From the Archives - Portrait of the Young Cyclist: Part 2

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog. You can open a bag of chips, plug your laptop into your TV, kick back, and pretend you’re watching TV. Or, you could plug in some headphones and pretend this is a podcast, and listen while doing your laundry. Or just read it, below. The world is your oyster.

Introduction

This post continues the tale, from my archives, of how I became a bike racer. What started as an unearned identity became an object lesson in recognizing self-delusion. Things improved a bit from there, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here is how I looked at the time. You can see how hapless I am: my belt is crooked, as is my cap, and I’ve got my shirt buttoned up wrong.

Portrait of the Cyclist as a Young Man – Part Two: The Art of Failure (written in February 2003)

As I was saying at the end of my last post, I took up bike racing mainly because my dad had forbidden it. It’s not that I sought to defy him; it’s that my mom did, disgusted by his attitude. “You boys are too stupid to race bicycles,” my dad had warned. “You’d get yourselves killed.” Hearing that, my mom insisted that we all sign up for the Red Zinger Mini Classic. I submitted my application, and a few days later I brought my bike to the High Wheeler bike shop for its mandatory pre-race inspection. It failed. The tires were completely shot.

Now that I think back, it’s a bit odd that Dad prohibited us from racing for safety reasons, since he let us all ride around all day on unsafe bikes. Dad couldn’t be bothered to maintain our fleet, and was too cheap to pay a shop to do it. So we tried our best to fix our own bikes (so long as replacement parts weren’t required). This didn’t always work out so well.

Once, when I decided my brakes weren’t working like they used to, I thought maybe the center bolt was loose. I tightened the bejeezus out of it, thinking tighter must always be better. In fact, now the calipers were too stiff for the springs, which meant as soon as I applied the brakes, halfway down Table Mesa to King Soopers, they stayed on and my bike ground to a halt. I can still remember dismounting and staring at the brakes in confusion, unable to understand or accept what was going on. Finally I pried the calipers apart and resolved not to use the brakes anymore, at least until I had another crack at “fixing” them.

Whenever my bike got a flat tire, I suffered two consequences. First, my dad would be angry at me, like that was a damn fool thing I’d gone and done. Second, I’d be in bike-less purgatory until one of my brothers, in an uncharacteristic magnanimous mood, got around to fixing my flat. During one of these bike-less periods I borrowed my brother Bryan’s bike (probably on the sly). I was shocked by a violent whump-whump-whump sound the rear wheel made, coupled with a terrible lurching. I jumped off and investigated. It was the tire: Bryan had skidded so badly on it at some point, he’d worn completely through the tread and the casing, and had fixed it with Shoe Goo.

Getting back to the pre-race shop inspection, tires were the only flunk-able safety problem with the bike, but it had other issues. The gears, for example, were a mess. Despite being cautioned against using the gears at all (my dad probably thought they’d distract me and I’d run into a parked car), I had eventually transgressed and started making use of all ten speeds. It was Max who taught/corrupted me, one day riding across town. We were descending a steep hill and he kept dropping me, until he spotted the problem—I was always in first gear!—and advised me to push both shift levers all the way forward. God, what a rush! All of a sudden I could pedal again, and I just flew!

(Both levers forward? Yep. This was a Suntour Spirt front derailleur, that was backwards from every other front mech ever made.)

Unfortunately, by the time I had shifting mastered, Dad changed out my rear cogs and derailleur, to give me lower gearing. This had meant replacing the fairly new components with ancient ones from some other bike, and I could never shift cleanly again. Now I was as clumsy as a surgeon operating in mittens.

I wish the gearing had been deemed unsafe by the High Wheeler, because then maybe something could have been done about it. As it was, just getting new tires on our bikes was a big crisis in the Albert household. You’d have thought my parents were being asked to buy EPO for all four boys. Lots of big sighs from Dad, who apparently was resigned to our participation in the race (probably the economist in him couldn’t handle the idea of our registration fees going to waste).

Worse, the whole ordeal made me look at my tires closely for the first time and realize that they were fatter than my brothers’. I had 600C wheels (roughly 24”), with tires 1-¼ inches wide, to my brothers’ dashingly narrow 1-1/8”. Actually, finding any tires was a chore. I had to make a lot of phone calls to a lot of shops, and nobody was happy to hear from me because skinny 600C tires apparently didn’t exist. Invariably I got a big lecture about how the width didn’t matter, that skinny tires were actually less stable and wouldn’t make me go any faster anyway. At first I assumed I was being told the truth, but I didn’t care because looks trumped everything. And of course it was only a matter of time before I realized that all these bike shop adults were lying out their asses to begin with. Of course narrow tires are better, everybody knows that. You think those hypocrites had fat-ass tires on their own bikes?

