“No job is so simple that it cannot be done wrong”

So said my fortune last Friday night at our fave local Chinese restaurant. And what was immediately running through my mind was, “Hmmmm…I just glued a new tubular on the rear wheel which I’ll be racing in my final ‘cross race of the season about 36 hours from now.” And my parallel, predominant concern, since I get superstitious when it comes to cycling, is that maybe this wasn’t the time to experiment with a new means of gluing tubulars…not glue per se, but my first encounter with Tufo Tubular Tire Gluing Tape. Can a glorified strip of double-sided masking tape really keep me from ignominiously rolling a tubular in competition?

Because nobody wants to be this guy…

Image source: http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=4469

Until cyclocross renewed my passion for racing a bike, I’d long since given up on tubulars. Clinchers have made vast improvements since the beginning of my racing days back in the early 80s, and the road racing I was doing over the past 10 years or so was not hindered in the least by foregoing tubular wheels. But me and tubulars, we go way back. Oh, the (sometimes painful) memories…

1. Fast Tack Trim Adhesive, I Guess the Fast Tack Part is Important After All
3M Fast Tack Trim Adhesive was the staple of my tubular gluing endeavors for nearly every tire I raced on from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. My source for the repurposed glue was the local Napa auto parts store in Cooperstown, NY. I kept a piece of the cardboard box with the code number in my wallet so I could make sure I got the right stuff from the dizzying array of auto accessories in their stockroom. They never asked me what I was doing with all that trim adhesive. Maybe they thought I was some kind of car trim idiot savant, since I didn’t buy anything else from them at all. They likely new I was “Peter, that guy who races bikes”, but the question of my glue purchases never came up.

One early summer day, I think it was 1989, I went by the trusty Napa store to buy some Fast Tack only to discover their stock was depleted. However, there happened to be another 3M product by the name (I think…it’s been a while) simply “3M Trim Adhesive”. Trim adhesive is trim adhesive, right?

I should have been tipped off right away by the consistency, very close to toothpaste, not the uber-sticky nature of Fast Tack. But I was young and stupid. So I glued up that front wheel. And then I drove to Pittsfield, MA that weekend to race on said front wheel. And in no more than 2 laps of what should have been a 50 lap crit, that bad boy rolled off the rim like it wasn’t glued on at all. Because it wasn’t glued on at all. I was first through the 3rd turn, just beginning to contemplate the can of whupass I was about to unleash on these rubes, when I unceremoniously found myself powersliding across the pavement on my right side. Thankfully, I was the only guy that went down. And then I immediately fled the course, mere microseconds after burning huge swaths of flesh off my right leg and arm, and limped about 2 blocks off the course so I could hide out for a bit. I was not about to get suspended for being a dumbass, and I needed to remount my tire and deflate it so I could re-emerge at the ambulance and have a (kind of lame) excuse about flatting my front tire and then losing control. I still have scars on my leg from that horrific slide across asphalt, I still cringe when I re-live the medics wire brush treatment to raw flesh (I happened to slide through a patch of sand to boot), and I learned that the Fast Tack part of 3M Fast Tack Trim Adhesive is an element not to be trifled with.

2. ‘Roid Ragin’ in CT
I did quite a bit of racing in New England from 1983 through 1991, and one of the things I remember was the pre-race bike inspection. In theory, it was a good idea. A surprising number of people show up to races with bikes in various states of being about to fall apart due to negligent or incompetent home mechanic skills, and everybody had to get a sticker on their bars to prove their bike wasn’t about to jettison parts mid-race and likely take down a huge chunk of the peloton. One rather annoying aspect of this inspection was the dreaded “Let me try to roll your tubular” guy, usually an amped up, ‘roided up, simpleton whose sole thought was “I bet I can roll any tire off any rim”. This guy usually had biceps bigger than my quads, and enough mis-guided strength in his arms and hands that I bet he could have snapped the welds of my steel frame given a few minutes of frenzied effort. On one particular weekend in CT, maybe it was New Britain or New London…who knows, I rolled up to the bike inspection sporting clinchers. I was a newbie junior, and tubulars weren’t yet part of my arsenal (which was probably a good thing). And then, much to my amusement, Angry Tubular Rolling Guy went to work on my clinchers trying his damndest to roll them. Because he was a bodybuilder, not a cyclist, he couldn’t tell the difference. So I said, “Hey, I’ll give you a million bucks if you can roll that tire off the rim”. I think this doofus really thought the offer was legit, and he set to work. I nearly turned as red as him, although I was laughing while he nearly burst a blood vessel in his head due to the stress and strain. Thank god that clincher held.

