Two Wheeled Life Part 4

 Life on Two Wheels Part 4

After a brief and disastrous romance I decided I needed some new friends outside of the motorcycle world. I'd left the motorcycle dealership for an outside sales position with a motorcycle part and accessories company but my heart was more and more into cycling with pedals vs throttle. I'd put my road bike on the car roof on overnight sales trips and sometimes spent more time riding than selling!

In 1986 American Greg LeMond won the famous Tour de France. I'd been following his career off and on since he won the World Championship in 1983. The World Championship roadrace for 1986 would be held in Colorado so the US stage race "Coors Classic" would be used as a tune-up by LeMond and his team, including the big French star Bernard Hinault on the same team as LeMond.

The race would start for the first time not in Colorado, but in California. San Francisco. I used to drive there in the motorcycle days, why not put my bike on the car and go see this? A cycling magazine had an advertisement for a cycling tour following the event - the promise was that guests would be able to enjoy riding on the race route before the race, then get a VIP viewing spot at the finish line. Sign me up!

I parked my car at the San Francisco airport to meet the tour operator. Three hours (and a couple of phone calls) later he showed-up and drove me to their HQ hotel where I met his girlfriend and brother, both acting as tour guides despite having no real qualifications that I could fathom. Everyone was nice enough and my new friend idea started to pay off. I'd started working on my own bicycles after a so-called "Olympic Mechanic" (turned out he'd helped out with the 1984 Olympic bicycle race, one I saw first-hand) gave it back to me in worse shape than I left it! I had plenty of mechanical skill and experience working on motorcycles so instead of paying to have my bike screwed-up I'd buy the special tools and screw it up myself.

I soon learned how not to screw-up and these skills came in handy on this cycling tour/vacation. I'd brought a small box of tools with me and soon became the mechanic on the tour since the guides struggled to do much more than take a wheel off and put it back on. One afternoon while watching the race I spoke with the owner, noting I'd been doing all this mechanical work and asking why he didn't have someone on-staff for this? I'd talked myself into a job, including driving some of my fellow guests back to the SF airport in a van the tour company had rented as the tour continued on to Colorado. 

I turned the van in, said goodbye to the clients, hopped in my car and drove back to SoCal, wondering when would be the next time I'd work with this tour company? The owner used to race motocross and we knew some of the same racers back in the day and soon we'd enjoy bicycle rides together a few days a week since he lived just a few miles away from me.

I went (with another friend) at my own expense to Colorado to see the 1986 World Championship Roadrace. I didn't know it at the time but my future wife was there too, same as the Olympic road race in 1984

It wasn't long before the boss needed me for a weekend wine-country tour near Santa Barbara. I worked just for expenses and the experience. It was fun and led to talk of working in 1987 on his Tour de France tour, but I'd taken a job as sales representative with a motorcycle and bicycle clothing company and despite my sales pitch on how they would benefit, they wouldn't let me go, That changed in 1988 as did a lot of things.

Meanwhile, I'd sold the trials motorcycle and had some money left to buy a mountain bike. I could now play/race in the dirt, but still enjoy exercise and cycling with this new toy! The fire roads of the Malibu hills were a great playground. I wore the cycling clothing company's gear and had a great time despite not being much better at racing it than I was at motocross.

I was working part-time at a local bicycle shop in addition to the sales rep job and gradually spent more time there than on the road. But the clothing company's growing cycling business was interesting so I took an inside sales job there, planning to take over the cycling division from the founder's brother, a guy who knew or cared little about cycling. The founder turned out to be not interested in cycling either, so it was time to work full-time at the bicycle shop.

I came along at the perfect time - the shop owner closed the store for few days to take all of his employees to a technical seminar put on by the then premium cycling component brand - CAMPAGNOLO. I'd already switched to this brand from my first "pro-quality" bicycle with a then-new Shimano component groupset. I'd crashed my next Swiss-made pro bike with the Italian brand of parts when an old guy in a car "left turned" me, leaving me with a destroyed bicycle and separated shoulder. I replaced it right away with a low-priced Bianchi bicycle and later added an American made custom bicycle frame from this local shop, using the still-good CAMPAGNOLO parts from the wrecked one to complete it.

Campagnolo provided three days of intensive training, from preparing new frames, making wheels, service and maintenance and the history of the company. I was really a fan of this company now and my knowledge and skills increased quickly thanks to them and the experience in the shop and with my new certification I was REALLY ready for the bike tour guide/mechanic position. The bike shop owner saw the value in having an employee with this kind of experience, so getting 10 days off in July for LeTour was no problem, though I was still working just for expenses + airfare rather than a real salary.

