Magic on Two Wheels

Less than a week after the launch party of a book chronicling the formation and success of the 7-Eleven cycling team, several dozen ex-racers from the 1960s and ’70s northern California community gathered at the Java Hut in Fairfax, California for an annual event called the Dino Ride in mid September, 2011.

This would be my second time rubbing elbows and hearing the old war stories. Event organizer Tom Hardy invited me along for the ride in 2009 when I was US editor for Bikeradar.com, and despite not having much of a race career to boast about, I felt comfortable among the former giants of the American road and track racing scene, men who I’d read about in VeloNews or Winning a few decades ago.

Northern California has been a hotbed of road racing for decades, and when Berkeley-based Velo Sport bike shop owner Peter Rich organized the first Tour of California in 1971, he set into motion a string of successes which would have a profound effect on international cycling. His young prodigy Mike Neel (who would factor prominently as a director and coach in the success of Team 7-Eleven in the ’80s) was the first of Rich’s many cycling protégés to gain a foothold within the typically European-only peloton. Neel took 10th at the 1976 world championships, a brutally challenging 180-mile race in Ostuni, Italy won by the Belgian Freddy Maertens.

The highly organized and prepared Berkeley native raced alongside Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Francesco Moser, and Felice Gimondi, some of the greatest cyclists of the 20th century. Several weeks prior, Neel’s compatriot George Mount finished a stunning 6th in the Montreal Summer Olympics road race, the best American result in 60 years. Mount kicked open the door that Neel had cracked, winning 200 races during a career that included two Top 25 placings in the Giro d’Italia.

Fast forward to 2011, and the Dino Ride. Begun in 1986 after a restless Hardy decided it was high time to convene his race brethren for some bench racing and saddle time, the ranks have swelled. Many of Hardy’s peers still call northern California home, including Lindsay Crawford, Peter Johnson, Tom Ritchey, Otis Guy, Joe Breeze, Calvin Trampleasure, and Alex Osbourne.

“I hadn’t raced in several years and missed all my friends from racing days so I called everybody who was still within about a 40-mile radius,” Hardy said. “On the first Dino Ride we had Peter Johnson, Bill Robertson, Lindsay Crawford, Gregg McElhinney, Keith Vierra, Rick Moale, Eric Jansen, Chuck Canepa, the Bike Barb, Oscar Bradley, Vince Moran, Tommy Hill, Jobst Brandt, and Joe Harvin. It rained.”

Like Hardy, most Dino Riders still ride regularly and haven’t lost their love for the wheel. Some, like Ritchey, Guy and Breeze, were instrumental in pioneering the modern mountain bike in the late 1970s, about the time two other notable NorCal roadies were blazing wide trails in the European peloton: Jonathan Boyer and Greg LeMond.

Hardy and I sat next to each other at the San Francisco Rapha Cycle Club last July, watching Phillipe Gilbert win stage 1 of the 2011 Tour de France. The chance meeting led to discussion of the upcoming Dino Ride, and the idea of inviting LeMond. I told Hardy I’d contact the 3-time Tour winner and multiple world champion, who I had the pleasure of sharing saddle time with on the roads near Big Basin Redwoods State Park between Saratoga and Santa Cruz in September 2008, days before his infamous confrontation with Lance Armstrong at the Interbike trade show.

LeMond, notoriously driven by distraction, responded immediately with enthusiasm and a promise to show. It helped that I’d see LeMond at the Interbike show days prior, and that the now 51-year-old entrepreneur would be riding in the Echelon Sports Palo Alto Gran Fondo the day before the Dino Ride.

Reminiscing, and a documentary
Not content with just gathering for a ride, Hardy added a social mixer the night before the event, typically held in Berkeley. The core Dino Riders live all around the Bay Area, but the highest concentration are in the East Bay and Marin County. Hardy had a few surprises up his sleeve this time, including the world premiere of Mike Neel Bicycle Racer, a 25-minute documentary filmed by Karl Anderson in 1973.

The film shows Neel training, racing road, track and cyclocross, while painting a picture of the ruggedly handsome Neel and his preparation and dedication to the then-unknown sport among most American enthusiasts accustomed to watching football, baseball and basketball. Highlights included Neel spinning on rollers in the attic of Rich’s Velo Sport, and eating beans from a can. For bike racing aficionados, Belgian filmmaker Joël Santoni’s documentary on Eddy Merckx, La Course en Tête, wasn’t released until 1974, but has become legendary as befitting the great Belgian cyclist himself.