3. The Last Turn at Fitchburg (Back when it was an off-camber near 180 degree turn about 200 meters from the line)
Maybe it was 1985, and I was racing in New England on 4th of July weekend. I’m pretty sure it was a 3 day affair, with racing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Friday and Saturday were in CT, and the only excitement coming my way during those two days was an impromptu extended interval to escape a gang of hooligans determined to rip off my bike (from under me) while warming up in the wrong part of New Britain. But no matter, the real excitement happened that Saturday night, the evening before Fitchburg. I was a wide-eyed teenager with more fitness than race-smarts accompanied by an upstate New York dynamic duo: a rather savvy teenager with equal parts fitness and race-smarts (Rider A) and a very green teenager with substantially less fitness and smarts than all of us (Rider B). Rider B flatted that afternoon, and Rider A and I watched him whip out a new tubular and proceed to glue it on the rim that evening in our hotel. And we couldn’t believe our eyes, because (1) he was gluing on a track tubular and (2) the glue he was (barely) using wouldn’t be dry enough to race on the next day. But Rider B was absolutely convinced that no harm would come his way, and that the track tire would be his secret weapon in Fitchburg the next day. All Rider A and I knew was that we needed to avoid him like the plague in the peloton come Sunday afternoon.

As Fitchburg frequently does, the Junior race came down to a frenzied field sprint which wound up a few laps out. Rider A and I avoided Mr. B according to plan, and set about setting up a leadout to earn some cash. We had a monster Suburban with twin tanks on E which needed feeding. Rider A was speedy, wily, and knew the ropes and my mission was to drop him off at the head of the peloton just as we approached the final death turn to the line: a 180 degree uphill off camber. I don’t know what came over me, since I really dreaded crits during my Junior years, but I managed to weasel and worm my way up the right hand side of the peloton in the closing laps with Rider A glued to my wheel. I made one last mighty surge up the back stretch, nearly scraping skin off my right arm as I threaded the needle up the right hand gutter adjacent to the snow fence, and Rider A wormed past me into maybe 4th place approaching the final turn with dollar signs for eyeballs…And then he rolled a tire while negotiating said hairpin turn. And then I plowed into Rider A, laid out in said hairpin turn. And I had to drive that scary ass Suburban back home, having had a learners permit for maybe 2 weeks, since Rider A had no skin on his ass and couldn’t drive. And Rider B took great pleasure in mocking Rider A nearly the entire drive back home, since his track tubular didn’t roll and all the huffery and puffery and indignation coming from Rider A the previous evening was just a load of crap.

4. Not the Wisest of Moves
Like I said earlier, cyclocross renewed my vigor and enthusiasm for competition and training. After racing for a couple of seasons on clinchers, I decided that maybe the leap to tubulars really made sense. And it just so happened I had a pair of tubulars left over from the heyday of my road racing years. Now I’m sure some of you out there may cringe or cry when you read this, but those tubulars were a well-preserved set of Mavic GEL 280s. Sure, I thought, they’re not noted for strength and durability, but I got my money’s worth out of them so what the hell. Well, about 1 minute into their inaugural ‘cross race in Boone, I plowed into a barrier at warp speed and that front wheel damned near transformed itself into a mobius strip. RIP.

5. Henk and I Luv Us Some Wachusetts Mountain
1991 was the first year that the esteemed Fitchburg Criterium morphed into its current incarnation as a stage race. They had some bugs to tweak, like the order of the events. For the Pro/Am field, this was my weekend lineup: Friday morning…105 mile Wachusetts Mountain RR, Friday afternoon…11 mile TT, Saturday afternoon…62 mile circuit race, Sunday afternoon…50 mile crit. There wasn’t much drama regarding the outcome of the stage race after the 105 mile slaughterfest concluded, particularly since Coors Light showed up with the A team: Davis Phinney, Steve Swart, Roberto “2×4″-ioli, Dave Mann, and maybe Roy Knickman. I believe Coors Light won all the stages and swept the final podium with Davis Phinney emerging victorious. What still resonates was how god-awful that road race was for me. The second time down Wachusetts Mountain, in a nasty rainstorm that felt like buckshot due to the peloton’s 60+ mph speed, my rear tire exploded when it got pinched in a frost-heave asphalt chasm. I thought it was all over. I had minimal braking, minimal control, I couldn’t see too well from the road spray, and I couldn’t raise my right arm to warn fellow racers or the wheel van about my flat rear tire. I drifted out the back of the pack, managed to stop the wheel van with a well-timed primal scream as the tail end of the caravan cruised by, and thanked the Lord that I was riding a well-glued tubular instead of a clincher. Because you can still ride a tubular when it’s flat, as long as you don’t have to turn too much. Just ask Abraham Olano about the 1995 Worlds, or just ask me.