Eventually I found (albeit fat) tires at some shop in Denver, and my bike passed inspection. This was kind of a gift from the High Wheeler, actually, as my bike lacked reflectors. My brothers had removed them, when they worked over my bike for me, adding toe clips and moving the stem-mounted shifters to the down tube where they belonged. They also removed the so-called “chicken levers,” which enabled braking from the tops of the handlebars. Don’t get the wrong idea: my brothers didn’t do this because they were good guys. They did it in case they were ever seen with me out riding—they didn’t want to be humiliated by association if somebody noticed an amateurish look to my bike.

One of the benefits of the Mini Zinger was the bike clinic they gave far all riders. They found some old veterans of the sport who were willing to volunteer and took us on a ride up NCAR—that is, the road leading from my neighborhood to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a mile or two from town. We all met at The Spoke, a bike shop in the Table Mesa center. People I knew from school were there, which in itself was an insult, since I thought I was the only guy around with any awareness of the sport. To make matters worse, they were giving this other kid, Mike Blaney, a hard time because he had a Schwinn. He tried to defend himself by saying, “Yeah, but it’s a nice one, with Quick Release!” This made the other kids laugh even harder at him, and they all started mimicking him—“I have Quick Release!”—which terrified me because my bike could just as easily be mocked. Hell, I didn’t even have quick release.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before some guy went and started making fun of how small my bike was, with its 18-inch seat tube and miniature wheels. The look on my face must have been downright lugubrious, because he actually took pity on me. He lifted up my bike and said, “But it’s so light!” (Of course it wasn’t.) Just like that, the expected fusillade of teasing never materialized. Paradoxically, everyone’s restraint in razzing me became an insult in itself, as thought they knew I couldn’t handle a little verbal abuse.

On our way out of the parking lot, I tipped over because I’d just switched to toe clips and straps instead of mini-clips, and was still getting used to them. So I felt like a complete Fred and the ride hadn’t even really started yet. Things got worse from there. Just getting to the base of the climb almost killed me as I was nowhere near fit enough for the grade. We took a back route, via Stanford Ave and Vassar Drive, which gained about 230 feet but might as well have been Alpe d’Huez. I was totally out of breath and dizzy by time we got to the base of the NCAR climb proper. I thought I might even hurl.

The actual climb wasn’t so steep, so I was able to loaf. It didn’t matter that I’d self-identified as a cyclist for years by this point, or that I’d been one of the first kids in town with a helmet, or that I loved “Breaking Away” … I was dropped immediately and mercilessly. Just like in gym class, I was dead last. The leader of the clinic dropped back and rode next to me, offering up encouragement. He politely suggested I get out of the saddle and go a little faster. This concept was completely foreign to me. The idea that I could choose to pedal harder just didn’t make sense. It seemed to me that if I wasn’t keeping up anyway, there was no point in exerting myself beyond what it took to keep my balance and eventually complete the ride. What this guy was asking me to do was to suffer—more precisely, to inflict suffering upon myself. This just didn’t make any sense.

He left me alone and cruised back up to the group, and as I continued picking my lone way up the road I pondered his words. (I had plenty of time to think.) I eventually began to understand what the old pro was saying. At some point in that ride I finally grasped that what he was suggesting not only wasn’t absurd, but actually made sense. What he was giving me was nothing less than the key to training, to racing, and above all to improvement. Those who went fast, I realized, might not just be more talented. They might actually be working harder, day after day, to service their ambitions.

So did I take the veteran cyclist’s advice? Did I get out of the saddle and push myself a little? Of course not. I understood his tutelage, but lacked the drive to apply myself to it. It would be weeks or months or years before I had the psychological gumption to fully embrace this bold ethos, to locate the will to flog myself vigorously and often in pursuit of betterment. It’s possible today for me to be mistaken for someone with talent, but it has taken decades of suffering to get to this point, all stemming from that day. Not to sound maudlin or anything, but that guy gave me one of the most important lessons I have ever learned. I wish I remember the guy’s name. He deserves to know that, despite all appearances, he did get through to me.

The Mini Zinger itself, a week or two later, was a real eye-opener for our family. Watching my brothers race, it was easy for me to see that gym class was no real indicator of athletic ability, at least for them. At Track & Field in gym class, these guys were slaughtered as badly as I was, but they did pretty well in the Mini Zinger, especially Geoff, who finished somewhere around tenth overall. Here is Bryan toiling away:

And here is Geoff (alas, the best photo I can find):

The difference was the duration of the race: the typical Mini Zinger stage lasted at least 25 minutes, which was an eternity when compared to anything you did in gym class. Geoff, Bryan, and I don’t have a single fast-twitch muscle fiber among us. Our only hope is to wear down our opponents, which isn’t exactly possible in a ten-second running race during a half-hour gym class, of which twenty minutes is spent walking to the park and back.

