On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 1/1/2008
Wrapping it up
On a recent evening, I found myself without anything to read. I'd burned through
my latest batch of library books and had devoured all the current periodicals
in the house. No doubt I could have found an infinitude of reading material on
the web, but I was tired of sitting in front of the monitor, processing pixels.
I wanted to curl up on the couch with a good book, the old-fashioned way.
Bereft of anything new to read, I went to my bookshelves to see if there was
anything old that might be worthy of a second go-round...perhaps some Patrick
O'Brian or Edmund Crispin that I hadn't read at least twice already; or perhaps
some fat, fancy coffee table book where I had only looked at the pictures but
never bothered to read the text.
But what jumped off a high shelf was another sort of old friend...a book I've
read more than once already, but which still manages to be fresh each time I
open it up. This would be Paul Fournel's Need for the Bike (le Boisin
de Velo in its native French). I reviewed this delightful volume in this
space in May of 2004, and you can refer to that if you want a quick refresher
on what the book is about. Obviously, from the title, you can guess it's about
bikes and the world of biking. It's a little book--just 150 pages--made up of
55 short essays or reflections on what it means to be a cyclist. Each can be
read as a stand-alone, although there is a flow and continuity to all of it,
so that it hangs together as a larger opus. The observations are witty and droll
and insightful, and always, above all, spot on...perfect pearls of cycling wisdom.
I'm not going to review it again here. If you want that, you can link back to
it from my archives of past columns. All I will say now is that it's a comfortable
companion for anyone who loves cycling, who thinks about cycling, who eats, breathes,
and sleeps cycling. Pretty much any bright thought you may have had about cycling
will find its expression somewhere in one of these brief essays. It's the kind
of book you can leave around the house--in the bathroom or next to the bed--where
you can pick it up and scoop out one quick paragraph or page at a time...just
a quick little nibble. I can almost guarantee that you'll come away from those
little between-meals snacks of velo-philosophy with a smile on your face and
a light bulb shining over your head, thanks to some new idea the writing will
have triggered in your biker-brain. That is exactly what happened to me with
this most recent reunion with Fournel's little masterpiece.
All of this is just a way of getting around to introducing my own essay topic
for this month. I'm taking my cues from some of his topics. For instance, the
title at the top: Wrapping it up. Fournel tells us that the word emballer,
meaning literally "to wrap it up" is also French cycling slang for sprinting
to the finish. So here we are in the month of January, 2008, or more precisely,
as I write this, in the last week of 2007. We are coming down the final kilometer
of the stage, getting ready to sprint to the finish line at the end of the year.
And of course wrapping it up also means tying up all sorts of loose ends, which
is what journalists love to do at the end of the year. Newspapers between Christmas
and New Years are aglut with retrospectives on every sort of topic with every
sort of spin. So I'm getting on that flashback bandwagon and revisiting a few
of my columns from recent months, refracted through that many-faceted Fournel
lens.
But first I will revisit one column that does not contain an obvious cross-reference
to one of Fournel's topics, and that is the one I wrote in February about having
done 52 centuries in the previous year. In the French world of metrics, centuries
would be meaningless as goals in and of themselves. Plus I'm not sure Paul would
relate to the notion of riding just to be able to enter some big figures in a
log book. Frankly, I am fully sympathetic to that point of view. I'm not big
on piling up big numbers myself, and if and when I do so, it is not for the sake
of the numbers that it happens. The log book follows the bike, not the other
way around. But as I noted at the time, I sort of stumbled into that century
challenge by half-assed happenstance, and then, when it took on a life of its
own, I simply, quite literally rolled with it.
Anyway, bottom line was a grand total of 52 centuries for 2006...the iconic one-a-week.
Because the total was published at our club Century Challenge website, I got
all sorts of props and kudos from my friends for doing it. It was pathetically
gratifying to garner all that attention. I confess I enjoyed my little moment
of glory. This year (2007), I did just about half that many, as I had predicted
would be the case. The fitness from the previous year carried over, so all of
the two dozen centuries I did were pleasantly effortless and uneventful.
The only reason I'm reviewing this item at all is because one of my friends put
it all in perspective this year. While I was basking in the glow of my 52-century
triumph from 2006, Craig Robertson was racking up 70 of them in 2007.