This was my first time out of the USA. I even had to get a visa from the French Consulate along with a passport. I packed up my bicycle and tool box along with some cycling clothes and met the boss and his girlfriend (qualified for this by sort-of speaking French) at the airport for a flight to Paris. Van rentals were so much cheaper in Luxembourg our first task was to take a train there, hop in the vans and drive 'em back to the Paris airport hotel/HQ. All while fighting jet-lag! The next day bicycle roof racks need to be assembled and mounted, advertising stickers slapped on the vehicles and our own bicycles assembled and fine tuned before clients began arriving.

I get tired even typing this, but the adrenalin rush of being at the Tour de France combined with way-too-many cans of Coca-Cola and chocolate croissants kept me going for more than a week. An incident with another guide's driving created what I saw as an opportunity to stay on for the third and final week of LeTour rather than return home. It was too much fun! The boss' girlfriend had to take over the driving after the incident so my idea was to stay on so she could go back to girlfriending (and some slapdash interpreting as nobody running the tour really could speak French!) and let me do the driving. It took some persuading...all the way up to the morning I was to depart to make it happen!

You read that right. The arrival day was chaotic, this group larger than the earlier one for the final, decisive week of the race. My bike was back in a box and luggage packed as I came out to board the airport transfer bus. I made one last pitch to the boss - "Look man, you need my help! Things are out-of-control here and if you keep me on your galpal can ride in the van with you rather than drive a van!" 

This idea was reinforced by an earlier incident - A cycling magazine editor was a guest on the tour. He was riding in the boss' girlfriend's van on a long transfer across France. The caravan was designed so that none of the guides really knew where we were going...you just stayed glued to the van in front of you, all lined-up behind the boss. We stopped every 90 minutes or so for "natural breaks" as they say. But the magazine editor had to pee. Now. He explained this to girlfriend but she had no way to communicate with boyfriend/boss. She kept begging editor to "hold it" since they had to be stopping soon. My van was the last in line but I knew nothing about it...until we finally did stop and editor quietly left a cycling water bottle behind!

He'd filled this bottle while sitting next to another client and his wife. Ironically, after complimenting all of us post-tour, shaking his head while saying "I don't know how you guys manage to pull this off" a few years later he started a rival tour company. I guess galpal had floated my idea to stay on and at some point reminded the boss of how she'd had to endure the peepee caper, so at the last minute he relented with - "Get your stuff!" so I jumped into the chaos to help. 

I phoned the bike shop with a flimsy excuse as to why I'd be staying on and enjoyed another frantic week though at least by this time I was over jet-lag. We were able to rebook my return flight without much trouble or expense. I was hooked! I couldn't wait to do it again.

I came back (with photos) and to the bike shop. The boss was a little miffed at my delayed return but soon forgot about it once the stories began and the photos came back from the developer.

Those photos sparked this story: The bike above was used by American Andy Hampsten to win the Giro d'Italia and he road the same bike at 1988's Tour de France. As most cycling fans know, the brand name on the bike is not always the name of the actual maker. In this case, department-store brand HUFFY was the team's bicycle sponsor, but the bikes also sported a small sticker that read "Serotta" the name of the man who actually built them. He was an American custom, made-to-measure bicycle frame builder and certainly was happy to be allowed to have his name on the team bikes. In most cases the brand sponsor takes great pains to keep this secret though it goes on even today.

The average cycling fan likely doesn't know and probably doesn't care about this custom, one that probably goes back to the start of bicycle brand sponsorship, but in this case there was a THIRD person involved. I came back with lots of photos of this bike as my bike shop employer was a Serotta dealer and I was riding one myself. Showing off the photos in the shop, a sharp-eyed sales rep noticed something odd - "That's NOT a Serotta! It's a Landshark!" Turns out John Slawta, whose brand was LANDSHARK was the "builder of trust" for Andy Hampsten. 

Why? The story was that Hampsten's team-issue bike, made from team sponsor True Temper tubing, broke. Hampsten lost all confidence in the team bikes and got permission to go elsewhere, though nobody told Serotta. Even the tubes used to make this bike were not from the sponsor. Once we knew, we wondered if Serotta knew? Who was going to call and tell him? I drew the short straw, but since I'd taken the photos, who better to make the call? 

Sure enough, Serotta was clueless but photos were soon sent to prove this bike was not one of his. Oddly enough the tour group included a sales manager for the True Temper company. If he knew, he wasn't telling!! It turned out to be the end of Serotta's involvement as the team switched bike sponsors from HUFFY to Merckx the next season.