Our brother Max had mixed results. He had been a champion swimmer for years, and his bike races always started strong. He’d go straight to the front of the pack, fly high for a few laps of a criterium, be the boss of the peloton for several stunning minutes, and then would inexplicably suffer mechanical problems. His derailleur get stuck between gears, or his chain would fall off. He’d announce the problem very loudly. In one race, a criterium, he came around a corner with his saddle broken clean off. He waved it at us frantically as we lowered our heads in shame. 

Which brings us to my performance. God, what a travesty. I was just as bad at bike racing as I was at everything else. Probably worse. If I’d been a Japanese kid, I’d have been honor-bound to commit seppuku on the spot to save my family from disgrace. The first event was a short prologue time trial, and when I saw the results I couldn’t believe how far down I was. I think I was second-to-last. Last place, at least, would have carried some distinction. Worse, while hanging around after the race I pointed out to one of my brothers a kid with really skinny legs—probably to try to cheer myself up by badmouthing him—and my brother was quick to point out that my own legs were even skinnier, and to my horror I realized my brother was right. I’d just never really looked at my legs before, never realized how spindly I was. Two rude awakenings in one day. How could I handle it? 

The next day was the North Boulder Park Criterium, where my Leisure Time Products teammate John Lynch placed top ten and I was lapped, probably more than once, notwithstanding the rather long circuit. I was second-to-last again, beaten out once again for the Lantern Rouge. I actually remember the kid who always got dead last: David M—. I guess I could have tried to let him beat me, so I could have Lanterne Rouge, but the fact was, I never knew what was going on in the bike race. I knew who was ahead of me, but never really could keep track of who was behind me, if anybody. (Of course it was never anybody except David M—, who was probably actually much stronger than I but always crashed or something, for all I knew.)

Once the pack started lapping me I got especially confused. It was a complete nightmare. I’d roll, snail-like, past my brothers, who would be yelling at me. This wasn’t really cheering, but more like a wailing lament such as you might see at a funeral from some bereaved mother throwing herself across the casket, lashing out at her son’s having been cut down in his prime. Unlike the brief moment of cheering we’d do when watching a Coors Classic stage, this interaction with my brothers would go on for a long time because I was moving so slowly. They’d yell for me to shift up, and I’d put the bike in my highest gear, and barely be able to pedal. They’d yell “No, no, that’s too high, shift down!” and I’d put the bike in my lowest gear and be spinning futilely. I was as awkward as the word “futilely.” Now, don’t get me wrong, my screwed up derailleur and freewheel alone cannot be blamed. I know that I possessed the ability to make that bike shift properly, but facing the humiliation of the race, and the extra pressure from my brothers’ yelling, I was just too flustered to function.

After one particular race, I broke down crying. The race organizer, Eddie Sandvold, a kind man, came running over, asking if I’d crashed. I sobbed that I didn’t crash, that I just lost. He didn’t know what to say. His look said, “Well, what did you expect?” This brought about another epiphany: it was just plain stupid of me to expect any other result. I’d never done well at anything athletic before; why should I have assumed that my knowledge of bicycles (which consisted of knowing that Dave rode an Italian Masi with full Campy in “Breaking Away”) and general cycling arcana (e.g., cycling caps) would make me a successful racer? And what about training? Had I ever done that, after all?

Solving this fundamental problem would have to wait, though. In the short term I had to face the crushing knowledge that my dad had seen me lose. He’d watched the whole thing, watched me get dropped and then lapped, and to top it all off, watched me getting removed from the course by the officials. You see, I hadn’t understand that all riders, including the lapped riders, finished on the same lap. I figured I had at least a lap or two more to complete after the winners were all done, and doggedly stayed out on the course, knowing that I could score three points just for finishing, which was slightly better than nothing. By the time somebody was able to make me understand that I really was done, I was more humiliated than ever that once again, just like with baseball and football, I didn’t even understand the rules. This is what had finally brought me to tears.

On the drive home with my dad, he asked me what I’d had for lunch. I said some bread and cheese. He explained to me that cheese, being a dairy product, took a long time to digest, and that likely I didn’t have enough fully digested food in my system to properly fuel me. I brightened at this suggestion, probably as much out of relief as anything, and trotted it out several times that day to explain, to each of my brothers in turn, and then to my friends, why I’d done so badly in the race. I was able to ignore my brothers’ reaction—after all, they were always trying to undermine me—but after the second or third friend gave me the same knowing, kind of disappointed, look, I recognized it for what it was: a look that said, “Yeah, right, whatever.” My dad had (albeit inadvertently) taught me a valuable lesson about making excuses, and at a young age. Of course, this did nothing to improve my morale. I was a loser, after all.

To be continued

Tune in next time for the unlikely tale of how I persevered in the sport, made a fresh start with a new bike, learned how to train, and went on to endure an entirely new form of humiliation.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Portrait of the Young Cyclist: Part 1

Introduction

I thought I’d just about exhausted my archives—that is, old essays and stories I’ve been writing since the ‘80s—and then I stumbled across a folder called “True Stories.” Jackpot! One of them was called “Portrait of the Cyclist as a Young Man.” I vaguely remember writing this back in 2003, but I don’t remember why. The full story runs like 14,000 words so I’ll be breaking it into installments, which I’ll run about once a month for a while. Here is the first.

