September | 2016 | Steve Tilford

Okay, I’m out riding and saw the comments on my phone and have to believe that some of you guys researched this enough to confirm it isn’t George that posted this, so this post is complete bullshit.

*Okay, another update now. I guess it is true. So weird. So, disregard the above paragraph.

I saw this Facebook post by George Hincapie that says he had an encounter with a motorist on Paris Mountain and the guy stopped and pulled a gun and him and his 8 year old son.

I’m not sure what to think about this. Obviously, my initial impression like everyone else, that it is horrific. But, there must be something else going on here. His reaction seems screwy.

If this happened to me, in the exact same circumstances, me, out riding with my 8 year old son, I would have immediately dialed 911 and had a police officer out there as soon as possible. He was with his child. How did he know the guy wouldn’t come back and do more than threaten him. The guy had already tried to assault him. But, it doesn’t seem like George did this.

Instead he posted a photo on Facebook, warning “his” cycling community to be careful incase they run into this guy.

Plus, the photo has the license plate number of the car the guy was driving. Do you think he wants one of his Facebook friends to help out in this matter, whatever that might be?

I can’t think of a reason in the world that George wouldn’t have called the police unless something else is going on. Well, I can. Maybe he just wants to take matters into his own hands. Or the hands of his posse or something. If he wanted to do it himself, he surely wouldn’t have posted the picture on Facebook.

Any other ideas?

I went over to the Walberg’s and did some measuring of a porch roof that needs to be redone. It is a super cool porch, with a tongue and groove ceiling and skylights, but has an ancient tar and gravel roof that leaks. And I happen to know how to adhere rubber roofing, so it is a perfect fit.

I put a huge, well maybe not huge compared to warehouses and giant manufacturing plants, but huge for a few bike racers learning how to roof as we go, rubber roof on. This roof was on a building my grandmother bought back in the early 50’s. It had continually leaked and should have been replaced a decade earlier.

This was 7 years ago. I probably wouldn’t have started the project without Michael Fatka just showing up in Topeka ready to work. He ended up staying there for over a month, helping out immensely.

It took me nearly 60 days straight of 16-20 hours days to complete. I am still amazed that I didn’t really run out of steam with so little sleep. I owe that to bike racing. I saved somewhere are 80K I figure. I spent $16000 and half of that was on insulation.

I only rode 3 miles in two months. The longest I’d ever taken off the bike since I was in high school. And it worked out fine. I felt better that February than I had in years. Weird.

Anyway, it was the biggest single project that I’ve continuously done. Normally a whole roofing crew would have been involved. Roofs usually need to be replaced in a hasty fashion. We got pretty lucky with the weather.

The Walberg’s roof is much smaller. I learned a ton, so it should go way quicker. Micheal still needs a new roof too. I patched that one together last fall and it has been problematic, so it needs to be completely ripped off and replaced. I didn’t realize how many flat roofs were out there.

There is a certain comradery working together in manual labor brings. I didn’t realize it so much until after this project. It is sort of like a bike racing team. Pretty rewarding. Okay, here are some pictures of the project. I had just started writing web posts and had Google ads back then. All the ads changed from bike related subjects to roofing advertisements. That was the sign I needed to finish up the job.