Back in October, when I saw his total soaring beyond 60, I sent him a congratulatory
note. He replied: "Being that it is a Paris-Brest-Paris year, that made for some
really long rides that ran up the numbers a bit. But I usually do a lot of 100-120-mile
rides on the weekends, along with a decent number of doubles and brevets. In
addition to four 200-k brevets, I did a 300-k, 400-k, 600-k, PBP, and nine official
CTC doubles this year." He also noted that, as of October, he had already logged
over 17,000 miles. I suppose he must have knocked down close to 20,000 for the
whole year.
Some people might consider this excessive or obsessive. It's not for me to say
whether it is or isn't. We each manage our lives in different ways. Some would
have said my 52-century binge was over the top, but I found the project to be
comfortable and well within sane and balanced parameters, at least for one year.
I mention Craig's whopper of a year not only to give him a well-deserved "Chapeau!" but
also to point out this little truth: no matter how well you've done or how glossy
your numbers, there is always going to be someone out there who has done better
and logged bigger, glossier numbers. Humble pie is available at every roadside
rest stop cafe we visit on our rides. And thank goodness for that! If it weren't
for those over-achievers who keep us humble, we might tend to become legends
in our own minds; to take ourselves just a wee bit too seriously. So thanks to
Craig for restoring my perspective about my year of only 52 centuries.
In August I wrote about the Tour de France, which was primarily a tale about
doping. Fournel has his little essay on doping too: "Competition produces doping,
just as taxes produce fraud. It's commonly said that racers dope because it's
a hard sport, but their sport is also hard precisely because they dope." He doesn't
pass judgment on the doping nor propose any solutions; just notes its existence
and acknowledges how difficult is has always been and will always be to root
it out and clean up the game.
Recall the bombshells of the Tour: Vinokourov busted and their whole
Astana team tossed out of the tour on its collective ass. Rasmussen
tossed out of the tour by his Rabobank team manager while in the maillot
jaune, handing the tour on a silver platter to Albertor Contador,
Levi Leipheimer, Johann Bruyneel and the Discovery team. Incredible!
That was then. Now? The all-conquering Discovery team has disbanded, as the sponsor
sought to distance itself from the taint of cycling's tawdry reputation. So where
did all those Disco boys go when their ship sank? They swam across en masse to
the thoroughly discredited Astana team, which had in the meantime thrown all
its own bad boys overboard. Now the Discos are the Astanas. Astonishing! Meanwhile,
Rasmussen is suing his former Rabobank team, for exactly what I'm not sure. His
team manager has admitted that perhaps he was a little hasty and drastic in his
firing of Rasmussen (which is what I implied at the time), and no doubt that
public admission will be presented in evidence as the suit makes it way through
the courts. Rasmussen remains one of the biggest names in the sport without a
team or contract for the new year, which seems a bit odd--to me at least--seeing
as how he has never failed a drug test and has yet to be charged or sanctioned
by the UCI for any drug infractions, aside from the so-called clerical error
of failing to properly document his whereabouts last June.
One way or another, all of the awful news stories were a catastrophe for the
sport, in light of all the sponsor desertions. Or--spun another way--the catastrophe
was the light at the end of the tunnel, showing that we are getting on top of
the problem, finally.
The really big doping news since the Tour has little to do directly with cycling.
First, there was the sad story of Marion Jones, the likeable superstar sprinter,
who admitted to doping in track meets, and was stripped of all five of her Olympic
medals and may yet have to do hard time in jail. Then the Mitchell Report hit
the streets, with its sweeping allegations about doping in baseball...naming
names of dozens of players, including several who had, prior to the report, been
considered locks for the Hall of Fame. Now they're enshrined in the Hall of Shame.
What's interesting about the report and its aftermath--the media feeding frenzy--is
how much it all looks and sounds exactly like the same sorry stories that have
besmirched the sport of bicycle racing for so many years. Various club house
support personnel and trainers--let's just call them soigneurs--have testified
about injecting the famous players with steriods; then the players in question
have either denied it outright or equivocated by saying, yeah, I did it, but
only once or only a little. Reminds me of Basso saying he had his blood drawn
and stored, but then never transfused it. Okaaaaay.... Do you believe Roger Clemens
when he denies it, or do you believe the club house flunky when he says he did
it, and has the receipts and documents to back it up? Do you believe Floyd Landis
and Tyler Hamilton and Iban Mayo or do you believe the UCI and the French testing
lab?
