteria-grade gruel in real time. They hoped this rando would be entertaining but he just just wasn’t. And who is this commentator? Where did they find him? Why is he ever on camera when he knows nothing about cycling?

They’re showing a list of past Plateau de Beille winners. I’m kind of surprised to see Lance Armstrong on the list, for 2002 and 2004. “Contador and Pantani won officially,” Bob Roll explains, “and Lance Armstrong won but was then disqualified … fairly or unfairly, time will tell.” Huh? WTF? I had kind of thought that after Lance made a fool out of himself on “Oprah” that the matter was settled. Isn’t that the acid test? I mean, after Tom Cruise jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch nobody has ever taken him seriously again … why would posterity ever return Lance’s past glory to him? This makes no sense.

Here’s an aerial shot of the final climb. A lot more interesting than a football field or a basketball court, innit?

The peloton reaches the base of the Plateau de Beille, and Kelderman, completely knackered, sits up and goes straight out the back.

The American Matteo Jorgenson, Vingegaard’s super-domestique, drills the pace on the front.

The gap to the breakaway is tumbling with a quickness. At the front, Carapaz attacks!

The GC group is down to nine riders. I’m not giving you their names … several more will get dropped soon. Suffice to say Evenepoel is still in there … for now.

What a waste of an exclamation point a couple sentences ago … Carapaz was reeled in like a retiree watching a timeshare seminar. (You won’t get metaphors like this with mainstream sports coverage.)

Jorgenson continues to drill it on the front, like a boss. Pogacar picks his nose. (His own nose, I mean. Not Jorgenson’s.)

The breakaway is breaking up. Mas, wearing an exquisite death-rictus, hammers on the front but it won’t be long until they’re caught. Note that Carapaz not only failed to get a gap, but slipped off the back of these two.

Carapaz regains contact and immediately attacks again. I’m sticking with a period this time, no exclamation point for him.

Vingegaard attacks! Only Pogacar can hang with him.

The duo blows by the dropped breakaway riders like they’re nothing, which they are. Look how weird De Plus looks in this photo. Some kind of A.I. auto-retouching, perhaps?

Now the leaders fly by the remaining breakaway riders. Carapaz latches on.

Evenepoel has already lost 30 seconds. And now Carapaz is dropped.

Evenepoel overtakes Carapaz. “He’s riding well and putting his rubber stamp on this race,” Phil says cryptically. I’ve certainly heard of “stamping your authority,” but the rubber stamp thing … doesn’t that normally indicate something very rote? I’m not getting this metaphor at all.

Pogacar has been out of the wind this entire race. He’s just sucking Vingegaard’s wheel, which is of course perfectly appropriate. And it’s a 9% grade so they’re probably not going all that fast, so it’s not like Vingegaard is being taken advantage of, exactly. But still, you wonder how long he can last. He had to attack early, so that in the unlikely event of Pogacar faltering, the Dane would have enough road to stretch out his lead and take the yellow jersey. But Pogacar looks super comfortable.

Peacock is patching in audio from their random, clueless baby-pool commentator who I just learned is named Steve. “I’ve already summited,” Steve says, as though being driven up a mountain is  some kind of heroic achievement. “I can tell you that it is very steep up here,” he continues, as though providing value. “Later I’m going to visit a day care center and hope to get some graham crackers and a juice box,” he does not go on to say, though he may as well.

Evenepoel is hemorrhaging time. He looks pretty demoralized. Or maybe he’s just hurting. I mean, of course he is.

And now Pogacar attacks! Rude! Gosh, with three miles to go, this really isn’t the prudent move of a GC leader with a decent lead who seems like he could theoretically lose the race by digging deeper than necessary. Very cheeky. Don’t get me wrong, I love panache, but this just seems gratuitous. Pogacar looks back, to taunt the Dane.

They ask commentator Christan Vande Velde, on the motorbike, to comment on Vingegaard’s unfolding nightmare. “He’s really suffering,” Christian says. “I haven’t seen him look this horrified since his family accidentally abandoned him in ‘Home Alone.’” Christian is to be forgiven for confusing Vingegaard with the child actor Macaulay Culkin because after all, the two are very nearly identical. Also, I made all that up, needless to say.

Pogacar goes under the 1-kilometer kite. Why is it called a kite? I don’t know. It just is.

Pogacar gets the win. He does the controversial “I’ve just woken up and am stretching” victory salute, as if to rub his rivals’ nose in it.

Vingegaard crosses the line, 1:08 down. His elbows are locked, as though even his arms have given out. I know the feeling.

Evenepoel finishes, losing 2:51 to Pogacar and 1:43 to Vingegaard. Presumably, more riders trickle in as the footage turns to Pogacar drinking water and once again being congratulated by various staffers. Yawn.

Now Carapaz limps through, well over five minutes down.

Bob Roll describes Pogacar’s win as “pure joy.” I’d say killjoy is more like it. Remember when riders were vulnerable and occasionally cracked, especially after winning races all season long? Pogacar has 16 pro victories this season, which is a similar number to the races he’s entered. He dominated the Giro and is now poised to be only the eighth rider in history to win the Giro/Tour double, and the first since the fully lubed Pantani in 1998. Some might find this exciting; to me it’s a lot like that egghead kid in the schoolroom who’s always got his hand up when the teacher asks a question, and who goes “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” when she pretends not to see him.

As they show a super-slo-mo of Vingegaard crossing the line, they play a recording of what his director said over the race radio: “Really, really good job. You did everything Jonas … Pogacar is better, and we have to accept this, huh?” Gosh. That guy should moonlight as a motivational speaker. (And no, I didn’t actually fabricate that quote, for once.)

