Someone told me about a post that Shaun Wallace put on Facebook that had a copy of some old results from the Nature State Stage Race in Arkansas, back in the early 90’s.   I hadn’t thought about that race in a long time.  It was a super good race, as most of the races in Arkansas are.  That state is one of the most under the radar states in the country.

I finally went to Facebook and looked for the results.  What surprised me was that I thought that I was 2nd in the time trial, not third, sort of tied with Shaun.  I knew Michael Engleman had won the stage, but I thought I was a little closer to his time and didn’t remember Shaun there at all. Michael, Shaun and I had all ridden together on the Wheaties/Schwinn team a couple years earlier, so we were all buddies.

I looked down the results and was surprised about how many guys I knew.  It is strange doing a race like Joe Martin and such and not knowing the majority of guys racing.  Back then I knew pretty much everyone in the race.  There are a few names on the first page of the results that I don’t recognized, but I know nearly everyone.

The race was pretty much a hillclimb.  It was just a few hundred meters flat, then you did a left turn, crossed some railroad tracks and rode up a pretty steep hill.  I pre-rode the course and realized it was better going fast at the top when everyone else was going to be going slow.  So I started super easy and then kept it in my big ring for the climb.  Nathan Sheafor, a friend from Topeka, who was also on the 1992 Olympic team with Lance came up to me after the race and said he thought I won.  He said I was going way faster than anyone he saw finish at the top.

What he didn’t realize is how slow I was going on the flat.  I talked to Michael and looked at his computer.  He had a 33 mph max speed and mine was 25.  Pretty huge speed differential there.Plus, I was still riding downtube shifters.  Nearly everyone else in the top 10 had STI levers, which would have probably been a few seconds at the end.  I did call Shimano up after the race and got a pair of shifters, which was super exciting at the time.

I wasn’t even racing on the road full time that year.  I was doing the full MTB season and was using this race as training for that. Thus, the free agent designation beside my name.  I was racing for Schwinn off-road.

Anyway, look at the names on the results. A couple of Olympic champions, Tour stage winners, tons of National Champions, etc.  And also a bunch of the guys that would go on to be the best riders we had in the 90’s.  This was kind of the tipping point of before, then after doping got super ingrained on the US rider side.

I remember talking to Lance and he told me that in 1993, when he won the Triple Crown and Pro Road Worlds, that was all him.  He was on “bread and water”.  I told him that he could never convince me that was true.  Two years earlier I could beat him in a hillclimb TT and then in Philadelphia, riding up the wall, he could go 5 mph faster uphill.  I witnessed it with my own eyes and knew that it was an impossible jump in ability.

Sally Jenkins, Lance’s autobiographer did an interview and said she thought all the guys that got caught up in doping in cycling would be looked back as victims.  I don’t see any victims on these pages of results.  Just a bunch of guys that loved to travel around and race their bikes.  It sure got way more complicated.   Life was much simpler back then.

Tucker was way interested in this rat at the pet store yesterday.

Cycling is an eclectic sport.  And since the planet is full of eclectic people, it is a good fit.

I’ve had a ton of experiences through the sport of cycling that are my life memories.  Most of the big moments in my life can be attributed or connected in someway to cycling.  That really isn’t a big surprise since I’ve been competing since I was a teenager and a lot of my daily routine is involved in the sport somehow.

I was thinking yesterday about how expensive cycling clothing has become.  It seems like the evolution of cycling clothing is making more expensive stuff.  It isn’t that unusual to have cycling shorts costing close to $200.  There are lots that are nearly double that.  I’m not sure why that has happened.

If you compare the cost of cycling clothing historically to that of regular everyday clothing, cycling clothing has a huge inflation rate in comparison.

When I first started riding, a good pair of wool cycling shorts, with a leather chamois, cost about the same as a pair of Levis jeans.  Now that same pair of jeans is around $40.  And the cycling shorts don’t have a leather chamois and the other materials should cost way less than wool.

But that isn’t the point of  this post.  Thinking about the cost of cycling clothing got me thinking about selling used clothing.  I used to have a swap meet/garage sale at home when there was a race in Topeka.  I’d sell all my used stuff for next to nothing.  It is funny seeing guys out riding in my old Wheaties/Schwinn jerseys nowadays.

I was just trying to get rid of old stuff, jerseys with out of date sponsors, etc.

One time, before the internet, I got a phone call from some guy in San Francisco.  He wanted to buy some old clothing and shoes.  He said it didn’t matter what size the shoes were and the wanted either bib shorts or a skinsuit.  He asked me if I’d wear the stuff, then not wash it and ship it to him.  I thought that was pretty strange.  But he was paying me nearly full retail for the stuff, so I figured it wasn’t up to me to judge him.

I don’t remember how he paid me.  I think he sent me a check, then I sent him the clothing.  A couple weeks later, he called me back and thanks me.  He said he wanted another skinsuit and he would pay me three times what he paid for the first one.  I’m making this up, but something like $150, for a skinsuit that would have sold new for $50.

The catch was he wanted me to wear it 5 days in a row, then put it in a plastic bag to ship.  This was getting creepy.  I didn’t want to insult the guy by asking a bunch of questions, so kind of just let it drop, being very non-committal about whether I had another one to sell.

A few days later, a check showed up in the mail that was for $50 more than he had offered.  I kind of felt obligated to send him the skinsuit.  But I wasn’t going to wear it 5 days straight without washing it.  I did go out on a couple hot rides, wearing once without washing it was the best I could do.  Then I just left it on my bedroom floor for the remaining 3 days, letting it dry.  I couldn’t stand the idea of packing a stinky, sweaty, skinsuit into a plastic bag and then shipping it.

The next week I flew out to California to race and was telling my teammates about this guy.  It turned out that he had called most of them and had bought stuff too.  Then I was talking to guys from other teams and he had bought clothing from them.  It didn’t seem like cost was a factor.  I’d done alright, but some other riders had really sold the guy a ton of stuff.

I always wondered what the guy did with the clothing.  In the back of my mind, I thought that maybe I’d get a call from the SF police department asking about the bib shorts.  Saying they had found a corpse at a party with my bib shorts wrapped around their neck.

I have to say this is probably the one strangest thing I’ve come across in the sport, so far.  Maybe it isn’t that weird.  Maybe the guy was making a cycling museum or something in his basement and wanted authentic smells or something.

I hadn’t thought about this guy in a long time.  It just makes me laugh thinking back upon it.

Not my pile, but I could have one 10x as big.

Tucker is feeling the dog days of summer.