More wall art

All the Italian bikes I've ridden -save one- have broken.

The Atala was nostalgic to a brief team experience in 1987. Primarily a fixed gear for winter training in recent years, I found a cracked lower head tube lug the other day while cleaning the other bikes I haven't ridden all year.

The trusty winter work horse Scapin, which did me well at Copperopolis during it's single race season, served mostly as a winter bike in California, Washington and Colorado but had one French race appearance at the Grand Prix Lillars. It had a crack around the brazeon guide for the rear brake cable at the front of the top tube, like a loose tooth, for a number of years. I stashed the Scapin in an attic in rural Flanders with a suitcase of clothes and a sleeping bag; never to be retrieved.

My Bianchi; the only bike I was ever paid to ride, fell apart at the head tube AND the bottom bracket much like the rider who starved on it.

The Bottechia Time Trial bike cries of dated technology akin to a DeLorian. Ridden by multiple riders including future champions, it's song ran out and landed with me. Now hanging in the attic with the rest, it's the one bike that is not broken but is completely useless with it's tiny front wheel and 1988 Swatch-watch paint job. Like a leasure suit that is not only out of fashion but long since grown out of in the waist, its fun to look at and think, "That was state of the art?"

A fork blade on the Guerciotti Cyclocross bike severed from the crown like a femur from it's head at the hip joint. The bike disapeared to a new home some years ago with an American made Serotta replacement fork. I still use the fork blade as an extension lever on socket wrenches to loosen super tight bolts. I think the broken blade is more useful than the bike ever was complete.

Next to these beautiful but broken and useless machines in my attic is another collection, one of crutches, canes, a walker and a geriatric portable toilet. Coincidence?

A Good Day at the Dairy

On Sunday, 1200 or so people raced at the Alpenrose Cross Crusade Cyclocross race. Which is good if your into huge crowds at bike races. I took G to watch. He mostly slept. It was a good day.

I've had good and bad luck at Alpenrose. Both on the velodrome and at cyclocross races. Never an average day, just the extremes. My first good day there was in like 1975 when visiting my cousins. Kathy was there for a horse riding day-camp and my aunt took Kevin and I to pick her up. Kev and I were like 4 or 5 then and we played in the mini-western town and looked at the velodrome and the people riding on it. Bikes on a track were well over my head but the experience of visiting had a subconscious positive impact.

I had a good day in a cross race there in 1999. It was dry, cool, windy and I had the kind of legs one rides all summer in search of. While racing through the mini-western town 20+ years after my first visit, I remembered clearly playing there with Kevin on the wooden sidewalks. On the back side, the northerly dirt side of property, I put some hurt to the pedals every lap, purging my anger of losing Kev. Around the ball field, onto the pavement and back through the western town I fondly remembered us as kids, all while I whirled through the turns on soft, knobby tires.

The top of the heap bad day was rolling the only tubular (tire glued onto the rim of the wheel)I ever have and breaking my shoulder on the track. That was 2003 which was a crap-tastic summer all the same. Neighbor Dave and I were growing mullets and A wasn't too happy with me for that; much less getting banged up bike racing. She came home, saw me lying in bed with ice on my shoulder asked what happened and immediately turned around leaving the house. When she returned she had a case of Henry's and said, "This is your sympathy; you can drink it all at once or milk it as long as you can. But when the beer is gone, so is my compassion."

The following Saturday she came home again, around 10.30 from having had coffee that morning with a friend. Finding me trying to mow the lawn wearing cut off shorts, a cut off sleeveless T-shirt, flip flops, bed-head mullet and a Henry's in the hand of my bad wing as a reminder not to use that arm to push the mower. She called me an embarrassment to the neighborhood, sent me inside and finished the front yard herself.

The picture up top is from the 2005 Six Day which takes the cake for best days since it was a week long. Bill and I rode it together in the heat of his Captain America phase. It was the week after I graduated from PSU and it rained every other day so we didn't even have to race all week! I spent my days casually looking for a job, watching movies, napping and my evening riding with perhaps my last descent legs. We finished second when it was all said and done, beat only by a duo containing perhaps the best loved bike racer in Oregon teamed with a guy I was coaching. So that was kind of a personal victory as well.

Regardless of my past, Gavin had a good day Sunday. Perhaps the best nap he had all week. I showed him off to everyone I knew, barely gimped around the course with friends I haven't been able to ride with all year, and watched a race I was okay with not being in this time around.