As Pogacar warms down, of course he’s on his phone. What’s he doing? Doomscrolling? Social media? The Wordle? We can only speculate.

My online correspondent writes, “Well, the Tour is officially boring.” True, true.

And now it’s time for the uncomfortable conversation: could Pogacar possibly be clean? Well, I just read on cyclingnews.com that “Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld reports that Niki Terpstra has calculated [Pogacar’s] climbing time as 3:39 quicker than Pantani’s 1998 Plateau de Beille record.” So … how would this amazing feat be achieved clean, knowing that Pantani was coked to the gills throughout his career? Is it because Pogacar has electronic shifting? Better nutrition? Just wanted it more? Uh-huh. I’m not sure what to do about this. Maybe the TV networks will sue WADA for failing to police doping better, so that the stages could last longer and provide more advertising opportunities. Think of how much revenue they’ve lost through the curtailed coverage since every day the riders come through far sooner than expected.

They’re interviewing Pogacar.

INTERVIEWER: Well, thanks to your absurd dominance today, the Tour is officially boring.

POGACAR: I never would have imagined this. It was really hot, a super hard day, incredible, I’ve been cooling down and everything.

INTERVIEW: Half of your [stage] victories have been in the Pyrenees. What do you make of that?

POGACAR: Well, think about it. There are two mountain ranges used in this Tour and I didn’t win the time trial, so … duh.

INTERVIEWER: How did you pull this off, taking so much time out of your rivals?

POGACAR: They didn’t have the legs. More specifically, they didn’t have my legs.

INTERVIEWER: That sounds rather arrogant—did you really just say that?

POGACAR: No, I have said very little actually, which is why this blogger is taking liberties.

INTERVIEWER: What were you doing on your phone a bit ago, during your warm-down?

POGACAR: I was reading albertnet, of course.

Here’s the stage result:

And here’s the new GC:

Mark Cavendish (Astana-Qazaqstan Team), who won Stage 5 to set a new world record for most career Tour stage victories (click here for details) crosses the line, flanked by teammates, less than two minutes before the time cut would have ended his Tour.

And now the French sprinter Arnaud Démare comes over the line, a minute before he’d have been cut. Why is this remarkable? Well, he’s an amazing climber, having set a new Strava KOM for the final climb of the Milan-San Remo classic back in 2016. Of course, he had a bit of help in that he was hanging on his team car the whole time up the climb in what must be the worst example of unpunished cheating in the history of sport (click here for details). The good news is, Démare totally sucks now, failing to win a Tour stage since 2018, and I love to watch him lose. And I’m glad he made the time cut so I can watch him lose the next flat stage as well.

Jorgenson really sacrificed for his team leader today, losing 9:30 and dropping from 10th to 12th on GC. But hey, he was doing his job and I respect that. In other news, they’ve awarded Carapaz the Combativity award for today’s stage, which he totally deserves.

They’re interviewing Evenepoel now.

INTERIEWER: Well, you blew big greasy chunks today. How do you feel about that?

EVENEPOEL: Actually, I am happy. I consolidated my third place and my white jersey.

INTERVIEWER: But you lost big time to Pogacar and Vingegaard.

EVENEPOEL: I was getting my time gaps to them over my radio, but I didn’t want them. I just wanted to hear about the guys behind.

INTERVIEWER: That’s really defeatist of you.

EVENEPOEL: …

INTERVIEWER: Why the COVID mask? Do you really think I’m gonna give you COVID?

EVENEPOEL: Well, you do seem to spit a lot when you talk. But actually, I’m wearing this mask because earlier my directeur sportif was giving me a hard time about my yellow teeth. So I’m just covering up.

INTERVIEWER: Is that true?

EVENEPOEL: Of course not.

Well, I was hoping they’d interview Vingegaard, but they never did and now the coverage has concluded. Tune in again next year because I’m not going to bother blogging any more about this officially boring Tour.

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Tour de France FAQ - A Guide for Newbies

Introduction

The 2024 Tour de France bike race is about half over, and presumably the most exciting stuff is still ahead. It’s been really good so far—at least, to me, a bicycle road racing afficionado. But what about the typical American sports fan, who doesn’t know a white jersey from an albino cow? That’s what this guide is for. Now, even if you already know all about the Tour, you should still read on, because the real point of this post is, “What’s funny about this race?”

2024 Tour de France Frequently Asked Questions

How do I watch the Tour de France live?

In America, you have to either subscribe to Peacock Premium ($6/month) or Flobikes (which literally doesn’t post any pricing—if you have to ask, you can’t afford it). Otherwise, you can use a VPN to pretend you’re in Europe and watch Eurosport. If none of these options appeals to you, you can watch highlights on YouTube, or (best of all) move to Europe. Then you won’t have to get up so early.

What does “GC” mean?

It stands for “good climber.” Kidding! It’s actually General Classification, meaning the overall race. The GC leader is the guy whose cumulative time, across all days of the race, is the lowest. Whoever leads the GC at the end of the final (i.e., 21st) day has won the Tour de France. For all those who aren’t in contention for the GC, the there’s the prospect of winning a single day’s event (aka stage) of the race … that’s also a pretty big deal.

What is a time trial?

