Bicycles, Commuters, Athletes, and Intellectuals

Our bike shop, Lulu's, at 3089 Telegraph Ave
in Berkeley, California

For years, I was an elite racer,
riding the most expensive equipment, smiling for photos, and driving or flying thousands of miles a year to race Olympic and National champions. It was a beautiful and fulfilling endeavor.

It was also a little surprising, since I grew up in an intellectual family that looked down on athletes as "shallow." We rode bikes. My daddy used bicycles as interesting example problems in the course he taught with Peter Doyle, called "Geometry and the Imagination." We went places on bikes - to school, to my daddy's office, to the pick-your-own strawberry farm, to summer camp three states away. But we didn't "work out."

After years as an athlete who rode in weightless circles for the sake of pure motion, it's nice to be back, running a commuter shop that caters to scholars. Because getting around was the whole reason that cycling became my passion.

Riding to Preschool behind
the "World's Greatest Geometer"
(my father)

Cycling medals, National and State championships

Randy Shoquist

I woke up this morning with a memory on my mind.
Randy Shoquist was a great match sprinter, and he was this really humble bike mechanic.
The first time I met him, I was riding my Schwinn High Plains around Portland, and I'd tacoed one of the wheels. It was a $300 mountain bike I'd had since I was 12. I went to 3 or 4 shops and all of them said it would cost me $150 to replace the wheel. I was just a poor college kid making minimum wage on my summer break. Thne I took it into Randy at Coventry Cycles...
"And he bent it back for you?" Dennis asked.
"Yeah."
"I did that 3 or 4 times yesterday."
"Randy stepped on my wheel a couple times and handed it back to me, charged me $10 minimum shop labor. I was pretty happy.
"The next time I encountered him was a few years later when I started racing. He had the flying 200 record at Alpenrose. He held that track record for 30 years. It was amazing.
"Then a couple years after that, Mike Murray, who was in charge of the velodrome in Portland, said that Norrene, my racer friend who promoted and took a couple people to the London Olympics, did "more with less than anyone else he knew. And Randy Shoquist did less with more."
And I looked at him and I said, "Randy went really fast."
That was what mattered to me. The physicality of it. Not whether you were sponsored or traveled to a bunch of fancy races. Physical speed.

"Opening up a bike store, now, makes me feel kind of like Randy."
"And it's a humble kind of bike store."
"Yeah."

Photo by James Mason, http://www.pbase.com/image/129875942

Disciplines

What I do, I like to do well. I’ve had some success racing bicycles on the road, the track, and in cyclocross. I’ve won elite national medals on road and track, and a masters national medal in cyclocross.
Last year, I got back onto the velodrome after a decade of absence, and I combined that with road racing and cyclocross. I had some success. But I learned – the hard way, as I seem to learn so many things – that, though I can do any of those disciplines well, I can’t do all three disciplines at a high level in one season.
“Discipline” has as much to do with punishment and domination as it has to do with devotion, understanding, and a life of faithful practice. Depending on its inflection, “discipline” can give a life structure and purpose, or, like in an abusive relationship, it can leave a person broken, fragmented, shut down, wandering, and lost.
So which discipline is it going to be this year? Well, cyclocross. That choice has more to do with timing than anything else. After a three-discipline season in 2012, I was hammered, overtrained, molested by a long string of injuries and illness, burnt out, and sick of cycling. I tried to quit racing for good in April. By June I had discovered (the hard way) that I love and enjoy and want and need to race my bike. It’s the end of July and I’m just toeing my way back towards the discipline of riding. Cyclocross happens late enough in the year that I can still hope to get all the way up to speed before the season ends.
The pure intense physical endeavor of racing is fun and games and punishing pain and grim hard work and serious indolence and satisfaction. I’m, tentatively, stoked.

Free Range Human

What does it mean to be a free range human?



Being a free range human means that my life, my work, my income, my self-expression come naturally and develop organically in healthy relationships to other people and the world around me. It means that my routines are comfortable and have enough space to let me be myself, and enough structure to allow me to coordinate with other people and develop stronger disciplines over time. For years I tried to fit myself into other people's molds and ideas of excellence, for instance the full time job. The most fulfilled people I know might roam around and move stuff for a living; they might sit and think for a living; they might ride bikes and talk to people for a living. It's a different combination for every free range human I've met, as unique and recognizable as a fingerprint. It's a way of dancing with life.