All these years, while cycling has been the butt of jokes and a target of scorn
because it has been washing its dirty laundry in public, the other, bigger, mainstream
sports have been every bit as guilty--or so it would appear--and virtually nothing
has been done about it. Even now, after the Mitchell Report, not much is going
to happen, as far as I can tell. So far, the penalties for doping infractions
in baseball amount to a slap on the wrist. First offense: a ten-game suspension;
second, twenty-games. First offense in cycling: a two-year ban; second, gone
for life. And there was the NFL player who admitted to using steroids recently.
His punishment? A four-game suspension! Please don't try to tell me cycling is
the black sheep in the sporting herd.
Cheating has always been a part of baseball, from spitballs to corked bats to
stolen signs. Players pumping up on HGH is just the lastest twist in the old
tale. What's more, cheating has been a boon to the bottom line for baseball.
Everyone loves offense, with towering home runs sailing clear out of the ballparks.
It fills the seats and it fills the pockets of team owners and players alike.
Anyone attempting to shine a spotlight of censure on all that fun has been seen,
up to now, as pretty much of a party pooper. It's been all, "Nudge, nudge, wink,
wink" and look the other way for years in the grand old game. Will that change
now? Hard to say. Will all the pious breast-beating of the self-proclaimed clean
teams in cycling change our beloved sport for the better? Hard to say. We enter
the new year with our fingers crossed, hoping for the best: that no new scandals
rock the sport; or if any do, that they will finally be overshadowed by bigger
debacles in baseball and elsewhere. Perhaps, finally, sports fans out there in
the larger world will understand that cycling isn't any dirtier or more compromised
than all the rest of the sports we know and enjoy.
Fournel has a nice piece in his book called Friends: about one's immediate
circle of cycling companions. "A group of buddies on bikes is almost always a
group at the same level. You have to be in physical complicity to ride really
well together. it's not a question of everyone being the same or having equal
strength; it's just that each person has to contribute something to the group."
We all understand this to be true, I think. I have written about my own circle
of riding companions on many an occasion. We have had a fine group for many years,
known variously as the Lazy Boyz & Girlz or the Loose Caboose. It's our little
gang of kindred spirits who not only stick together within the matrix of larger
club rides but also meet on weekday afternoons for unstructured rides of our
own devising. Looking back over 2007 however, I am forced to contemplate the
disintegration of our once lively cohort. The pushes and pulls of each of our
lives have driven wedges into the group and broken it apart.
Bob followed a job to the Sierra foothills. Rich fell in love and followed his
heart to Sacramento. (Both come back every few weeks to visit, so we still do
get to ride together now and then. But it's not the same as those weekly, weekday
adventures.) Wes took a job as a wrench for the BMC Racing Team and was constantly
gone to race meets with the team. Robert left us in 2006 for the big peloton
in the sky. Firouzeh took a real job in the City that left her no time for afternoon
rides. Emilio is still around, but has become so involved with his new passion--winemaking--that
cycling has taken a back seat in his world. (He still makes himself available
to ride now and then, when chores in the vineyard and winery are not too pressing,
so to speak. But the wine comes first, whenever there's a conflict.) Likewise,
Kathy has turned her new passion--beekeeping--into such a busy hive of activity
that she has little time for riding with old friends. And so it goes...one by
one, the old gang slips away. There are a few others who are or were sometimey
partners in our little band, but after enough defections, the center no longer
holds and the general, critical-mass momentum bleeds away, so that the remaining
few can't keep things going.
It's not easy to replace and reinvent such a cohesive group of like-minded goofballs.
And so I end up riding alone, at least for the time being. I like riding alone.
I have always done more of it than of any sort of group riding. But I do miss
the dynamic of our little gang...the carefree, whimsical interaction of the different,
disparate players, all coming together in a whirling-dervish dance. The easy
rolling miles; the long, lung-busting climbs; the darting, diving descents; the
good company...the wit and repartee and banter...the shared group-mind: that
we are, in spite of our differences, all in this together.
Ah well... Such is life. Nothing stays the same forever. Our lives branch and
braid, tangle together for a time and then fan out to new opportunities, new
horizons. We'll still get together now and then, our little band of brothers
and sisters, like old fogeys at a class reunion. But it appears those happy afternoons
of spontaneous combustion may be a thing of the past.
No sense in moping about it though. Fournel ends his slim volume with a tale
about a time in his own life when he was forced by circumstance to give up cycling;
to lose, for awhile, that connection to the road and to his own cohort of biking
buddies. He ends with a vow: "to return to a country with pretty roads." Indeed.
With or without old friends, this is where you will find me in 2008: heading
out along the pretty roads; the never-ending, ever-meandering pretty roads.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net