In the time trial event, each racer rides by himself and his time is taken. It’s basically the same format as downhill skiing. The time trial is called “the race of truth” because tactics, psychological gamesmanship, and drafting don’t come into play. Frankly, I think these more complicated aspects of cycling are the best things about it; by that measure, time trials aren’t the true test at all. Moreover, I think mass-start downhill ski races would be awesome.

The Tour de France sometimes features team time trials. They are totally badass, featuring each nine-man team going alone against the clock. I wish TTTs figured in every Tour.

What are the special jerseys about?

There are basically three categories of jersey: standard, leader’s, and what I’ll call “other.”

The standard jersey is what almost everyone on a team wears (i.e., if he’s not wearing a leader’s or “other” jersey). It’s basically a billboard for the team’s sponsors. This is how this sport gets its money: through advertising, like with NASCAR. Otherwise there’d be no feasible way to pay all the salaries, since nobody has to buy a ticket to watch the Tour. If you’re lucky enough to live in France, you can just stumble out your door and wander out to the road to see them all go by.

Then we have the leader’s jerseys, for those leading one of the overall categories of the Tour. The yellow jersey, or “maillot jaune,” is what the GC leader wears. Then you have the white jersey with red polka-dots which is worn by the King of the Mountains (aka KOM) leader. You’d think this would indicate the best climber of the race, but often it’s actually not. It’s the guy who wins the most sprints to the tops of climbs and is awarded points for doing so. Obviously this guy needs to be consistent, but not perfectly; if he lost 20 or 30 minutes on a mountain day he’d miss the opportunity for more points on that stage, but could hang on to his overall KOM lead. Why is this jersey polka-dotted? Beats me.

Next is the Points jersey, which is green, and identifies the guy who’s most consistent in the races that end in a sprint finish, and for extra (“intermediate”) sprint opportunities along the way. This jersey is green because … money? I have no idea. Doesn’t matter. Finally, we have the plain white Best Young Rider jersey, for the highest-placed GC rider under age 26. This jersey is white because this rider is also required to be a virgin. (No he’s not.)

The “other” jerseys exist because of distinctions riders have earned beyond the Tour. For example, the winner of the previous season’s World Championship road race gets to wear a white jersey with rainbow stripes for the entire season, including the Tour. Also, many countries have their National Championship road race before the Tour, and the winner of each gets to wear his champion jersey, which often resembles the country’s flag. This can be confusing, of course.

Has a rider ever won more than one jersey?

Yes, it happens sometimes. For example, Eddy Merckx won all the jerseys on offer back in 1969. More recently, in both the 2020 and the 2021 Tours, Tadej Pogacar won the yellow, white, and polka-dot jerseys. Note that if a rider is leading in more than one category, he wears the jersey for the most prestigious one, and the next highest rider in the lesser category wears that jersey. For example, right now in the Tour, Pogacar is leading the KOM category but also the GC, so he’s in yellow while the second place rider in the KOM, Jonas Abrahamsen, is in polka dots. There are cases of one jersey trumping another as well; for example, in this year’s Tour, Remco Evenepoel wore his white jersey (for best young rider) during the time trial, despite being the current time trial World Champion. (No, nobody else wore the rainbow stripe jersey for that stage.)

I’ve heard announcers call the Tour a “chess game on wheels.” Is it?

Well, not exactly. In chess, only half a player’s pieces (the pawns) match one another in terms of what they do and how, while you’ve got all these other pieces that move in unique ways. Imagine a cyclists who could only go in an L-shaped direction, like a knight. It’d be ridiculous. Cycling is really more like checkers.

But in terms of the more general question about tactics and strategy, this is a team sport where most teams have a single leader (occasionally two), and the rest of team members are trying to help him (or them). And some teams aren’t even trying for the GC victory but only want stage wins, based on what they can realistically hope to accomplish. So they might have one guy who goes for sprint wins and another for mountaintop wins, and the rest of the team supports that day’s leader.

What makes cycling so tactical is that you can save gobs of energy by riding right behind another rider, or ideally a bunch of them. (If you wondered what I meant by “drafting” earlier, that’s what it’s called.) So a team’s job is to a) keep their star rider out of the wind, and b) force other teams’ star riders out into the wind. This is why riders “attack,” which means to sprint off to try to “break away” (i.e., get ahead of the rest and build up enough of a gap not to get caught by the end). In cycling, “attack” rarely means to hit, kick, or bludgeon. When that does happen, it’s usually hilarious.

What is a domestique?

A “domestique” is literally a servant. Per the teamwork discussion above, sometimes a domestique’s job is to attack other riders to “put them into difficulty” (to use a favorite term of the sportscasters’), but at other times their job is to ride back to the team car to pick up water bottles and then carry them forward to the star riders. They’re also around to offer up their bike if a leader’s is broken, or to pace him back up to the group if he goes off the back for any reason.

There is a documentary about cycling domestiques called “Wonderful Losers: A Different World.” It suggests that a domestique’s main job is to crash his bicycle. I’m not sure how this movie got to be so warped; perhaps they just had gobs of crash and first aid footage they couldn’t resist using. I don’t recommend this one if you are a cyclist with a significant other who worries about your safety.

The riders all seem to have hearing aids, or maybe earbuds. Are they music lovers, or deaf?

Those are the race radios, which keep the riders in constant contact with their team directors. The directors give them instructions, warnings about road hazards, encouragement, and sometimes recite poetry.

Do the directors really recite poetry to the riders?

No. Of course not. What gave you that idea?

It seems like the helmets are just getting out of hand. Is this some kind of joke?