Of course, once the jitters and the shock of thinking I was going to die wore off, there was the matter of those pesky 88 miles still to race. By myself. In the rain. Thank goodness the officials had mercy on me and turned a blind eye to the time cut. I was actually amazed there were still officials on top of Wachusetts Mountain waiting for me.

Ok, all you children of the 70s, quick question…

If you spent as much time as I did during the pre-teen years poring over the Guinness Book of World Records, what single image is still burned into your brain?

$100 says it’s this one:

Image source: http://www.cojoweb.com/McCrary-twins.html

Here are some interesting facts about Benny and Billy McCrary, the World’s Largest Twins (source material: here and here, more photos here):

• Benny maxed out at 814 lbs. Billy never crossed the 800 lb. barrier, opting instead to keep his weight at a svelte 784 lbs.
• Backed by Honda and Holiday Inn, Benny and Billy rode Honda mini-bikes cross-country. They took 30 days to ride from New York to Los Angeles.
• During the cross-country mini-bike odyssey, Benny and Billy met professional wrestler Gory Guerrero in El Paso, Tx.
• Once their mini-bike trip concluded, Benny and Billy embarked on a career as professional tag-team wrestlers, initially under the tutelage of said Gory Guerrero.
• They trained about two months in Mexico and began wrestling there, often in bullrings.
• From there, they went to work with Dory Funk Sr. in Amarillo, Texas.
• Later, they worked for Leroy McGuirk in Oklahoma City and in Nashville.
• After that, they were pretty seasoned and hit the road.
• In Japan, they switched from being the McCrary Twins to the McGuire Twins. “The announcers would have trouble with it. They would pronounce it Queary and we’d say, ‘We ain’t no queers.’
• One of Benny and Billy’s signature wrestling moves, “The Big Splash”, had an occasional unsavory result. Benny would pin an opponent, and then, according to Benny, “…then Billy would come sit on top of me. I’ve had wrestlers poo-poo in their pants from the weight.” (Wow, too much information)
• Benny and Billy appeared in Vegas where they played trumpets and told jokes with 400-pound go-go dancers.
• Billy died of injuries after a mini-bike stunt gone wrong in Niagara Falls.
• After Billy died in 1979, Benny teamed up with other wrestlers, including Andre the Giant, before retiring from the sport.
• Benny later opened up a pawn shop.

Another random tidbit of information is that Benny and Billy McCrary are natives of Hendersonville, NC, where I just happened to be last weekend for day 1 of the Southeast’s only UCI sanctioned cyclocross races. The less that is said of my performance in the 35+ event the better. Suffice it to say that 5 hours of sleep, a 20 minute warmup, and training one day a week for the entire year are not conducive to podium appearances. More along the order of “please don’t lap me”. But regardless of my form, I do love racing.

Anyway, between the finish of my race and the start of the Elite Men’s event was an approximate 2 hour window which I dutifully spent riding to Benny’s and Billy’s final resting spot (Crab Creek Baptist Church Cemetery: 72 Jeter Mountain Road - about 9 miles southwest of downtown Hendersonville) where I paid my respects.

Even in death, they’ve set yet another world record: the world record for the largest granite tombstone, weighing in at about 3 tons:

Imagine for a moment an alternate universe. A parallel dimension where instead of meeting Gory Guerrero in El Paso, Benny and Billy ran into a certain legendary six-day pro/promoter Patrick Sercu:

