Random TdF Observation #2 - l'A d'H

OK, here we go to the Land of Make Believe. On one of the last pages of my book, I suggest to the reader that they go to the TdF and see the stage that goes up l’Alpe d’Huez (AdH), to sleep on a picnic table, eat stale bread and drink warm coke, and yell like a fool when the race passes by. Well, you can’t. There are no picnic tables. But you can do everything else. And after having just done it in July, I can re-state it with feeling: JUST GO. It’s an experience like no other. I’ve been to a lot of sporting events. Ryder Cup golf tournaments, Summer Olympics, big running marathons, American League play-off games, NCAA March Madness. I’ve been to big college football games (Michigan-Ohio State at “The Big House”). Compared to AdH, they’re all quaint little over-hyped garden parties. A golf tournament asks a lot of the spectator. You have to walk around a golf course. AdH demands that you walk up a mountain. How far up is up to you. (Actually, we had to walk two miles to get TO the mountain. And we were one of the early arrivers. The late-comers had to park in Switzerland.) The Olympics are a world party. But I find nationalism divisive. AdH is a world party, but everyone cheers for everyone whether they’re in the race or not. At an NFL game, you're stuck in an assigned seat sitting next to an obnoxious drunk guy who insists on showering you with beer. Your souvenir: a paper ticket costing $100. At AdH, you meet cool people from around the world. This is Pascal, a hitchhiker we picked up in Grenoble. He took the night train from Toulouse and stood along the road with a cardboard sign stating his objective. Football has tailgate parties that begin at 8am for a 3pm start time. AdH has a tailgate party that begins two days before and involves carrying your party up a 15% grade. Football also has people with painted faces. Sorry, but those guys would be laughed off the mountain. March Madness has hype, and it has college pep bands. You can keep the hype (and do whatever you want with Dick Vitale, baby!) I'll keep the pep bands. AdH has the music of a hundred different languages.
Ryder Cup has an expo area. If you’re lucky, you might get a sleeve of golf balls, but you have to sign up for a credit card that you don’t need. AdH has the "caravan publicitaire" doling out shwag to the people. Take a look at this: And watch this:
Major League Baseball has …. um… not much to offer, really. Let’s skip that. Running marathons are cool. I like how they shut down the roads for long periods. And then there's the sound of the helicopters in the distance thumping their way through the valley announcing the arrival of the peloton. Few sounds in the world of sports can stir the excitement kettle like the thump thump thump of a distant helo. And talk about concession stands? There is nothing quite like shopping in a supermarche full of cycling fans right at the base of the mountain. And if you really want to do it up right, you can bring your TV and watch the live coverage:
Or you can find Frankie and Robbie on the climb and watch them shoot the stand-ups for the Versus coverage:
Or just watch the parade of all ages. Don't believe me??

Stay tuned... I'm still adding more stuff.

The Origination of Fred

I had often wondered what had become of the word "gibaffo". It was a word that cyclists used back in the 70s and 80s. I also wonder, as many people do, where the word "Fred" came from in its use in the cycling world.
The correct spelling of Jabaffo varied (see? I spelled it differently.), but the meaning was always the same: someone who perhaps dresses the part but rides like it's their first time on a bike, a nerdy rider, a rider with great intent but poor follow-through. Or perhaps a rider who fixates more on the technical side than the actual riding. Or someone who never really reaches the level of "adept". See also "gomer" and "uncool".
The term and the description is obviously subjective. And never derogatory, really. Just a descriptive word.
Well, in a conversation with two longtime cycling guys, the word Gabaffo came up. What's interesting is that Steve Brown and Eddy VanGuyse come from very different parts of the country but both knew the word, which tells me that it was widely used. And I had first heard the word in the early 1980s from Neal King who used to be a pretty good track rider in Detroit. Eddy, in case you don't pick up on what he's saying, is a Chicago boy transplanted to the L.A. area. Steve is now located in Traverse City (if you're having trouble placing the name, let me refer to him by his other name "Iceman").
But Steve Brown told me, and Eddy agreed, that a certain Colorado-based technophile named Fred (last name withheld) started writing technical and somewhat nerdy articles about bicycles long long ago. Then his name became associated with any rider who exhibited nerdy tendencies. And later, it morphed into anyone .... well, see above; I don't want to type it all again.
If you have any input on the origination of the word Fred and the death of Gibaffo, leave a comment.
If, however, you're one of those people who get offended by the use of "Fred", relax. There's a little bit of Gibaffo in each of us... some just a little more so.
And I don't claim to know all of the true signs of Fredliness, the cure for Fredliness, nor the secret handshake. You're free to speculate in the comments box.