I assume you’re talking about the time trial helmets, like this one:

These helmets, designed to confer an aerodynamic advantage, are no joke, mainly because they’re not funny. They’re proof that people will do just about anything to gain an edge, when their careers are on the line. I think goofy helmets should be banned, for the good of the sport. And yet, for some reason, the Union Cycliste Internationale (aka UCI, the governing body of cycling) has not asked my opinion on this. Shoot, I’d be the arbiter for free, just to be nice.

By the way, if the helmet above doesn’t look like it would even cut through the wind very well, bear in mind it’s designed for a rider who’s got his head down. With any luck, said rider would run into something and learn his lesson.

I guess the silver lining is that cycling helmets seem to work pretty well … maybe the NFL should try them.

Why are pro bike racers so dang skinny?

It turns out that humans can be pretty close to starving and still perform at a very high athletic level, if their nutritional needs are being met (e.g., balanced diet). The Tour de France features gobs of brutal mountain passes, and to be competitive every rider needs to have a very high power-to-weight ratio. So Tour riders eat as little as possible in training, so they come to the race extremely lean. They do eat a lot during the race but then they’re burning probably 5,000 calories a day.

Of course not all the riders are that skinny (except by the standards of other sports like baseball and curling). The sprint specialists, who go for victories in the flatter stages, are pretty muscle-bound. But they still have to get over the mountain passes, and within a time limit based on when the leaders finish. So, they can’t be as ‘roided out as, say, an American football player.

Speaking of which, do the Tour riders use performance-enhancing drugs?

Short answer: probably. Surely not all of them, and maybe not even most of them, but the sport will never be rid of doping no matter how much it claims to have cleaned up. I base this on current race leader Tadej Pogacar’s absolute domination of this year’s Giro d’Italia (aka Tour of Italy, similar to the Tour de France), where he won by an extraordinary margin while setting a new record for the highest average speed ever in that race. Higher, even, then in the years where infamous dopers like Marco Pantani and Ivan Basso were winning it.

Couldn’t this mean only Pogacar is doping? No, because he lost the last two Tours de France, and there are plenty of other riders who, on a given day, manage to beat him. Too many riders are putting up overly impressive numbers (that is, data points like average speed, power output, and the ratio of rider’s power to his weight, which many consider to be the smoking gun). Even the domestiques are turning out unrealistically strong performances.

All that being said, cycling is probably no dirtier than most pro sports. At least the footage isn’t embellished with CGI like in the movies, and all the riders do their own stunts. As long as the doping arms race doesn’t get too unbalanced, it’s still a fun sport to watch.

In the context of bike racing, what does “stack” mean?

It means to crash. All the road cyclists I know use this term (e.g., “Dude, I hit some gravel and almost stacked!”) but, oddly, none of the commentators ever say it.

Speaking of commentators, they keep talking about this or that rider “getting back on terms.” What does this mean?

I think only the Peacock commentators, Bob Roll and Phil Liggett, say this. It means “catch back up” or “get back into favorable position,” but nobody else on the planet uses this term. I think those two are trying to start a thing.

Is there an official anthem of the Tour de France?

No, but in 1983 Kraftwerk recorded a song called “Tour de France” and you can watch the video here. Although Kraftwerk is German, the lyrics are all in French. They’re not all that interesting, but if you croon along or sing this in shower, you can substitute this line: “An American will never win/ Tour de France, Tour de France.” That’s what I was doing in the mid-‘80s before Greg LeMond surprised everyone. Actually, I still do this. Force of habit.

What has been the highlight of this year’s Tour so far?

I would say the highlight so far was Mark Cavendish breaking the record for most career Tour de France stage wins, with 35 of them, at age 39. What makes this so special, at least to me, is that it came after a long dry spell. Cavendish failed to win a single Tour stage between 2017 and 2020, and many thought he was all washed up. Perhaps he’d become a bit jaded, kind of lost the hunger. I think a lot of us can relate, especially as we age. For example, another middle-aged superstar, Eminem, has rapped eloquently about this:

Man, in my younger days
That dream was so much fun to chase
It’s like I’d run in place
While this shit dangled in front of my face
But how do you keep up the pace
And the hunger pangs once you’ve won the race?
When that dual exhaust is coolin’ off
‘Cause you don’t got nothin’ left to prove at all
‘Cause you done already hit ‘em with the coup de grace

Miraculously, in 2021, Cavendish suddenly regained his form, and perhaps his mojo, and won a remarkable four stages of the Tour, picking up the green jersey in the process and matching Eddy Merckx’s record for most career stage wins. It looked like Cav was back on track and positioned to break the record the next year. Amazingly, though, his Deceuninck Quick-Step team director, Patrick Lefevere, didn’t put him on the team for the 2022 Tour de France, and in fact terminated Cav’s contract at the end of the year. While Lefevere didn’t really explain himself, it’s widely acknowledged in cycling circles that he’s is a vainglorious, narcissistic, power-crazed douchebag. (Note: by “widely acknowledged” I mean it’s my personal opinion.) I can imagine this was very inspirational for Cav, to come back and show the world what an idiot Lefevere is for not believing in him.

So Cav changed teams for what he thought would be his final Tour in 2023, only to crash out early before winning anything. I think all us cycling fans thought that would be it, but Cav decided to go one more year and take a final crack at Merckx’s record. Clearly, he put in all the work required—which is a lot, for a 39-year-old trying to beat the young bucks in pure speed—and his sprint victory in Stage 5 of this Tour was glorious. He lived up to the rest of Eminem’s rap:

Still you feel the need to go full tilt
That Bruce Willis, that blue steel, that true skill
When that wheel’s loose, I won’t lose will
Do you still believe?