I started racing bikes in 1997 out of Portland, Oregon, where truly elite level racing was kind of rare at the time. For better and worse, I was always strongly independent and suspicious of authority. I quickly racked up some impressive national level results, but I also racked up some physical issues. I quit racing for a couple years, and when I started my comeback, dealing with the injuries and nagging issues became a necessity. In 2006, at the urging of my friend and teammate Sonya King who was interning as a PT in his office at the time, I started working with Curtis Cramblett on some lower back pain that kept me from racing and training. He was a big help, and he helped me to resolve my low back pain.

Injury would rear its ugly head again during the 2012 season and the 2012-2013 winter, in the form of debilitating pain in my right knee and my right hip. That’s a full year and a half of right leg dysfunction. I worked through it on my own and managed a good late summer season on the road and track, and a good mid-season of cyclocross racing. Then my knee started bugging me again, then my hip, and I missed the most of the end of the cyclocross season. I had a dismal nationals and skipped world championship altogether because I could not train or race around the hip pain.

I am stubborn and it took a complete athletic breakdown lasting months to send me back to the physical therapist for help again. I emailed Curtis. Curtis is a busy guy who travels a lot, and he recommended his colleague at Revolutions in Fitness, Mark McMahon.

Mark does excellent work. He’s got skills – he’s like a Rolfer, a Chiropractor, a Physical Therapist, and a Bike Fit expert all rolled up in one. He refers to different techniques and modalities from moment to moment depending on what will be the most beneficial. He doesn’t waste time. Like Curtis, Mark is also a sweet and inspiring guy. Working with Mark, I was consistently back in training within 2 sessions – after the full year and a half of tenuous contact with the bike.

We’re continuing to work together to resolve the issues that I’ve accrued over the years. Be better than I’ve been, and let Mark help you work stuff out before it becomes debilitating.

Tour de Nez 2012

Last Sunday was the Tour de Nez in its 20th anniversary. It is often a national calendar race, though not this year. A technical course, with seven corners and a corkscrew going into the final stretch. We had a high-quality field this year, with several riders each from four great pro teams (Exergy, Primal, NOW/ Novartis and Vanderkitten), and about fifteen local racers. It was windy, hot and dry. All of that makes for kind of an unforgiving peloton – there is not much “pack fodder” to help to hold things together, and things small gaps tend to increase in the wind.
About 12 minutes into the race, Mary Maroon, a very accomplished top local rider who wins many local races, broke away from the group by herself. “It’s not my job to chase that,” I thought from the middle the pack.
After a couple of laps, three riders – Taylor Wiles from Exergy, Emily Kachorek from Primal, and Robin Farina, last year’s national road race champion, from NOW/ Novartis – jumped away from the group to bridge up to Mary, making a four rider breakaway. I was boxed in at the time, but a few seconds later I jumped away with Ruth Winder, Vanderkitten, and we worked together to bridge up to the four, making a six rider breakaway.
For about a lap the three major pros did all the work at the front. Robin warned, “You have to work or we’ll start attacking you.” I moved to the front of the group and took a pull. Neither Ruth nor Mary had pulled through by the end of that lap. Robin attacked. Ruth fell off the pace.
The four of us worked together, and Mary kept about a bike length off the back of our group. She was playing invisible. The three pros were content to ignore her. But Mary is an excellent sprinter. I didn’t feel comfortable working that much harder than she was. I dropped to the back of the group, behind Mary, and sat out my pull. The other three suddenly noticed. Someone attacked and opened up a small gap. I accelerated around Mary, around the group, and took a fast pull. We dropped Mary.
The four of us worked together for the rest of the race, eventually lapping the rest of the field.
I was bawling an hour later. And I knew that I would be – that kind of physical intensity brings stuff up. Sad things.

I am racing as well as I think I ever have, and I feel like I have plenty of head room.
“It sounds like you do,” said Uncle George on Wednesday evening, over dinner just after I finally arrived in Rochester.
My dad’s eyes sparkled. He has a lot of trouble speaking these days. His mouth is a big mess. He can smile with his whole face.
“I almost didn’t race. I mean, really, fifteen or ten minutes before it was time to warm up, I really was tempted to get back in the car and drive home. So what if it’s three and a half hours each way? But I talked myself into engaging with the hard part of the warm up, and I lined up.”
“Where was this?”
“Reno, Nevada. I drove over Donner Pass to get there. It’s the course where I rolled a tire and crashed and hurt my knee last year. [My knee has been bothering me with intermittent intensity for the entire year.]
“I was feeling so good and strong and confident. Amber Rais was a few bike lengths off the front, and I was leading the pack after her. I took that corner really aggressively, I leaned hard into it. I was flying. And then my tire rolled, and I fell down.