Portrait of the Cyclist as a Young Man – Part One: How the Sport Found Me  (written in February 2003)

Don’t let the working title mislead you—what I am about to write will share nothing with James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (except, I guess, being written in English). Joyce must have had time on his hands, because he wrote and wrote and wrote and never got to the point (that I could see, anyway) and I gave up reading after about 150 pages. As for me, I have only one night to write this, since I’m fighting a cold and can’t ride. My goal is to write the entire history of how I became a cyclist and why that is important. If my output is poor, it’s because I’m in an awful rush. If it’s too verbose, that’s because I’m pretending I’m being paid by the word, just like the pros. (Get it?)

It’s all my dad’s fault, really, because my first bike was a ten-speed. Dad must have worked hard to find a ten-speed, in 1978, in my size. It was a Fuji Junior and had 24-inch wheels. The fact of the ten gears wasn’t the point—my dad figured that any 9-year-old, or at least his 9-year-old, would be too stupid to work the gears without running into a parked car or something, and told me not to touch the shift levers. (I reckon this was supposed to be an interim edict, but he never remembered to rescind it or teach me how to shift. Maybe he figured youthful disobedience would eventually take over, in which case he was right.)

[This is pretty much exactly the bike I had, only mine was red.]

It was the dropped bars, mainly, that differentiated my Fuji from the bikes my friends had. With my three older brothers, who of course also had ten-speeds, I held a playful contempt for regular bikes. We even had a label for them, something like High-Rise-Handlebar-Banana-Seat-Small-Wheel-In-Front-Big-Wheel-in-Back-Streamers-from-the-Grips-Stupid-Schwinn. I’d have to check with my brothers—I’m sure I mangled that—but you get the idea. I remember asking Dad if ten-speeds were faster, just to make sure, or to get something juicy to quote to my friends, and he said in his professorial voice, “The dropped handlebar improves the aerodynamics of the rider, which would make the bike faster.” I didn’t know the word “aerodynamic”—heck, it wouldn’t enter even the specialized cycling vernacular for other couple of years, but it had “arrow” in it and whatever garbled version of that word I spewed for my friends made their eyes grow wide. I felt like a racer long before I ever entered a race.

So did my brothers. I remember Max, at 10 or so, asking our next-door neighbor Greg (no authority on cycling, of course, but a good six or eight years older, and thus an authority on Life) if he (Max) looked like a racer, and demonstrated his style by riding to the top of Howard Place and executing a U-turn through which he put down his inside foot and dragged it lightly as if for support. When Max returned and pulled up to a stop, breathless, Greg laughed and said, “Yeah, you really did look like a racer, except for when you put your foot down in the turn.” I took a lesson well and never did that.

It’s difficult to remember whether my first exposure to bicycle racing was the Red Zinger Bicycle Classic stage race or the movie “Breaking Away.” I don’t think it matters. They were both huge. The Red Zinger gave me a taste, or at least a smear, of the sport. Our mom would drive us out to the Morgul Bismark course, which in the late seventies was basically the middle of nowhere, and we’d screw around for half an hour or so waiting for the racers to come by. Why we didn’t hike up to the top of The Hump, the second hardest climb, is beyond me. Lazy kids, I guess; we watched from the base of the climb. The pack flew by too swiftly for us to catch more than the patchwork of colors, like an animated quilt, and the whirring of chains, mostly drowned out by our own cheering. We knew the racers mainly through the great program that the race had put out. George Mount—Smiling George—was our favorite racer. The way he grinned while suffering, he was a superhero.

Then there was the two-page section showing nothing but racers who had crashed, with lots of blood and such, and it was a natural draw for bloodthirsty young boys.

The program also had a section showing the racers’ legs, all shaved, totally muscular, vein-y, superhuman. I also remember that the racers had these really cool-looking hairnet helmets—we called them Bandinis, for some reason—and between the name and the obvious lack of real protection, we were completely enchanted. I also remember that one or two of the racers had the new Bell Biker helmets, like what our dad had. The fact of those helmets told me that it was possible, just barely possible, that a nerdy kid like me might actually be able to join that race someday, even if at the back of the pack—heck, even off the back of that pack. I would be honored.

While the Red Zinger aroused our interest, “Breaking Away” blew us completely away. It delivered not just a glimpse of the sport, but a real story—actually, lots of real stories, and the main story was of this being a European sport that an American could hope to have a tenuous piece of, but only if he’s willing to immerse himself in another culture. (This was remarkably accurate, if you look at what Jonathan Boyer and Greg LeMond had to do to make it in international cycling at this point.)