(Does Eminem have any idea who Mark Cavendish is? Surely not. But Eminem doesn’t read albertnet either, so it’s all good.)

Belief came up in the post-race interview after Cav’s amazing win. The journalist asked, “But that makes you the best? That mindset—that mental strength that you have?” Cav replied, “It’s definitely a benefit, you know, especially when you’re not physically as good as everybody else.”

Do exploits like Cav’s—coming back from the doldrums, persevering, and achieving great triumph—cut across all sports, inspiring all of us whether we’re cycling fans or not?

Why, yes. Yes they do. And thanks for asking!

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

We Have A Winner! - Part II

Don't let the soccer ball motif on the medal fool you: you’re looking at the winner of the second non-annual albertnet Amateur Product Review contest! As you will surely recall from my blog post back in November 2015, “1-Star Reviews: The Fun & The Folly,” I ran a contest to see who could spot the fake reviews that I wrote and hid among actual one-star amateur product reviews. As you can see, I was very generous with the contest entry time period but I’ve decided to finally cut it off and announce the winner: John Lynch of Ithaca, NY. He is pictured above at his victory party in Albany last night. His prize: a First Endurance EFS Liquid Shot. That and untold glory.

[I feel I need to come clean about something: I doctored the above photo because John wasn’t actually in it. Last-minute logistical issues prevented him from attending his victory party but we held it anyway. I did manage to take him out for a celebratory dinner, but for some reason he ended up paying the check. Anyway, I used A.I. to add him to this photo and it didn’t come out quite as convincingly as I’d hope so I figured I better just fess up.]

Amazingly, John is the same close reader who won the first non-annual Amateur Product Review contest. (Rumors that he is the only reader of albertnet are greatly exaggerated.) This time, he upped his game and actually nailed every single question. That’s right, a perfect score. This is particularly impressive given that I myself, taking my own quiz some eight and a half years after I wrote it, scored just 4 out of 5.

When asked to comment on his contest victory, John replied, “Sure, I won again, and by definition the award has to be given to just one person: me. But it must be said that I can’t do any of this without my team. My publicist, my agent, my assistant, my driver, my foot masseuse, my macchiato guy, my dental hygienist, the guy I pay to say ‘top o’ the mornin to ya, guvn’r!’, my landscaper AND my manscaper—they all played an important part! And I want to thank them all from the bottom of my heart, because without them I could never do what I do—which is to tell the difference between actual poorly written Amazon reviews and fictitious poorly written Amazon reviews created by Dana Albert. It’s a hard job—not a job I’d wish on my worst enemy!—but it’s one that I love, and one that I am truly blessed to do (at least once every 3 to 5 years). Thank you.”

Contest background and correct answers

To review: after my discussion of the strange phenomenon of the one-star amateur product review (click here for details), I provided a list of five products, each with three reviews. In each case two of the reviews were real (however improbable they may have seemed), and the other was a fake one that I wrote. I did my best to stymie everybody.

Below are the questions again, for your convenience, followed by John’s responses with his colorful commentary. If you like, you can pretend you’re yelling at the TV during a game show by guessing the right answer before checking the response. (Of course it is far too late for you to enter.)

Review #1: The Turn of the Screw (novel)

a) The Turn of the Screw is quite possibly the stupidest and most pointless story I have ever wasted my time on. Purportedly a ghost story, the “ghosts” are nothing more than occasional appearances by the former governess and valet, both of whom are now dead.

b) A friend told me “I couldn’t put it down.” Couldn’t put it down? I couldn’t pick it up! So hard to read...took me weeks to get through. If Henry James wrote this today, he would NOT get laid.

c) The story is lousy, the characters are unbelievable, the protagonist is annoying, the plot development is glacial, and the ending is absurd. But what makes this book really bad is the writing.

John’s response: “ALL of these reviews are just amazingly good. Review (a) is angry that it is a ghost story about “ghosts” who are actually just people who are now dead! Genius! Review (b) first suggests that the book is an immovable object, and then impugns the author’s potential sexual acumen in the present day—for no reason! Double genius! And review (c) is a straight up list of grievances that ends with a wallop of an insult. I love it! Isn’t the internet marvelous?!? I honestly don’t know which one to choose… But of the three, I guess (b) has the most Dana-ness to it (“I couldn’t pick it up!”). I’ll be sad when I find out that I was wrong.”

Review #2: Apple Watch

a) I had a hard time charging the watch.. The instructions read that that the charger attached magnetically to the back of the watch. When I placed the charger to the phone it seems to repel the watch instead of attaching to it. I tried resetting the watch twice but that did not help. I was finally able to get a charge by physically holding the charger to the phone and strapping it down, but this took 8 hours and I only got a charge 62%. It is our assumption that the magnet was placed backwards in either the watch or the charge.

b) this is poop

c) i thought this watch would replace my iphone (or actually I wouldnt have to buy one and watch is actually reasonable compared to phone cost) but it turns out WITHOUT THE PHONE THE WATCH DOES ALMOST NOTHING also battery life sux

John’s response: “Review (a) is not by Dana, but it almost is. By that I mean that it was clearly written by Harry Albert. Who else would so gamely try to make a defective product work and then reverse-engineer where the manufacturer had gone wrong? Review (b) was written either by my friend O— or his son, C— (both of whom are total poop aficionados, and know “poop” when they see it). So this leaves (c). Review (c) is one of those “Hapless” reviews, or maybe “Irrelevant” reviews, but it hews close to the formula for Terrible Reviews by A) misunderstanding the product and then blaming the product for the buyer’s ridiculous expectations for a product to do things it clearly was never intended to do (e.g., “This stupid external 1TB hard drive doesn’t sort my paper clips by size when I drop them in the little slots in the top! Total garbage!!!”) and B) uses ALL CAPS TO EXPRESS THEIR DISBELIEF THAT THE PRODUCT DOESN’T DO THINGS IT WASN’T DESIGNED TO DO, and C) adds a final jab to the review that looks like an afterthought, but is actually the only relevant part of the review. Well constructed Dana — I think (c) was yours. Again, abject sadness when I find out I’m wrong.

