Bill gave me an idea last week. For Valentine's Day Bill asked people to DM if they wanted to receive a Cycling Valentine. As a Gemini I was all over that. I mean who would not want a Cycling Valentine from one of the coolest cyclists on the planet? He had me at Valentine obviously. And it was much appreciated. There is so much negativity right now. Cycling is and was always supposed to be an escape and outlet from the craziness that life throws at us. On a ride I was sort of thinking about what Bill was doing and thought "I should write a Love Letter to Cycling" As many great ideas go it got tabled because of more important things than blogging. Such is life. But a sort of blog challenge has been thrown down and I am taking that challenge. I didn't get into blogging for any reason other than to put my thoughts down. Maybe inspire or motivate. Or just celebrate cycling. Who knows. But without any further ado I give you my Love Letter to Cycling.
All of my friends are cyclists. I prefer the term "biker" but I know not everyone likes that. So cyclist it is. But it is a fact. I have a real hard time with civilians. It has gotten harder as I have gotten older. Maybe it is Peter Pan syndrome. I don't know. But my love of cycling isn't new by any means. Most of my fondest early childhood memories involve cycling. Some of the stories involve pain. For anyone who knows me it will come as no surprise that I got hurt a lot as a kid. And my crashes on the bike were pretty legendary. I forget how old I was but my street was kind of a circle. All the neighborhood kids would get together for bike races, rock fights, you know all the stuff kids did back then. Anyway the bike races were different than how you would think of a race these days. As I said we lived on a circle. So the race would start at my house. Rider A would go to the left of the circle. Rider B would go right. The left had a nice descent. The Right was mainly flat. We raced to the Piersacks house. You could "cheat" by looking through the houses to see if your rival was ahead of you or behind you.
So on this fateful day I took the Right. The high side. I was neck and neck with Robbie Sullivan. I really wanted to beat Robbie. Not sure why. Maybe I was more competitive back then. So I am looking through the houses to see Robbie. Pedaling as fast as I can. And then WHAM. I clearly did not see the parked car at the Harkins. People really didn't park their cars in the street back then. People usually only had one car anyway so it isn't like you had to park them in the street. Well cars were pretty solid back then. And they had hood ornaments. What you don't know what a hood ornament is? They were these fancy metal pieces that stuck up off the hood of a car. Really cool. Anyway. So next thing I know I am flying through the air. I guess the good news is I was going so fast that momentum carried me over the car. But I of course hit my leg on the hood on the way over. Somehow I wasn't "hurt". I get up off the pavement and my whole pant leg is wet. Even in my stunned state I realize this is probably not good. I pedal home to my house. I go in and tell my mum I crashed my bike. This as I stated before was not unusual. My mom was a nurse. We go into the bathroom and she lifts up the pant leg. There is a massive gash with fat hanging out of it. She washes it off, pushes the fat back into the wound, puts a butterfly bandage on it and sends me back on my way.
That story says so much about my relationship with cycling. I love it so much that when it hurts me I don't really care. I just patch myself up and get back on the bike. That is when my love affair began. Bikes were freedom back then. It was how we got around. We biked to baseball practice. To school. To friends houses. To the woods to have rock fights. We lived on our bikes. It was cool to ride a bike back then. And then we got our licenses. And it wasn't cool anymore. Love can be so cruel. I forgot all about bikes. I had a string of crappy cars that I would total in the same epic manner I totaled myself on the bike. Luckily only the cars were totaled. Again, the cars were much sturdier back then. When I went to college cycling almost got me back. RISD had a cycling club. A bunch of the kids on my floor rode. I got a black road bike. I don't even remember what kind. We rode out to the RISD beach a few times. But I was much more interested in going to Brown frat parties than riding bikes. So sad. If I went to RISD now my life would be soooo different. That black road bike got stolen sophomore year and that was the end of my collegiate cycling career. Once again I broke up with cycling. Love is cruel sometimes.
After college my future wife and I packed all our things into my red Jeep and we headed west. Hard for cycling to compete with a sick red Jeep. Sorry but true. Anyway we get settled in SF. In my attempt to find better employment than being a lacky in a Law Firm or delivering pizzas I attempt to use my brand new RISD degree and get a job in a magazine's art department. The magazine in question is a regional cycling magazine. I know absolutely NOTHING about cycling. But they are a really cool crew with an office in SOMA before SOMA and SF sold out. Oh I forgot one critical part of this story and how I fell back in love with cycling. And like lots of things the third time is the charm. So back to my early days as a lacky at a Law Firm. SF is LOUSY with Law Firms. If you need an entry level job they have tons. But talk about soul sucking. I mean absolutely brutal. Anyway so my job was a job. No real complaints. Part of my job was to drop off all the legal docs at a Fed Ex in downtown. As I am walking to the Fed Ex office I get this bizarre vertigo feeling. Then the concrete road appears to be coming at me as a wave. The buildings start shaking and people start running. Have I mentioned we had been in SF for about 6 months?