It didn’t occur to us to view Dave as an adult would, to find humor in his attempt to become Italian—we were completely with him, somehow identified completely. When the Italian racer put the pump in his spokes, sure, we hated the guy, but we were also in awe, and couldn’t really fault him because this was their sport, not ours, so the Italians were somehow exempt from judgment, like how a hockey player who assaults another player gets a couple minutes in the penalty box instead of going to jail.

Max taught me that Europeans were physically stronger than Americans, and less affected by pain. (When we had some new neighbors and wanted to try to convince them that we were from Europe, we demonstrated our heritage by pretending to fight, and being unfazed by the punches we landed on each other.) “Breaking Away” helped to teach us that as Americans we were not worthy of this beautiful sport. So complete was my awe of the Italians, I was as horrified as poor Cathy was when Dave gave up the Italian impersonation. Even his triumph at the end of the movie was only over a bunch of American college students, on crappy AMF Roadmaster one-speeds. Winning the race, and holding up the trophy, didn’t quite redeem him. What did redeem him for me was that at the very end, he had picked up a new French persona. For months after seeing that movie, I carried around a French/English pocket dictionary and made a horrible attempt to speak in that indecipherable language.

The other thing “Breaking Away” did for us was to steep us in the arcana of the sport. What we didn’t catch from the movie itself, we got from the Bicycling magazine article about it. For example, I knew that the cycling caps that flooded the marketplace as being identical to Dave’s—that is, yellow Campagnolo caps—were completely wrong. They weren’t the right canary yellow (they were too orange), and they had too many stripes down the middle (i.e., five, these being the World Championship stripes). Dave’s cap had just three stripes.

When I found the right cap, for a shocking $5.00 at Pedal Pushers (most caps were $3.50), I had to panhandle for the 30 cents I needed to cover the tax, having only a five on me. When a friend accidentally broke the plastic inside the bill, and refused to apologize appropriately, our friendship was over. I also had a really cool red Cinelli cap, with the old coat-of-arms logo. By wearing these to school instead of a baseball cap, I brought on myself the scorn of my peers, but took it as a natural part of the outcast role I’d need if I wanted to embrace this sport. Boulder, Colorado was something of a cycling mecca even then, but this did not trickle down to the elementary school level. That cap was almost a badge of courage. I was almost, I felt, a Cutter.

[With a cap that cool, it’s a mystery why I wasn’t totally popular at school, especially with the girls. As you can see below, my overall fashion sense was unparalleled. The t-shirt I’m wearing actually says “LAMBCHOP” on it. My mom sewed those letters on there; Lambchop was her nickname for me. At least I had the physique for cycling, though I didn’t appreciate that at the time.]

All my identification might well have stayed in the realm of unearned or false had it not been for the Red Zinger Mini Classic stage race put on by the Sandvold family—Eric and his dad Eddie—and three of Eric’s friends. I guess they’d done a little race in 1980, but I never knew about it. It wasn’t until 1981 that they put on what can honestly be described as a totally legit stage race for kids. They had published a program that was remarkably similar to the Red Zinger ones we’d seen, except of course it didn’t show a lot of crash photos. (Don’t want to scare the devil out of the parents!)

The race’s slogan was “By, for, and about kids.” It looked like an incredibly cool event, and my brothers and I got our registration packets all together, and a kid named Scott M—, who had seen me riding around and saw my caps, even recruited me to be on his team, along with his friend and next-door neighbor John Lynch. There was only one problem: getting permission from Dad. Remember, this is the guy who didn’t want me to know about gears, lest I ride headlong into the back of a parked car.

We were all terrified to approach Dad. He was often grumpy, especially when we wanted something. He also never “got” sports and so far as we knew had never tried one. Mom supported the idea of us racing, but either she wanted to teach us assertiveness or she was as terrified as we were, because she refused to ask on our behalf. We boys all discussed the matter together and decided that Max, being the black sheep of the family, was in enough trouble with Dad already that it wouldn’t matter if he pushed our old man even further. Max wasn’t in a position to refuse his mission, because if he did, either Geoff or Bryan could beat the crap out of him, so with the two of them together he wouldn’t have a chance. Heck, I would have happily piled on myself, to dole out whatever I could add to the beating. Okay, I guess I’m exaggerating about the threat of actual violence, but anyway the matter was decided. Max would ask that night at dinner.

What a solemn occasion that was. The room was deadly silent through the whole meal as Max attempted to summon his resolve. This was very strange, because normally dinner time was an open forum for just about any subject, or at least any scientific or technical subject, and normally our table was abuzz with conversation (or at least my dad lecturing us while we nodded our heads and pretended to understand). The whole meal went by in awkward silence, the rest of us boys glaring at Max while he sweated bullets. Finally, just after dessert was served, Max finally cleared his throat and took the plunge: “Um, Daddy, um, I was wondering, er, actually, my brothers and I were wondering if, um, there was any way that we could, um, enter this bike race, that’s just for kids, um, because it’s really good exercise and would be good for us.” (Something like that.)

