March | 2013 | Steve Tilford

I didn’t fall in love with riding my bike initially when I got into the sport. That isn’t completely true, but there was a time after I had bought a nice bike that I was wavering on whether it was my passion.

My brother and I mowed lawns for a couple years to save up enough money to order Schwinn Sports Tourers. There were about $220. My bike came in and he was back ordered. In the meantime, a new bike shop opened in town that sold European bikes. He went over there and realized that a Schwinn was not a good deal compared to the lightweight bikes the new shop sold. So, Kris gave up his $5 deposit and bought a Motebecane Grand Record. His bike weighed about 10 lbs less than mine. It came with Campy derailluers and sewup tires.

Anyway, we started going to bike tours to ride. We didn’t ride much between the tours, just at the Tours. The problem was that we didn’t have a car and usually went with our friend Ed Bauman, who owned a VW pickup truck (I bought it from him and own it still). Thus, we were always late. Unless the tour was local, we never got to the start anywhere close to when it started.

One time we went over to the town of Leavenworth to ride a century. It is hilly over there. We got there at least a couple hours late and there wasn’t anyone at the start. Ed immediately took off and dropped us. So we, started the tour and pretty much rode as hard as we could until we couldn’t really ride any more. And that happened to me sooner than Kris.

It wasn’t a uncommon thing back then to walk the hills, towards the end of the tour especially. You’d come up to a steep hill and there would be a ton of people just walking up them. Since I didn’t know any better and since I was completely done, I just dismounted and walked. I’m not sure if people just didn’t know how to shift or were just so unfit they couldn’t ride them, but everyone did it. I probably weighted about 90 lbs then and the Schwinn was over 30. Anyway, towards the end of the tour, Kris and I were riding by ourselves, no one in sight in front of us or behind. Kris was riding the climbs and I was walking them. Kris kept encouraging me by telling me it was the last climb and we were almost done. It wasn’t really working because when I got to the top and saw the next one it just made me crazy mad.

I barely made it to the finish of that tour. I was destroyed. I was at a tipping point at that time of my life right then. I wasn’t enjoying the sport much. I truly took the addition of the competition to add enough more to the sport to keep me involved. I started racing pretty soon after that and that aspect of the sport drew me in like crazy. It was the racing, the tactics and strategy that intrigued me.

Obviously, that isn’t the only reason that I am still riding and racing my bike. But, I very much doubt I would be still doing it without the combination of all aspects of the sport. I have to admit, I’ve never again had to walk up a hill, training or in a race as far as I can remember. And I’ve ridden a ton of very steep hills around the world. From the 30% grades in the British Milk race to the cobbled climbs in Belgium, I’ve always stayed on my bike. I’m sure there will come a time when I revert back to the beginning and have to walk hills. By then, I’m hoping it won’t bother me much.

This was pretty much Kris’s Motebecane Grand Record. It was a pretty bike.

Looks like my VW pickup, only mine is in much worse condition now.

I rode this street up and down when I was in New Zealand. It is pretty steep.

Yesterday we spent the morning touring Louisville with our friends Karl and Stacie, then headed back to Topeka early afternoon. We went to the Kentucky Science Center and saw the Body Worlds exhibition and then watched an IMAX movie on the body. After that we headed over to the river and walked on a new pedestrian bridge that spans the Ohio River. The weird part about the bridge is that it is open on the Kentucky side and not finished on the Indiana side, so it is a dead end.

Driving back, we needed to make haste because an early spring snow storm was moving toward Northeast Kansas. We really didn’t stop and pretty much only ate jelly beans and drank coffee the whole way home. It started raining pretty good when we nearly got to Columbia Missouri and by the time we got to Kansas City, it was a full on blizzard. We were driving in the Honda Insight and it is so light that it doesn’t like going super fast in the snow. It didn’t matter because we got stuck behind the plows in Lawrence, so only drove 35 mph most of the way home on the Interstate.

I just went out and got the paper and there is about 8 inches of wet snow on the ground right now. Of course that would be the case the first day that I am near a bike and have the okay to try to ride some. It’s been over 6 weeks since I last rode outside, so what’s another day?

I’ve been messing with my shoulder, kneading it some and realize that a lot of the issues I’m having is the scars I have at the 5 holes cut through the muscle for the arthroscopic tools. These are not insignificant holes. The scars are deep and thick. I’m figuring if I can get these scars under control, my arm is going to work a bunch better. I’m still not really sleeping much, so I’m anxious for my shoulder to get better because training and not sleeping really doesn’t work very well.

One Kansas basketball team is already in the Sweet Sixteen. Wichita State pretty much schooled Gonzaga the last 3 minutes of the game and deserved the win. Kansas is playing late this afternoon against North Carolina. If they don’t play better than Friday, they are not going to be playing any more basketball after today. Hopefully they show up today.

I’m thinking about heading down to Austin the next couple days. The weather looks bad here and it is really not that far of a drive. My friend Ann got a new puppy and her other dog, Stanley, is feeling a little blue. Bromont could fix that in a second, since Stanley and Bromont are such good buddies.

So, sports spectating is the plan today. First Gent-Wevelgem in about an hour. Click here for the links. You could watch some of the Criterium International too if you don’t get enough bike racing. Here are some links. Then KU basketball later this afternoon. I’m going to ride inside for a while in between and hopefully get a couple more hours sleep. Guess that is kind of a full day using my present scale.

Karl, Trudi, B-man, me and Stacie at the new pedestrian bridge in Louisville.

Here’s pretty much the position that Don Walker was in the last 3 hours I was with him. He cooked up a super great shrimp pasta dinner and then made incredible omelets on Saturday morning.