I spoke with Neel after the viewing. As the din of old friends sharing race stories increased, we talked about his early career in Europe, working for next to nothing for his bike team sponsor (an Italian mattress maker) in the office season to make ends meet. A child of the `60s, the free-spirited Neel was discovered by Rich grooming horses, and the elder shop owner gave the young stallion a chance to focus on sport to stay out of trouble. A quick study, Neel catapulted beyond the Bay Area racing scene to make international inroads for generations of American cyclists to follow, but his erratic behaviour replaced his highs with too many lows.

His second chance came when Team 7-Eleven founder Jim Ochowicz – a former competitor turned sports team manager – asked Neel to be a director in 1985, when the team made its Giro d’Italia debut. Neel, a calm but intense man, used his vast racing experience and gut instinct with his riders and applied his knowledge of Italy to propel the team to two victories during that race. He continued with 7-Eleven through 1989, chalking up victory in the 1988 Giro with Andy Hampsten, and several stage victories in the Tour de France along the way, including a spell in yellow for Alex Stieda during the team’s 1986 debut.

Now 61, Neel lives in Fort Jones, California, a remote city of 737 in the Scott Valley area of Siskiyou County, ideal for training bike riders and living a solitary life. Neel got his dates wrong for this year’s Dino Ride, and couldn’t join his former rivals and teammates in Marin County the following day, spending the day fishing with his 86-year-old father, who still lives in Berkeley.

Saddle time
After an evening of reminiscing, the riders gathered Sunday morning in the Java Hut parking lot in Fairfax, for many the birthplace of the modern mountain bike. I had spent the night in the Sausalito home of Dave McLaughlin, a road, mountain and cyclocross racer from the late 1970s and early `80s, now the director for the Team Luna Chix, one of the most successful women’s mountain bike racing teams of the past 10 years. Dave Mac is one of the youngest official Dino Riders, having won the esteemed Mt. Hamilton Race to earn his place among the local greats, Hardy and Mount among the victors.

The scene in the parking lot was a contrast of colors: the weather forecast called for sunshine and temperatures in the 70s, and the morning was wonderfully devoid of the typical Marin County fog. Riders were busy getting their gear together, airing up tires, filling up water bottles and jersey pockets, slipping into their Sidi shoes, and finishing their morning coffee. While some were clad in the latest Lycra on top the latest carbon fiber machine, most had chosen the more period-correct ensemble: wool jerseys and steel bikes, among them lugged and fillet-brazed beauties from De Rosa, Della Santa, Colnago, Richard Sachs, Albert Eisentraut, Ritchey, Breeze, Serotta, Merckx, Pinarello, Bianchi and Pogliaghi.

Many had arrived straight from the Interbike Show in Las Vegas, where Joe Breeze had purchased the new Bill Humphreys book, “The Jersey Project”, a coffee table book chronicling decades of European and American bike racing jerseys. Several Dino Riders were included in the book, and Breeze was gathering autographs.

It’s not uncommon to seeing a gathering of this magnitude on any given Sunday in Fairfax. Roadies choose the Java Hut as their launch pad onto local roads because it’s central to some of the best riding, but also for its proximity across the street from the Iron Springs Pub, where we planned to eat and enjoy each others’ company after the ride. What may have escaped some people’s notice that day was the inclusion of several veterans of the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, Olympics, Paris-Roubaix, Vuelta a Espana, Tour of Flanders and world championships on the road and track.

As riders reconnected and our prescribed rollout time of 10am drew near, a palpable excitement ran through the nearly 70 or so riders, as LeMond pulled up in a rental vehicle with Echelon Gran Fondo organizers and employees from San Jose-based Look Cycles USA. Wearing a 50th birthday commemorative jersey fashioned after his 1986 La Vie Claire kit (the year he won his first Tour de France), the stocky LeMond was swarmed by friends and folks he hadn’t seen in years. He posed for pictures, signed Breeze’s book, and after taking stock of the scene, threw a leg over his new Look 695 carbon bike and clipped in as we rolled toward Point Reyes Station.

I pedalled alongside LeMond, asking about his father Bob, who took up racing the same time as his son in the mid 1970s.

“He’s hiking with some friends today, and couldn’t make the ride,” LeMond said. “But it would be cool to see him here next year.” As an embedded journalist, I was respectful of the nature of the Dino Ride: reuniting old friends and talking about the good old days. I kept my time short with the riders, catching snippets of information when I could, observing their smooth pedalling cadence and bike handling. After all, these men and women were the cream of the racing crop at one point, and as I’ve witnessed many times on rides with them, a good rider never really loses his or her technique. My job was to drink it all in and provide domestique duties whenever possible.