Sercu: Listen, Gory Guerrero’s got nothin’ to offer. NOTHING. This so called ‘Rasslin’ is not a sport. It’s fake. On the other hand, professional six-day bike races are honest athletic endeavors devoid of any illusion of fraud or scripted outcome…
Billy: That’s not what I heard.
Sercu: Now where did you rubes get that idea? Hear me out…How would you like an eternal diet of complimentary beer and frites…
Benny: Wait, I know all about beer, but what the hell are freets?
Sercu: Uh, gloriously fried, golden, crispy, salted potatoes. I believe you call them of all things “French Fries” here. But we use mayo, not ketchup.
Benny: Ooh, that sounds good. Me and Billy can’t live on beer alone.
Billy: At least not for extended periods of time.
Sercu: Right…Anyway, as I was saying, you’ll have a chance to race your mini-bikes - umm…actually we call them dernies…but no matter - all over Europe, ogle oodles of show girls, take in a non-stop disco music soundtrack each night, and most importantly, you’ll be guaranteed a place in six-day lore and legend. I can’t seem to find any Yanks who can cut it in Europe indoors on track bikes. Instead, this land has an uncanny knack for producing men larger than anyplace on the planet. But Benny and Billy, you two win the fat-ass crown hands-down.
Benny and Billy: Amen to that, brother!
Sercu: Damn, I’ve got about 20 Euro speedsters itching to draft such a doughy dynamic duo like you two. And my-oh-my, draft they will. Why don’t you both sign right here on the dotted line…And then we leave for Belgium.

Feast your eyes on what may have transpired in hallowed indoor velodrome venues such as Dortumund or Copenhagen or Zurich or Munich or Grenoble or Ghent. Benny and Billy…you missed your true calling.

Photo ©: Roberto Bettini http://www.cyclingnews.com/cross.php?id=photos/2006/nov06/worldcup4_06/S-moureyFrancis42

The wrong Frenchman (in my humble opinion) won the Treviso World Cup last Saturday, but what a masterful performance by Francis Mourey. He even repeatedly ran the stairs with his stubby legs just as fast as the svelte Vervecken and Nys - no easy feat. Of course, the Treviso parcours was much more dirt criterium than cyclocross so it makes sense that Mourey, a FdJ road pro, would prevail in the 3-up sprint, but you can never count out Sven Nys who just plain knows how to win no matter what the conditions. 5:51 laps on a 3.2km circuit (better than 20mph avg. speed) is just nuts, and the race director in Treviso admitted that changes would be made for the 2008 world championships to take place at the same venue. I had a hunch Mourey would win, even if the cycling.tv duo all but wrote him off, but that last 100 meters was a thing of beauty. Fluid RPMs trumped raw Belgian power bogged down in big gears.

If wee John Gadret hadn’t been knocked off his bike about every other lap on the crazy steep-maybe-you-can-ride-it,-but-there’s-a-good-chance-you’ll-run-it 26% power climb by flailing competitors who crashed and burned when their forward progress ceased and desisted, maybe he could have improved on his 10th place finish. I can’t wait for the remaining World Cup races to be broadcast on cycling.tv.

And I believe that freaky-tall Ryan Trebon will be making his way across the pond very soon to do battle in Europe all the way through the world championships next February. I think Francis Mourey’s head would barely crest the top tube if he happened to be walking next to Trebon’s ride in the pits.

“It’s the first race where you can’t hide”
-Sven Nys opines on the Koppenbergcross

When you weigh all of 128 lbs. including the field-full of cow shit and slimy Belgian mud plastered on your limbs, when you rock Giro mountain stages in the company of Ivan Basso, when you’ve got the watts to finish strong in the Giro di Lombardia, when you live for hard-guy courses in Belgium, then the climber-friendly cobble-rama that is the Koppenberg Cross is your time to strike the fear into Sven Nys. If only John Gadret could go downhill like he goes up. But a podium spot in the heart of Flanders ain’t too shabby for someone heretofore relying solely on ProTour road fitness. Says Gadret, “I’m really happy with my performance as this is the first important cyclo-cross for me. Up until now, I didn’t enjoy specific cyclo-cross training so I’m certainly lacking the technical skills that other riders have mastered,” Gadret explained. “My goal this season is to win an event in the world cup.”

That’s right, it’s just a matter of time…a time, that is, when Gadret can convince a World Cup ‘cross promoter to have a ‘cross hillclimb.