"So this year I had trouble convincing myself to trust my tires, to trust the course. I kept reasoning with myself not to worry, but there is that visceral fear. It is not a course where you can afford to be afraid of the corners, because it is so technical. So I didn’t do very well in the sprint, and I finished fourth.“
“Wow,” Aunt Sally said on Thursday night, just back in Rochester after a conference in San Diego. In California, standards are higher. You’ve got to win the sprint. I’ve got to trust my tires. I came home yesterday.

Adventure Stories

My grandfather has been an inspiration to me for a long time. Maybe he's the reason I race bicycles. A week ago, my uncle Tom went to Ontario to move my Grandpa down to California. Grandpa flew in on Saturday night.
He’s had an interesting life. As a young man he was a successful chemist who registered 30 or 40 patents working for the USDA, including the original patent for epoxidized oils. Then he quit and left town, taught environmental studies for a couple years, canoed from New York City to Alaska with some of his studies, and finally settled on his forest in northwest Ontario.

My mom used to take me and the rest of the family up to Ontario sometimes to visit in the summer. When I was 3, they would plunk me down in a patch of blueberries and let me eat myself blue in the face. As long as the blueberries held out – and they were prodigious – I wouldn’t move. When I was 9, I learned to paddle and steer a canoe on my own. Me and Grandpa were stronger than the Eagle Scouts.
When I was 15, my parents bought an 80-acre parcel adjacent to Grandpa’s. We spent three weeks exploring the ins and outs of the twisting Wabigoon River that knit the two properties together. Our family stayed on an old homestead under a stand of poplar just downstream from the waterfall, 100 feet from the gradually collapsing log cabin. We built a raft to cross the river, and a rope swing for jumping into it.
I spent a lot of time staring at the water flowing past, like time… The river is a rich brown the color of tea, dyed from the tannic acid in the leaves that the water passes through. The tannic acid suppresses bacteria and keeps the water clean and pure. Grandpa says that his water tastes better than water from wells or water from lakes or water from anywhere else. A leader from the Native American reservation downstream agrees, and likes to visit periodically. Grandpa’s good health and spirits were always a strong indicator that the river water is clean and safe and good to drink. But at 91 ½ years old, I guess he was ready to move to a place… where water comes out of a faucet, instead of a bucket carried in a wheelbarrow hauled up from the river ½ mile downhill.

On Monday morning, I saw him for breakfast in my Mom’s apartment on Garber Street. He likes to have his tea by 6 or 6:30 am. We discussed, amongst other things, my bicycle racing. I did pretty well on Sunday, ended up fifth place, with some good prize money. “But where is your bicycle this morning?” he asked me.
“I don’t have it today. It was just so early and I drove. I’ll bring my bike next time,” I promised. Not the biggest promise I’ve ever made him, but a real one.

After Thursday’s group ride, I came back to visit again. Lunch. Warm smile, regard. Grandpa sat on Mom’s window seat overlooking the bay. She’s on the fourth floor on a hill facing the bay, and the view is incredible. I spent the afternoon setting up my old laptop for my Mom to use and encouraging her to clean. Grandpa napped on the window seat. When he woke up, Mom pointed out the fog rolling in through the Golden Gate. It looks pretty good even through a limited pane of glass. But being out there...
“The view from Grizzly Peak this morning was amazing. The bay is so blue, and the mountains are so majestic, and then there’s all this industry in the middle of it, the cranes in Oakland, all of the tall tall buildings in the City, all stretched out below me. Every time I come up over Pinehurst and catch a view of the Bay, I feel like I’m in an adventure novel, and I am an adventuring heroine.”
Grandpa nodded his head in recognition.
“It’s amazing. I’ve lived here for – almost ten years. And the view still takes my breath every time.”
Again, Grandpa nodded. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about the forest in Ontario. “Good morning, morning” he used to say each morning, and the Whiskey Jacks came flying out of the trees into the clearing where his cabin is. They used to eat toast or pancakes from a tin pan on top of the woodshed, or sometimes from his hand.