Seems like I’m going to be spending a bunch of time in Vail the next couple weeks. I’ve always liked spending time here in the summer, but have never spent much time here in the winter. This isn’t how I would really like to be spending my winter time here, but it’s not a choice I get to make.

Anyway, I’ve been coming to Vail to race bikes since, the late 70’s. That is nuts even writing that. I can’t tell you the first time I raced in Vail, it must have been a criterium, probably during the Red Zinger or Coor’s Classic, but it’s been a long time.

Then when I switched over to racing MTB more full time, each year there was always a World Cup, or even the World Championships held there. When I was interviewed about my favorite place to race, I would always say Vail, even though I usually, personally, sucked racing there. I never had very good luck racing higher altitude MTB races. I loved racing there because the town of Vail treated the bike race very well. They closed down the main streets and had us race right through the middle of the village. Plus, the town and hotels never jacked the event with jacking up the prices when the race came. The race circuit went to Traverse City, Big Bear and such. Each one of those events, you would pay out the wazoo for an old, seedy room. In Vail, they would just honor the summer rates and you were staying in beautiful, new hotels and condos.

The crowds for the Vail criterium in the Coor’s race were incredible. The whole course would be lined 5 deep. We’d usually ride a time trial in the morning up the frontage road towards Vail Pass. The same course that the Pro Challenge used for the time trial.

Sometimes racing in Vail I would surprise myself. One year for the Coor’s race, I was riding for the La Vie Claire Team. A then start up company, Krestrel, built me a custom frame to race. The first time I rode the bike was for the Vail TT. Paul Koechli, the team director of La Vie Claire came up to me before my start and told me to take it easy during the time trial. That I was supposed to be helping Roy Knickman and Andreas Kappas in the afternoon. I remember just cruising up the TT, whenever I got a little winded I would shift down in the back. All the time, everyone lining the hill would be saying something about the Krestrel frame. It was a very good promotion for them. The strange part was that when I got to 2 km to go, I wasn’t the least bit tired, so I stood up and rode the last mile off my seat, staying in my big ring. I don’t remember my exact place, I believe top ten, but it was the best, by far that I’d even done in that time trial.

When the Mountain Bike Worlds were held in Vail in 1994, it was the first year I rode for Specialized with Ned. I never rode well at altitude. We’d raced in Big Bear at altitude a couple weeks earlier, then the World Cup finals in Silver Star, BC Canada, sort of at altitude and then stayed in Vail up until Worlds. After a month at altitude, I must of been sort of used to it. I started at he back of the field because I had to ride the qualifying race. I ended up moving up the whole day and finished 12th place that year, the 3rd American, behind Tinker, who finished 2nd and Paul Willerton, who was 6th. Ned was sick before the race and finished behind me in 15th. That result for sure secured me a contract with Specialized for the next few years. It is strange how one thing can shape your future.

Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed Vail. I never would be out here right now if it wasn’t because of knowing Mike Kloser from racing mountain bikes. He’s from Iowa, but has lived in Vail ever since I met him. He is a legend here and got me into see Dr. Millett. It is strange how connections open doors. I’m going to be out here for the next couple weeks, at least, doing physical therapy on my shoulder. I hope to feel better soon, so I can get to enjoy some of the city. I plan to do a whole bunch of walking around and hiking the next few weeks.

Changing the dressing yesterday.

Click to enlarge.

I think this is the start of the Vail Criterium in 1984, This is Alexi, Ron Keifel and myself. That was an Olympic year and they only allowed National Teams in the race. The US got three teams, the red team, white team and blue team.

This is Cadel Evans racing MTB in Vail back in the day.

I am eating a lot of pills right now. I could be taking more, but I’m kind of administering them selectively. Most the time it is working, but when I’m off, I’m really off and I pay the price.

I’ve never been big on taking pills, but this is a completely different scenario than I’ve been involved in before. You need to take pills to kill the pain. And then you have to take pills that counter the side effects of the other pills. I feel like Richard Virenque who after denying taking anything in the Festina Affair, admitted under oath he took something like 1000 injects that year. That seemed like a huge number to me. And now, after the surgery, I have a huge number of pill bottles laying around here.

I’ve only recently started understanding how many different medicines that are prescribed here in the United States. It is unreal. But, that isn’t what this post is about. It’s about trying to get common medicine, at least for us, in other countries.

I went down to Brazil to race a Specialized Catus Cup back in the late 90’s. I took Trudi with me and Todd Tanner, then a downhill rider, went too.

A couple days before the race, we went out to the jungle outside of Sao Paulo to do a photo shoot with a Brazilian MTB magazine. When we got done with the shoot, we were driving on a dirt road and came upon a woman that was walking by herself. We had this translator with us, his name was Arturo. He was was a strange dude, sort of a modern day Renaissance guy. He told the driver to stop and asked the woman if she wanted a ride into the city, which was a few miles away. She said yes instantly.

She got into the car and Arturo asked her what she was doing. She said that she was walking into this very small village to get some Aspirin for her sick kid. The child had a fever for the previous 3 days. This was all in Portuguese, so I had no idea what they were talking about. Arturo out of the blue asked me if I had any aspirin with me. I had my toilet kit and happened to have a medium size ( for the US) bottle of aspirin. He told the driver to stop driving and we went back to my bag and got the aspirin. It was a bottle of 250 or so I’d probably bought at Walgreens for 2 dollars.

Arturo said she would like to buy 10 from me and offered me 10 Brazilian Real, which was just about one to one back then. I thought, what is she talking about. Everything was much cheaper in Brazil then. I told her that I would just give her the aspirin. After thinking about it for a second, I took 10 aspirin out of the bottle to keep and gave her the rest of the bottle.

That is when it started getting weird. She said that she absolutely would not take the bottle of aspirin. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was adamant about it. I told Arturo to explain to her that these pills were very inexpensive in the United States and that I really didn’t want to fly back with them. He explained, but it was no use.

I can’t remember exactly how it turned out, but she paid me money for some aspirin. I think I maybe convinced her to take a handful and she gave me the 10 R$. The was nothing I could do to not except the money.

I’ve thought about this woman and the encounter lots over the years. I sort of understand it, but probably will never completely understand all the reasons that this woman was too proud to except free medicine from a stranger. And, I’ll never understand why these important pills/medicine, was so expensive for a poor Brazilian woman. Out of all the experiences I had on that trip, this stands out most.

Here are the masses of pills I’m supposed to be taking. A lot start with oxy, which I can’t complain about one bit.

This is how ragged I look, and feel, after consuming most of the pills above.

This is Brooke, my physical therapist at the Steadman Clinic. She’s really great and super gentle.

I left the hospital with prescription for aspirin. I’ve been taking the 81 mg ones ever since I got that blood clot in my leg from crashing last April. I wasn’t positive that they sold the 325mg over the counter still after seeing this. They do.

I think that this is the tendon that he got cinched back on.

Here is the finished product. There are some anchors screwed into the Humerus, holding the sutures in place.