The skinniest-and-freakiest man in cyclocross has been busy putting the finishing touches on his inaugural ProTour road season, while getting his feet wet on the ‘cross circuit. John Gadret is one of only two riders (Enrico Franzoi of Lampre being the other) who has let it rip in 2006 in the Spring Classics, a Grand Tour, Fall Classics, and the Euro ‘cross circuit. His initial forays into cyclocross this Fall seem a bit subpar, maybe he got even freakier-lean to rock the hills (on the road) at the expense of raw power necessary for ‘cross, but there’s plenty of ‘cross to come…

Quik Step-Innergetic must be laughing all the way to the bank. They’ve got the world champion on their squad for another year, and all they have to do is put Tom Boonen’s kit and bike in an industrial strength drier for a few hours so it will shrink to fit wee Paolo Bettini.

And not being satisfied merely using Boonen’s hand-me-downs last week in the Championship of Zurich, Bettini integrated some leftover Paola Pezzo gold lame shorts into the kit a few days later for the Giro dell’Emilia. Leave it to the Italians to bust out the exotic threads.

The Olympics are truly a new frontier for professional cyclists. It’s only been since 1996 that professionals were allowed to compete in the Games, with Switzerland’s Pascal Richard emerging victorious in the inaugural pro/am Olympic road race in Atlanta. Realizing that this would likely be the last, great race he’d ever win, and having no precedent to follow, Richard invented his own Olympic kit, complete with a pretty tame set of gold shades to boot. And don’t forget those world champion bands to commemorate his 1988 world cyclocross championship:

A garish Pascal Richard in 1998 (note to Pascal - Casino kit and Olympic rings are a hard visual combo to digest)

A tamer Pascal Richard in 1999

I think the IOC then became aware of Richard’s copyright infringement and shut down his self-styled Olympic tribute, leaving future road cycling Olympic champions at a loss to commemorate Olympic glory. Because it there’s one entity on the planet more freakishly protective of its intellectual property than Disney, it’s the Olympics. Hence, Bettini’s use of gold and gold lame instead of concentric rings to honor his Olympic victory. Curiously, it doesn’t appear from a cursory review of photographs between 2001-2004 that Jan Ullrich ever took liberties with his kit to reflect his Olympic glory, preferring sartorial Telekom pink and when appropriate, his German national championship jersey.

If there’s one thing our current administration does better than anybody - better than Nixon, better than J. Edgar Hoover, better than the Stasi- it’s spying on people. The NSA is just going crazy, sucking cell phone and land line conversations out of the ether from anyplace on the planet. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I think antiquated documents such as the Constitution still apply. Spy on anybody you like, just get a warrant first.

But the upside of this perfidious conduct is the juicy conversations acquired amidst our world-wide eavesdropping net. File yourself a FOIA request and you, too, can hear casual conversations from just about anybody. Like what transpired between Alejandro Valverde and Oscar Freire moments after the conclusion of the recent Salzburg world road championships. Who knew Mr. Freire was such a fiesty little bugger.

Enjoy!

No, not our riders, (I trust that any Americans selected for a world championship position have enough decorum and respect to represent our country properly), but our clothes. Just look what Bjarne Riis thought about the 2006 Team USA kit sported in Salzburg…

And on a somewhat tangentally related note, if you want to delve into the world of someone whose life’s passion is “the obsessive study of athletics aesthetics”, check out Uni Watch. A recent read through the site reminded me of the unflattering kits worn by Americans at the road and mountain bike world championships.

Just who is Frankie Andreu’s anonymous partner in crime? Here’s US Postal’s 1999 TdF lineup:

It really seems odd that one of Andreu’s 8 teammates is trying to keep his identity a secret

“because he said he did not want to jeopardize his job in cycling”

Did Mr. X really think that nobody would do a 10 second Google query to see who else was on the 1999 US Postal TdF squad in addition to Andreu? The person in question has to be either Jonathan Vaughters or Kevin Livingston, and my money’s on Livingston. Vaughters has too much at stake with his TIAA-CREF squad to risk the bad press, and he’s already made a statement within a signed affadavit attesting to no personal knowledge of drug use at US Postal. Livingston indeed does still have a job in cycling, and one only has to wonder if some strange car accident, bankruptcy, or stern “lecture” from hired-goons will soon befall Kevin.

This “I took EPO while preparing for the 1999 TdF” revelation of Frankie Andreu certainly has curious timing, coming not-too-long after his sudden dismissal from DS of the Toyota-United Pro Cycling squad. If that rather perplexing termination was a none-too-subtle long distance jujitsu strike to the gut orchestrated by a certain Lance Armstrong because of the Andreus’ (Mr. and Mrs.) testimony, then this public tell-all is Andreu’s bitch slap of Armstrong. I think this may only get uglier…

A photo essay…