My wife and I still ride a tandem frequently, but I haven't entered a bicycle race for over 30 years. I retired as a firefighter six months ago and have been working on increasing my fitness level and losing pounds for the past few months. Things are starting to come together. Who knows? Maybe one day I will be light and fast enough to be competitive in my age group.
“Jock” Boyer was one of my heroes. The Seattle area had some notable riders at that time as well. Mark Pringle who won the 1976 Nevada City Classic when he was 19... A couple years after that on a rainy winter day he exclaimed I was crazier than he was. As a young junior I had ridden 50 miles up from Tacoma in the rain and pushed the pace on an early season 40 mile club ride and then rode back home in the rain.
My younger brother had a huge crush on Rebecca Twigg. When they were both intermediate’s (under 15), they crashed together in a drainage ditch at the side of the road in a race near Redmond. He was using some Cinelli track pedals on his road bike. You had to reach down and pull a lever to get the pedals to release. He was head down in this deep ditch. He couldn't get to the lever and the more he tried the more he slid toward the water a couple feet deep at the bottom of the ditch. Suddenly a beautiful angel came to his rescue. He was scratched up but they rode back together and he felt no pain. He couldn't stop talking about her for weeks. Unfortunately for him nothing came of it.
There were many others... Tom Brosnowski was probably the rider who was the very nicest to me. My room mate at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs won the JR Nationals the following year. It was a long time ago and you probably have never heard of most of my friends, but it was a pretty close knit community.
In those days a lot of the best races near us were in British Columbia and we used to go up there a lot. I rode with a group whose leader had on old VW Van, a crazy mustache and a pony tail that went to his butt. Incredibly, we crossed the boarder dozens of times but were never hassled even one time. None of us were pot smokers because we didn't want to screw up our lung capacity.
Well it is fun for me to reminisce.
I am sorry, It was two years later that my roommate at Colorado Springs won the JR Nationals. He was quite a character, but like me, I believe outside circumstances caused him to have to give up racing while he was still young.
I’ll add you to our ping list. But it will have to wait a while because our power is out up here on the Olympic peninsula and I’m trying to keep up on my cell phone.