Review #3: toaster

a) Mostly works well except something is catching on the bread and tears bits off that get “stuck” down in the toaster and hard to get out. So I tried to fish it out with a knife (with the toaster off, by the way) and got this big electric shock! My wide actually laughed at me and said next time just turn it upside down and shake it. So I tried that and burned the crap out of my hand! Toaster is going back for sure.

b) I was so excited to buy a four slot toaster, morning arguments solved. However, this toaster was highly disappointing. The level that lowers the slots down is thin plastic and wobbly. The right side of the toaster quickly stopped lowing. The left side often burns part of the bread, while the rest of it is still cold. Overall, a shotty machine. Do not buy.

c) I looked on line and read reviews and decided to get this one, HA! This does not even pop the toast up high enough to grab! It says that you get even toasting on both sides, not! It worked for about a week and after that half the side of toast would cook and then only half of a half, When I use the Bagle button the Bagle is cooked on both sides, not one like it should have been.

John’s response: “Oh goodness… I can’t decide. Is this a trick? Did Dana write all of these? Each one has critical misspellings that seem impossible unless you were impersonating an internet troll (‘wide’ for ‘wife’, ‘lowing’ for ‘lowering’ and ‘shotty’ for ‘shoddy’, and ‘Bagle’ for ‘Bagel’). Sticking a metal object in a plugged-in kitchen appliance?! With ‘wide’ laughing at you?! Complaints about a toaster that has stopped moo’ing?! And let’s consider this sentence: ‘It worked for about a week and after that half the side of toast would cook and then only half of a half…’ They’re describing the Zeno’s paradox of toasting!!! So much genius. In the end, I guess I have to go with (a). Something about fishing out toast bits with a knife while a man’s ‘wide’ is laughing at him suggests a Dana story. But (c) is so good! With that bit about the toaster not even popping the toast up high enough to grab! Ugh. Too hard. But I’m going with (a).”

Review #4: Tom Danielson’s Core Advantage: Core Strength for Cycling’s Winning Edge (book)

a) I would buy this book but not from somebody who was suspended for doping-specifically for using Testosteron-as a Physiciian I know that Testosteron is useful in the recovery and healing of tissues, especially muscles.If his training was as beneficial as he describes why did he need Testosteron-also being as long in the Pro Peleoton as he ,he must must be pretty stupid not to know how easy it is these days to discover Testosteron.Therefore with me he has no credibility and I will not buy the book

b) It’s a shame how these books get published. The so-called co-author, Allison Westfahl, actually knows a lot about core strength training and theres lots of useful info here. Problem is she’s a nobody and couldn’t publish a book without tying it to a celebrity name so she let TD (aka Total Douche) pretend to co-write this. Almost worked but she should have hitched her wagon to a clean rider, if there are any left.

c) I noticed the chapter on doping was missing. Can’t trust a doper. Maybe I will wait for the B sample of this book before buying again.

John’s response: “All of the reviews focus on Tommy D’s doping career, so there’s no hint there. Only the one that is supposedly written by a ‘Physiciian’ is terribly written and full of grammatical and punctuation errors, and I think this is a red herring — it reads like it was written by a doctor for whom English is a second language and who may in fact be hopped up on ‘Testosteron’ RIGHT NOW. Review (c) was short and snarky, which I don’t associate with Dana’s prolix proclivities. This leaves (b), which might actually be right. ‘Total Douche’ sounds like it could have been written by Dana? Maybe? ‘Hitched her wagon’ sounds like Dana? Maybe? Yeah, I’m going with (b).”

[I got this one wrong, having no recollection of writing any of these reviews and supposing that the little bit of research I’d have had to do for response (b) above would have been more than I’d bother with. I underestimated myself!]

Review #5: cordless drill

a) never should have bought cordless drill, remember when drills had a cord and you could just go whip it out and use it, now i always have to plan ahead and charge the batteries, this one particularly bad won’t hold a charge and tajkes forever to charge up do not buy!

b) Only lasted two years and stopped working while my son was assembling soccer goals. Thought it was the battery and installed fresh one from the charger. My son came running to me yelling the drill was on fire. When I got to the drill smoke was pouring from the battery.

c) came with black marks along handle, tip and back of drill. case had interior scratches, battery had a charge, and scratches, second battery had scratches. im not talking about scratches you could blame on rough shipping, this thing was dropped a few times outside of its case. nobody wants somebody elses tool. *cough*

John’s response: “Jeezus, another hard one. I am suddenly feeling a lot of sympathy for Dana for having to read through (I assume) so many on-line reviews to find just the right utterly ridiculous ones to throw us off. I’m going to rule out (c). Sounds like a legit review with a snarky joke at the end about using other people’s tools (*cough*). Looks real. That leaves Mr. ‘Whip Out Your Drill When You Need It’ and Ms. ‘Drill Almost Burned My Son and His Soccer Goals’. I’m going with (a), Mr. ‘Whip It Out’. I love the idea of whipping out a drill with you need it. Also, the punctuation and the insertion of the ‘j’ in ‘tajkes’ (just to remind us that Dana still remembers what a QWERTY keyboard looks like) looks contrived. Then again, most things on the internet look contrived. I’m probably wrong. But (a) is my final answer.