Random TdF Observations: Post #1

My Montenegro trip, fascinating as it was, sidetracked me from following up on my Tour de France trip. A lack of Internet in Tuz (and a head-spinning agenda) made it impossible to write and load. So here we are several weeks after the fact, and I'm finally getting around to it. Luckily, my observations are so stupid that no one else has beaten me to the punch. And they would certainly never appear on any televised coverage.
Case in point...
The final day in Paris is extraordinary on many levels, but one that I felt worth noting was the feeling of brother/sisterhood that the entire organization and families certainly must feel after three intense weeks on the road. Similar, I'm sure, to the bittersweet feeling you had on the last day of summer camp: you don't want to it to end, but you can't wait to get home.
I noticed it in many ways. First, I noticed it when the first staff cars started rolling up the Champs Elysees hours in advance. They would pull to a stop in front of the viewing stand we were seated in, pause, get out, wave to someone in the stands, get back in, continue driving. It's kind of like a kid in a school band concert finding mom or dad in the audience and giving a quick wave. And it was so cool to see almost EVERY car, truck, and motorcycle do it at some point.
I also loved to see each of the sponsors bring out their huge transport trucks in the Publicity Caravan. Until this day, these supply troops have been working in the background all Tour long, and now they get to shine up the rig and roll up Main Street, take their curtain call, and wave to their families as well. Horn blaring. Very cool.
And then this happens. OK, you gotta watch. This is their first time through, so the anticipation was killer.
But then the race finishes, and each team does a parade lap of the Champs. And they all wave to the crowds, but I noticed that they also wave to each other as they pass indicating a brothers-in-arms relationship that was very cool to see. It wasn't easy to capture it in a photo, but I got r-e-a-l-l-y lucky with my crummy little point-and-shoot Nikon. That's AG2R in blue waving to the blob of red on the right which is the Caisse d'Epargne team going the other way.
Even my travelling companion
and I said our goodbyes to our friend and souvie booth operator Sebastien who we met in Roanne and saw every day along the way forging our own connection with the rolling circus.
It was very much like the end of summer camp. The only thing missing was the kid who got covered in poison ivy and got duct-taped into bed at night and had allergies. And I'm sure he was in this group. Probably works as a UCI Commissaire now.

Road Trip: Crna Gora

Actually, there wasn't much 'road' in this road trip to Montenegro; it was 18 hours of airports and airplanes. And I will turn this post back to the topic of cycling. Stay with me.
My 'day job' took me to Montenegro for a visit to our Sister City of Tuz just outside of Podgorica. Look it up on the map. I had to. (Since I work for a local government, I had to pay my own way to avoid the wrath of our stingy taxpayers. So it's more correct to say that my day job 'invited' me to Montenegro and I accepted.)
Montenegro is only 2 years old as an independent country and is still struggling to recover from Communist rule when it was part of Yugoslavia. In fact, they're still feeling the effects of the Ottoman Empire even though that's been gone for almost a hundred years. The scenery is breathtaking. The government is making slow but steady progress.
Our Sister City relationship is much less political in nature. We can only help teach them how a democracy affects a small community and how city services can be administered effectively in such an impoverished environment. We've also come up with a few 'humanitarian' programs to help provide materials to operate. School supplies are our first priority. Their high school is run down beyond anything you'd want to attend and has no budget for the basic needs.

And there are other programs that we're working on along those same lines that I won't bore you with. (You're welcome.) We're careful not to just throw American money at a problem and call it a success. We're not sending them fish; we're teaching them HOW to fish. At one of our many feasts, I was seated next to a man who has started a cycling club in the region. He is starting with nothing but an objective to keep kids healthy and out of trouble by keeping them active in a variety of sports - cycling, tai kwon do, etc. His enthusiasm was infectious. They have miles and miles of amazingly challenging roads and trails to ride on, and they're doing quite nicely. But he needs clothing and other expendables that are hard to come by over there. Helmets, for example, are a pressing need.
Knowing that American cyclists throw away more than these people will ever have, we've begun a clothing/equipment drive amongst my local Club. We're also working to gather new helmets to send over. When we get the means, we'll likely supply them with our used bikes that gather dust in our three-car garages.

If your Club is interested in doing something similar, I urge you to explore the possibilities both locally and internationally. The day we get our asses kicked by Montenegren cyclists that we've helped get started will be a happy one.

No Internet in Montenegro

I'm in the small town of Tuz Montenegro until the 19th. They are in the former Yugoslavia. Internet is scarce. Stories are plentiful. WIll be back on line next week.

Pave` Maria Part II

Real quick: here's the video that goes with the following post.

Pave` Maria

This is the first post-France post. I'm starting with the most recent part of the trip only because it's the freshest thing in my brain.
On Tuesday morning, I made a pilgrammage to the Arenberg Forest where the most famed stretch of cobbles can be found. For you non-cycling folks, this is the hallowed ground of cycling where the Paris-Roubaix race is raced and usually decided. This is where bikes are broken and legends are made. It's our version of the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field or the Boston Marathon's Heartbreak Hill . It's said - very dramtically - of this race that "no one wants to race it, but everyone wants to win it". This second photo speaks volumes. Those pave` beat the living shit out of bike and rider. Even when riding slowly, your brain gets jumbled, your eyes twitter, and your back is going to feel it for three days.
They actually race on this stuff.
We Americans get our view of the race on tape-delayed broadcasts and mail-order DVDs. Scant few of us actually see it live on TV or in person, and very few visit this remote location. When they do, it's a pilgrammage to a revered stretch of road inhabited by cycling ghosts; a sports shrine.
I went. It was pretty magical. It's not easy to get to, but it's definitely worth the effort. You can't ride the cobbles without imagining the epic battles that have taken place there or the famous names that have rolled across it. You also can't ride the cobbles right after lunch.
Still, one must keep it in perspective. It is still just a road (albeit closed to vehicular traffic); a path from Point A to Point B. The locals use it as we would a rail trail. Where we see ghosts and faded images of legends, they see a quick ride home for lunch. This helps in reminding us that at some point even the Champs Elysees becomes just another street.
But it was damn cool to ride on the same road as Merckx, Hinault, Lemond, Museeuw, and Hincapie. Albeit much much slower. And I have a much better appreciation for the race and for the next generation of cycling stars.
And check back with me in a day or two; I'll cover the topic of the Champs Elysees in a post soon.