They had given us some basic training about earthquake preparedness but really I was sleeping during that presentation. I remember it being super important to get in a doorway or something. I see all these office workers running TOWARDS the doorways so I am like ok Chip if you want to live run. So I run. This was a mistake but what do I know. Something comes flying past my head and hits my leg as I am running. It feels like I just got hit with a bat. Anyway I want to live so I run into the Fed Ex office dive over the counter and hide out with everyone under the counter as the building rumbles above us and sounds like it is going to fall on our heads. I may or may not have held a strangers hand under that counter. The earthquake stops and a eerie silence falls over the City. I am almost certain my leg is shattered. I somehow convince a stranger to drive me to the hospital. I get to an ER out in the Sunset and they are prepared for the worst. I get all the attention as I am the only one in the ER. Somehow my leg is not broken. By the next day I have a bruise from my upper thigh to my ankle.
As part of my PT my DR recommends cycling. I am like cycling? He is like yeah get a bike and ride. It will help the healing. So I borrow a two sizes too big mtn bike and then start riding from my house in the Marina over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin. It is 1989. Mountain Biking is BLOWING UP. So I quit my Law Firm job. I can't go back in an office building after that Earthquake and my office manager really isn't down with the whole PTSD thing but as I was "on the job" we come to a bit of an agreement. I spend time healing the leg and the mind. In this process I somehow find out about this cool job in an art department of a magazine. I somehow land the job. Maybe it was the RISD education. So I start a whole new chapter of my life. Sometimes things happen for a reason. If that earthquake hadn't happened I would probably still be getting lunch for Lawyers in SF.
My love affair of cycling is about to take a deep dive. My new job has given me access to a whole world I never knew existed. The staff is so cool. I somehow go from making ads on a tiny computer and pasting up the magazine to New Products Editor. I honestly have no idea how that happened. Basically, the editorial staff just took me under their wing. We have so many cool experiences and I fall totally in love with cycling. The Bay Area at that time was going full gas into mtn biking. And cycling was cool again. I fell in with the Swobo crew. Rode with Tom Ritchey, Joe Breeze, Scott Nicol. If it didn't actually happen it would seem like some dream. I fell in love with cyclocross. I blame Pineapple Bob for that. And the Ritchey team. I made friends who would shape my whole life moving forward. Jeremy Sycip, Paul Sadoff. The late '80s early '90s were amazing. Again, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. I got knocked down a lot. Not just on the bike. The bike industry is a cruel mistress. My dream job came to an end as lots of dream jobs do. The beginnings of the end of publishing were in the air. But every time I got knocked down I got back up. I probably learned more from some of those hard times than the good.
When we moved home in 2004 I had some major panic attacks. I was like how can we leave this paradise where all my friends live to move back to that Hell Hole we left. My opinion off the east coast as you can imagine was less than kind. But what was truly bizarre and in an odd twist of fate was that the Town I grew up in was a Mecca for cycling. I had some great mentors when I first moved home. Made lots of connections. I flew my Sycip Team kit with pride for a few years. Then I somehow ended up on HUP. I still to this day remember talking to HUP founder Zac Daab at Providence. It was so simple. "You want to be on HUP?" Hell yes I do. Those early days on HUP were an eye opener. HUP was an anti-team before it was cool to be an anti-team. What is an anti-team? An anti-team means no sponsors. No drama. No nonsense. You do it because you love cyclocross and you love your teammates. HUP became my family. And I loved them with all my heart. I still do. HUP has outlived so many teams. Teams I really miss. But our unwavering belief that we should be our own sponsors has kept us intact. No ones gets mad because Karen got cooler wheels than they did. No one gets pissed because Chad got free race entries to Rasputitsa.
My love of cycling obviously is as much about the people as it is about riding the bike. And while I like racing I have never been much of a racer. I just like going to the races and seeing all the cool people and maybe mixing it up with my friends or frenemies. I have made so many friends over the years. I guess that really is what this letter is about and who it is too. This Love Letter is to all those people who got me stoked, picked me up when I was down, took a leap of faith with me, got lost with me, shared a water bottle, didn't get mad when I got us lost. All the people who just make this sport so amazing. I am not sure if the internet made cycling better or worse. I certainly have gotten into my fair share of twitter fights. And some of those twitter fights have moved into the real world and that is unfortunate. But I think things have calmed down. Twitter fights and drama were never my jam honestly. I love the internet for its ability to connect us not rip us apart.
So, Bill, thank you for reminding me how much I love cycling. And thank you cycling for loving me back. What always blows me away is that I just keep falling deeper and deeper in love with cycling. I am getting slower, older, less skilled in many ways. But I always find a new trail, meet a new person who is totally cool, new opportunities and communities arise. It is so unique. I hope you too love cycling as much as I do. It means different things to different people. But for me what drew me to it way back when I was a kid is true even today at almost 55. The bike to me means freedom. And adventure. It might bring me pain once and a while but that pain is a small price to pay for all the joy.