“Dana — your fake reviews are all so inventive and creative. You’ve really mastered the genre! You have a great future ahead of you as an internet troll.”

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Old Yarn - The Cinelli Jumpsuit

Introduction

What do I mean “old yarn”? Well, I thought about using “spun yarn” in the title but that phrase has been taken and I don’t want to confuse the search engines. What I mean is a story that would be from my archives, except I’ve never written it down before. It seems as though I have enough good old yarns, I might as well write them up, and where better to put them but albertnet? (Isn’t it odd, by the way, that “write it down” and “write it up” mean the same thing?) So here is the first of what may become many old stories I’ll post here.

Cinelli jumpsuit

A cycling pal was in Italy recently and emailed our club a photo of a cool t-shirt he found at a bike shop, featuring the word “ciao” with its first letter being the classic winged “c” from the Cinelli logo. (I had a Cinelli bicycle for a while but that’s another story.) This photo got the team chattering, of course, and another pal posted a photo of his niece rocking a sweet tomato-red Cinelli jumpsuit.

I myself have a similar Cinelli jumpsuit in canary yellow, and sent around this old video of it to the team:

It’s been a while since I wore that jumpsuit, but I’ve got some fond memories of it, and you’re in luck: I’m going to share them here. (If that doesn’t seem like luck to you, click here.)

I bought the jumpsuit wholesale when I was working at the High Wheeler (aka Thigh Feeler) bike shop in Boulder, Colorado in 1989. The head mechanic, JB, had one, and as soon as my brothers and I saw it we had to have them, too. (I worked there with my oldest brothers, twins B— and G—, following in the footsteps of our brother M— who’d paved the way years before.) Summer in Boulder is hot, and the lightweight cotton was nice and breathable, but obviously that was just gravy … the real point of the jumpsuits was how awesome they looked, if you didn’t mind certain people thinking you were a complete idiot. That wasn’t much of a problem; at the Thigh Feeler, we mechanics weren’t allowed on the sales floor and in fact were encouraged to enter the store through the alley out back. We in turn tried but failed to ban the salespeople (whom we called “retail scum”) from the workshop area, where they tended to borrow but not return our tools. It was damned unfair.

I suppose part of the flair of rocking the jumpsuit is that it showed you weren’t scared of getting it dirty from greasy bike parts (vs. wearing the standard-issue shop apron). I thought frequently of the line in the classic cycling documentary “Stars & Water Carriers” (at least, I think that’s the movie) where someone says, “The Italian mechanics are so slick, they wear silk shirts.” To complete my look—and because my hair was so long it kept getting in my face—I wore a bright red bandanna with the jumpsuit. Of course, in Boulder when I’d venture out for my lunch break nobody really noticed my attire anyway, as Boulder had all kinds of exotic birds already.

(According to Thigh Feeler lore, when it got really hot some mechanics, possibly including the three Albert boys or perhaps them specifically, worked wearing absolutely nothing but an apron and shoes. I’m not going to say this legend is true, but I’m not saying it isn’t.)

When I moved to California for college of course I brought the jumpsuit, though I didn’t have much occasion to wear it. As a student at UC Santa Barbara, I worked at the Associated Students Bike Shop, but only for very short shifts arranged around my classes, and there wasn’t time to go home and change. I didn’t suppose it would be a good look for a college kid anyway, especially one like myself who was hoping to attract the ladies.

The AS Bike Shop was actually a very good place to be if you were looking for ways to chat up pretty young things, because helping customers fix their own bikes was actually part of our job. Not surprisingly, the guys never asked for help because they were too proud, but the girls often did. And they were invariably pretty. What’s more, almost all their bikes were cheap beach cruisers so the repairs were easy. One dazzling blonde brought her bike in one day and said, “Oh my god, the tire is completely flat!” I replied, “Gosh, that’s too bad. If it were just kinda flat that’d be better, because we charge by the PSI.” She said, “Oh, no! What’s a PSI?”

So what does this have to do with the Cinelli jumpsuit? Hold tight, I’m getting there. There was a supervisor on staff named Willie, who was an older guy who, it was said, had done a bit too much acid in the ‘60s. He was generally fairly grumpy, particularly (it seemed) with me, because he said I spent too much time with the coeds. I would remind him that it’s my job, and these tricky beach cruiser repairs take as long as they take, especially when a total novice is receiving patient instruction. Willie and I would go around and around on this but got nowhere, as the real issue was unspoken: he was apparently discouraged from instructing the customers himself; perhaps that opportunity was supposed to be part of the student employee experience.

The other thing Willie didn’t like about me is how I tended to squeeze in short shifts between classes. Truth be told, I didn’t have enough hours, or a high enough wage, to really earn much money at the shop. This was supposed to be a work-study job where the shop paid half my wage and the university the other half, but I didn’t qualify for work-study. My dad made too much money, you see, and declared me on his income taxes (thinking he was some kind of wise guy, since I’d lived with my mom after their divorce). So I was making half what I should have at that shop, barely over minimum wage. I mainly worked there so I could buy my bike parts wholesale (though factually the cute coeds did factor in as well). The short shifts were a problem because, being a more seasoned mechanic than most, I took on the more complicated repairs, but often didn’t have time to finish them. “Sorry, Willie, I gotta get to class!” I’d say cheerfully. Nobody likes taking over a tricky repair midway, least of all a tired-out guy like Willie, but it was what it was. One day, as I abruptly abandoned a repair, he grabbed the rag off my bench and gave it a vigorous, angry shake, only to discover that the rag was where I’d put all the eighth-inch ball bearings of the headset I was repacking. The bearings flew everywhere and I couldn’t help but laugh.