Dad didn’t even hesitate. “No. You boys are too stupid to be bike racers. You’d get yourselves killed.” I knew it sounds improbable that he actually said this, but I am quite certain I have it verbatim. My brothers remember it as well, and all our versions jibe. That was it. Nobody said another word for the rest of dessert, and immediately afterward Dad went back to work and nobody ever spoke to him again on the subject.

I guess I was relieved at his refusal, because I’d been pretty ambivalent about the idea myself. Not so much because I’d get myself killed, though I’m sure that worried me too, but the fact is, I was no athlete. I’d swum for years, first lessons and then the swim team, and I basically sucked. The best I ever did was third in some backstroke event (that loss-leader stroke), and that was only third in my heat—I ended up fourth overall, and that was only summer league. I was as undistinguished a swimmer as ever floated on water (or, more to the point, practically sank). I remember when our coach, Paul S—, got some video equipment and filmed us so that we could watch the footage and analyze our stroke. His main criticism of me was that I didn’t stay in my own lane. I’d kill for that footage today: sure enough, halfway through a lap I actually wander out of my lane, under a lane line, into the path of an oncoming swimmer. I tried to explain that I had to swim with my eyes shut because my goggles leaked so badly. Maybe the only guy everyone laughed at more was John W—, who swam freestyle with a butterfly kick.

And yet swimming was my best sport! At school, in Track & Field, I was always dead last in everything. I wished I could throw like a girl—it would have been an improvement. Every aspect of PE class was a source of humiliation. It was assumed that every boy knew the rules of football and baseball. I did not. I had no idea what was going on. Football was the worst. Offense? Defense? I didn’t know the difference. As far as I was concerned my job was to stay out of sight. Baseball? Just sit there and don’t swing, I told myself: if you don’t swing, you can’t strike out, and might get to walk. And yet the teacher kept calling strikes! I thought it was because I wasn’t holding my bat still enough, that the teacher must have thought she saw it move. I had no idea about a strike zone. I just stood there, as motionless as a statue, as the strikes were counted. I was uncoachable; teachers assumed I knew exactly what was going on and was simply demonstrating my complete contempt for the sport. Utter humiliation. Why would cycling be any different?

I guess I have my dad’s prohibition—and moreover my mom’s reaction to it—to thank for the fact that I ended up becoming a bike racer. Mom all but insisted that we all sign up for the Mini Zinger, on principle. I remember this well. The day after Max crashed and burned on our behalf, I was in the kitchen, hanging out around the stove while Mom cooked, and she asked me if I was entering the race. I reminded her what Dad said, and right there on the spot she basically made me commit to signing up. It wasn’t a long conversation, and I don’t remember her argument, but after that I was fully committed. I submitted my application, and …

To be continued

Tune in next time for the wretched tale of my flunked bike inspection, and—worse yet—the bike racing clinic where, for the first time, I felt bad about being a talentless loser unwilling to make himself suffer properly.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2019 Tour of California Stage 6

Introduction

Sportscasters covering professional cycling have a massive challenge: how to describe the action while continuously biting their tongues. They’re not allowed to bag on dopers, so they have to pretend that it’s exciting to watch a totally lubed rider destroy everybody. The Tour of California, however, runs concurrently with the much more prestigious Giro d’Italia, where the heavy hitters are. The TofCA is bound to be a cleaner race, so the announcers have got that going for them. Which is good.

So yeah, you could watch the coverage live, using the Amgen Tour of California Tour Tracker which really is the greatest streaming video platform ever. I’m so stoked on it, I feel like supporting Amgen by buying a bunch of their EPO. But even with this great tracker, the coverage is in the middle of your workday, so you don’t have time, and if you try to watch the highlights later, they’re going to give the outcome away in the first five seconds for some reason. You don’t want that.

Besides, maybe you’re a bit disgruntled by the sport, like I am, so you like my snotty remarks. Of course you do … you wouldn’t be here otherwise. So read on for my biased blow-by-blow report of the all-important, GC-deciding Tour of CA Stage 6, which finishes atop Mount Baldy in southern California (motto: “Don’t you dare walk here, we’ll ticket your ass!”).

2019 Tour of California Stage 6 – Ontario to Mount Baldy

I join the action way, way late. I took the whole day off work, went for a bike ride, went too slow, got home late, and then had a nice lunch at a Tibetan restaurant were the service was so slow, I almost wonder if they hired the cook after taking our order. Only 14 kilometers remain in the whole race, so I’m going to have to really rush here, which means typing “km” instead of “kilometers” from here on out, and not taking time to change kms to miles for you. Also, if I need to talk about the weather, I may express the temperature in Kelvin.

There’s a breakaway. Behind, some Bora-Hansgrohe guy has attacked the peloton. He’s trying to bridge up to the break, which only has like 30 seconds on them. That’s not a lot when at least half the remaining distance is uphill. The Bora guy is Felix somebody. With a first name like that, you don’t actually need a last name … “Felix” is distinct enough. I have a pal named John and I told him his name is useless. He agreed: “It’s a fcuking disaster.”

Okay, Felix’s last name is Großschartner. I admit I was stalling just a second ago, because that’s a really hard name to type. Steephill.tv had it as Grossschartner which I knew couldn’t be right. I mean, three Ss in a row? Nobody would have such a name. You couldn’t say it without hissing. Everyone would hate you.

Felix has a teammate in the breakaway, Maximilian Schachmann. So if Felix bridges up successfully, he’ll be able to help Schachmann win, obviously. I don’t know if there are time bonuses in this race because I was barely aware it was even happening until two days ago. Someone mentioned it was going on this week, so I looked for the Tour Tracker and happened to check out the final 10 km of the Morro Bay stage, which had apparently been super boring until the last 8 km. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Felix is on the short descent to the base of Mount Baldy. The top ten riders are all within like 30 seconds of each other in the general classification and there’s no time trial in this race, so this climb will be absolutely decisive.

The breakaway is Schachmann, Hugo Houle (Astana Pro Team), Matteo Fabbro (Katusha Alpecin), Pawel Bernas (CCC), Lennard Hofstede (Jumbo-Visma), and one other guy whom I’ll call John because hey, why not.

Schachmann is only 22 seconds off the GC lead, so this break is probably doomed. Tejay’s EF Education First team will surely reel them in, and even if they don’t, the race officials will bend the rules until Tejay comes out on top. They did that already in the Morro Bay stage, where Tejay crashed, then took a wrong turn, then blatantly drafted a support car for a really long way, and then only caught up to part of the peloton—specifically, the riders who were on the ground due to another crash—and because this was inside the final 3 km the officials gave Tejay the same time as the entire peloton: that is, as the part of the peloton that hadn’t crashed and was way, way ahead of Tejay. Meanwhile, this was actually 3.2 km from the finish, but the officials didn’t really care. I think they want a known rider, and an American one, to win the race because it looks better. I mean, if Hugo Houle won, what would that do for the sport? Everyone would remember it as “a foreigner called Huge Hole won,” and they’d shrug and go back to NASCAR. At least, that must be the thinking of the commissaires. As if this sport weren’t a big enough joke already.

Lawson Craddock is leading the chase for Tejay. He’s a great ungodly godlike domestique. I wish I could get him to work for me. Not in my races, of course, because those are few and far between. I could really use him for some light filing, maybe going through my mail and throwing out all the junk. Running errands. Things like that. I wonder of Craddock does that for Tejay during the off-season.

Wow, Schachmann has dropped the break and is trying to solo! He’s only got like 6 km to go, but also 2,000 vertical feet. And it’ll be hard to pedal effectively with such big balls crowding the crotch of his shorts. He looks like he’s pretty cool and calm, but that could just be a poker face.

Okay, the announcers just said there’s a 10-second time bonus for the win. But is that really going to happen? Tejay is really fast, obviously, and I think his teammate Rigoberto Uran Uran is in that field with him, and on a good day Uran is almost matchless on the climbs so he should pace Tejay quite effectively. (I guess I should hedge a bit though and point out that I haven’t watched a road race since last year’s Tour de France, where Uran crashed out, so for all I know he’s gotten too old to go fast.)

This stage is such a great one to watch, because there are plenty of GC hopefuls who haven’t had much opportunity to do anything in this largely flat stage race and have put all their hopes on this climb. Another rider to watch is Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo), who had so many not-normal performances with Team Sky that the only thing holding him back today would be not being able to find a fresh vein to inject himself in. I guess maybe his new team is clean though. Maybe he’s a really good guy and Team Sky was just a bad influence.

Speaking of Team Ineos (née Sky), its leader Gianni Moscon, wearing bib #1, is going out the back! So I guess the peloton is already going pretty damn fast. That being said, Schachmann has increased his lead to 35 seconds with only 5 km to go.

Tejay looks pretty comfortable. That yellow jersey looks so much better than the pink ones EF riders wear. In this one instance, I wouldn’t fault Tejay for wearing a yellow helmet to match the leader’s jersey. But a black helmet would be even better.

Kasper Asgreen (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) is now leading the peloton. He would be wearing the leader’s jersey today were it not for the clowns officiating this race (as described above). He must be impatient with the EF team or something, or maybe he’s trying to crack them in Merckx style instead of attacking. That worked pretty well for Merckx … everyone since him, not so much.

Shirtless idiots have arrived to run alongside the riders. I hope one of them gets smacked. Not hard or anything. Just a smack.