When it came to what Willie took as my poor job performance, he didn’t have much recourse because I was on great terms with the manager and the school administration. The manager liked me due to what modern corporate America calls “affinity bias”—we were both from Boulder. He’s the one who bent the rules in hiring me in the first place. The school administrator liked me for a similarly non-work-related reason. We were required to submit a daily report with our hours and a description of what we were working on. The answer—“fixing bikes”—was just too boring for me, but I was unable to wiggle out of submitting the reports. So I just made up something inane every day, according to my whim. “Cultivating raisins,” I’d write, or “Stroking my ego.” One day the administrator phoned me up and drew my attention to my highly unorthodox reports. “Am I in trouble?” I asked. She replied, “No, not at all, I just wanted to tell you to keep ‘em coming! My job is really boring and your reports are the highlight of my day.”

So what does all this have to do with the Cinelli jumpsuit? Hang on, I’m getting to that. So, every year our cycling team put on a race weekend, including a criterium on campus. The riders (when not racing) had to help in various capacities, and the AS Bike Shop chipped in, and I volunteered to help Willie with the pre-race bike inspections. The main thing we checked was that the tires were glued on properly. Most racers back then used tubulars, aka sew-up tires, which didn’t have a wire bead that hooked into the rim, but were rather glued on to the rim with this messy cement, and it was hard to get right. An improperly glued tire could roll right off the rim during hard cornering, which almost always caused a crash and frequently a pile-up. So we’d try to roll the tires off with our hands during the inspection; if we could, the bike wasn’t safe to race, and the rider was basically screwed because he’d have just a few minutes to try to find another wheel to put on his bike. Most guys got really pissed off about this, but Willie and I backed each other up. “Hey man, this guy did you a favor,” we’d say. “Better you flunk the bike inspection than cause a big crash.”

Willie seemed to really relish flunking bikes. He even wore gloves, to increase his chances of successfully rolling tires. When a wheel/tire passed inspection, we’d stick a colored sticker on the rim to indicate it was race-ready. (The color wasn’t determined until the day of the race, so riders couldn’t cheat and bring their own stickers.) Every time we flunked a bike, we’d put a sticker on Willie’s wheel truing stand, like a victory marking on the fuselage of a fighter plane. Our cooperation during the bike inspection marked the best we’d ever gotten along.

And that, finally, is where the Cinelli jumpsuit comes in. Here I must confess I’m a bit hazy on the details … either I showed up wearing it and Willie looked so totally envious that I rode back home, changed, and brought it back for him to wear; or, perhaps I just figured he’d enjoy wearing it even more than I would and brought it just for him. Suffice to say, he got to wear the jumpsuit. He had kinda long, scraggly hair, a big moustache, and wire-rimmed glasses, and those features—along with his zany personality—made the jumpsuit a perfect fit. He was so stoked to be sporting it.

Well, the next year, a day or two before the annual criterium, I was working away at the shop and Willie came over and—without the normal brash, tetchy tone he used for nagging me about the coeds—he said, “Hey, um, you’re working bike check with me at the race, right?” I assured him I would be. “So, yeah, well, I was wondering if, uh, well, like last year, if you could—”

“Sure,” I interrupted him. “I’ll bring the jumpsuit for you.” He grinned hugely (a rare sight, to be sure), and the next day he again enjoyed rocking the jumpsuit at the race, where we added many more stickers to his truing stand. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he hassled me less at work after that … but actually, when I really think back, it was no different. He was still a pretty grumpy guy.

During my second year at UCSB, I applied to transfer to UC Berkeley and was accepted. That June, after my last final exam, I made a final visit to the AS Bike Shop. “Done with your last final, huh?” Willie said. “That calls for a beer!” As he opened the mini-fridge he remembered I was transferring and said, “Wait, this was your last final ever here, right? That calls for champagne!” I kid you not, he had a bottle chilled, and popped it open. There weren’t too many guys at the shop at that moment, so I ended up drinking a fair bit of it. And then I realized, “Oh, shit! I’m supposed to meet the guys to go ride!” I raced home, changed, and met a few of my teammates for an 80-mile road ride. The first 15 miles or so were just awful, trying to get my rubbery legs and buggered motor skills to cooperate. Then my body seemed to burn through the alcohol, and everything was just fine. Kind of odd, that.

Well, I moved away, up to Berkeley, where I got a proper bike shop job, with real pay and real hours (due to the higher cost of living in the Bay Area). I wasn’t teaching the art of bike repair to customers anymore, so it wasn’t as much fun, but it paid the bills. I was still racing, now for the Cal team, and in the spring we headed down to do the races at UC Santa Barbara. Obviously I wasn’t on the hook for helping with bike checks anymore, but nevertheless I headed over first thing to say hi to Willie. He seemed legitimately glad to see me, asked how I liked Berkeley, etc. Then his expression changed and he said, “Hey, I gotta ask you something. By any chance, did you … did you—”

“Yeah, Willie,” I said. “I brought the jumpsuit.”

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