Whoooooah, Tejay is cracking! Dude is just getting shelled, with his own teammates ahead of him! Who’d have thought! I guess he’s getting old or something. It happens to the best of us. Heck, even Chris Horner kind of sucked toward the end, not that I blame him. I feel so old myself now, talking about riders who have retired. I confess I kind of lost track of this sport after Chris Froome was exonerated and I could no longer bear to watch.

Wow, Asgreen has been dropped! He looked so good earlier.

Now George Bennett (Jumbo-Visma) makes a dig and gets a bit of a gap before anyone can react. He’s being joined now by Tejay’s teammate Sergio Higuita, and not far behind it looks like Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates). I think that’s Porte struggling along behind them.

Higuita attacks!

Higuita is hauling ass and there’s no poker-face here, he’s just drilling it, his face a pitcher of pansies. You didn’t think I was gonna say “picture of pain” did you? I would never do that. His face is a pitcher. A patchwork. A bun. A bane. And more.

Porte is having bike problems. Good.

It’s only 1.6 km to go! Higuita is still really motoring. It’s hard to tell how far behind he is from Schachmann. Do I care who wins? Not much, though I don’t like Higuita’s neon green shoes. His Pepto-Bismol-pink jersey is ugly enough without introducing neon green to the outfit. Behind Higuita, Pogacar and Bennett keep up the chase, Porte having been totally distanced.

The break has completely dissolved, every man in it for himself. Like all the rest of us. Except moms. They’re in it for their kids. But I digress.

It looks like Pogacar is catching Higuita. He looks really smooth, and started the day only 16 seconds behind Tejay on GC.

Pogacar and Higuita are together now and look like they’re kind of crawling. The camera makes these grades look way flatter than they are. It must be insanely steep. I’m so glad I’m just sitting in this armchair typing, not out biking with these fools.

OMG, there’s 100 meters to go and still no sign of Schachmann, which means they must have passed him at some point. I’ve been thinking he was up the road this whole time! Maybe he was abducted by aliens or something. Crazier things have happened in this sport, like Froome getting off the hook after testing positive.

It’s the final sprint, and Bennett is coming back! And now Higuita overcooks the final curve, taking it too wide!

Pogacar comes blasting through! He’s freakin’ flying! He’s got proper black shoes and he’s blowing Higuita out of the water!

Pogacar’s got the wine! I mean win! He’s got the win! He’ll get the wine later. See how these typos work?

And now we wait to see how far back Tejay finishes. Wow, it’s not good. He’s clearly lost the GC. And he’s so tired, his arms are all crooked.

Gosh, Pogacar is super young. He looks like he’s about 15 years old. I think he cools himself the way dogs do. Maybe all the young humans are being made this way now. Okay, they’re saying he’s actually 20 years old. Too young to buy booze, which is surely why he had that extra edge today. I love to drink beer and look how slow I am. (No, you can’t actually look. Nobody is filming me. Thank God.)

Tejay’s daughter is too young to realize just how badly her dad fcuked this up today. She still loves him. That’ll change. When she’s a teenager she’ll read this blog (like all the cool teens will), and then she’ll be like, “Dad, the beginning of the end was Mount Baldy. Speaking of which, how’d you get so bald? You’re, like, a living fossil! And your chain of auto dealerships is failing.”

So, Pogacar not only has the yellow jersey, but rumor has it he’s going to get a video game made in his honor. Here he is getting his yellow jersey. Note that the podium girl doesn’t kiss him. Maybe she’s afraid she’ll get in trouble. Or maybe they’re not doing that anymore.

Man, Pogacar is so fricking young, some thoughtful race official got him a teddy bear! That is so fitting! They’ll have cookies and milk waiting for him later. I love the thought of him snuggling with that teddy bear tonight, maybe wearing his medal over his Star Wars pajamas.

They’re interviewing him now. “I was really strong and that made me go fast. Strong means fast, I have noticed. Higuita took the turn too wide. This black stuff you see at the corners of my mouth is Oreo. I just ate like five of them really fast. In Slovenia we have no Oreos. Also I have won very many bike races back home but nobody ever gave me a bear. I love America.”

Note: as you probably already figured out, I totally made all that up. He did say something about going fast and being strong, but after that it got really boring. “Thanks to my team blah blah blah.” It’s possible that my freestyling got us closer to the real truth. Though you must not quote me on the Oreo thing. I just did some light fact-checking and discovered this blog post, all about Oreos in Slovenia. I did not make that up. Click the link.

Now they’re doing the team podium. Here are the top three teams:

Wait, how did that get in there? That’s not just the wrong race, that’s the wrong sport! What you see above is the Albany High Cougars mountain bike team celebrating their victory in the team overall for the season. How that photo made it into this report is beyond me … probably some kind of online tampering. I’m going to leave it though, because they’re even younger and more fresh-faced than Pogacar. And that’s saying a lot.

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