As I finished a short exchange with LeMond, Ritchey came up next to us as we crested White Hill on Sir Francis Drake. I snapped a few photos of them before riding toward the front to chat with Dave Mac and Sterling McBride.

Pioneers
For Dino Riders Otis Guy, Breeze and Ritchey, their love of the road in the 1970s evolved into the pursuit of developing the perfect machine for the dirt. All three are credited with advancing the modern mountain bike beyond the confines of northern California by the early 1980s, and have been instrumental as well in the promotion of high school mountain bike racing, which began in Berkeley in 2001.

“Back in the 1970s we shared a lot of good times together,” Breeze said. “We were in the prime of our lives, cycling an unreal heap of miles, and the endorphins were running rampant—a staggering amount of endorphins! Naturally there are a lot of great stories to recount.”

Today, though, it was all about the road, as the sun shone hard and the cadence increased. Our peloton was spinning its way toward the first rest stop in Nicasio for a group photos, and the pace typically increases once we turn right onto Nicasio Valley Road at the San Geronimo Golf Course. Plus, our rolling mass of carbon and steel would need to string out in a long line to obey traffic laws and be mindful of Sunday drivers.

Some of the Echelon boys were feeling a bit too rambunctious on the long descent after the climb, and realizing they probably didn’t know about the rest stop a few miles ahead, I took it upon myself to chase them down on Hardy’s behalf. A few other Dinos followed my lead, and we corralled the escapees right before stopping in Nicasio.

After the pocket cameras and smartphones were tucked away, we sped along toward Hicks Valley Road, although fate didn’t allow me to join the others, thanks to a pesky flat rear tire.

“Catch us if you can!” LeMond shouted as the pack roared by.

Friend and Black Mountain Cycles owner Mike Varley not only got me rolling after a pro fix, he towed us back to the tail-end of the peloton. We saw LeMond and crew heading the opposite direction toward Point Reyes Station on Point Reyes-Petaluma Road as we sped east, most likely to avoid the impending pain of climbing the Marshall Wall ahead. Varley and I soldiered on, catching up to Bob Muzzy before reconnecting with the peloton. We rolled through the centuries-old ranch land, flying along at 25-plus miles an hour over roads maintained for dairy trucks. The group strung out like a colorful clothes line on the climb, with Breeze asking if I had any spare energy bars or gels as we crested the hill before descending toward Highway 1 and Tomales Bay.

Several riders reconvened for water at the Marshall Store, where we were joined by former racer and journalist Owen Mulholland, one of the first Americans to report on the Tour de France. We sped south toward Point Reyes Station, strung out single-file on the narrow strip used by thousands of cyclists each year. Varley opened his shop to replace my inner tube (we could only manage 60 psi on the first attempt before breaking off the valve extender back in Nicasio) and replace Tim Nicholson’s chain, and we were off once again to rejoin the travelling circus speeding toward Fairfax and pub food.

After cresting the climb on Sir Francis Drake outside Olema, we took a hard right onto the Cross Marin Trail, where Varley alerted us to the harsh reality that lay ahead in the form of sharp rocks and new drainage construction. In true Paris-Roubaix cobblestone form, the best way to avoid flats or cashing was to keep one’s hands on the tops of the drops and push a large gear in the big chainring, Roger De Vlaeminck style.

Unfortunately, several Dino Riders suffered punctures, some multiple, by the time we reconnected with the smooth pavement of Sir Francis Drake. Many of us stopped to assist others, and we pooled together to get everyone back in the saddle.

The stories continued as we rolled toward our destination. After 57 miles at a nearly 17 mph pace over hill and dale, we arrived at the Java Hut parking lot hungry, happy, and wiser for the time shared.

Competitors
They say time heals all wounds, and from my perspective it seems the bike is instrumental in the healing process. LeMond and Boyer had a falling out after the 1982 world championships in Goodwood, England, where LeMond claimed the silver medal after Boyer had broken away toward the finish. The former Renault teammates are separated by five years, but lead very different lives.

Boyer was the first American to race the Tour de France in 1981, three years before LeMond. The Utah native turned professional for a French team in 1977, racing for 10 years. He raced for five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault, the Irishman Sean Kelly, and finished his career with 7-Eleven, providing insight and perspective to the young American team. LeMond won three Tours, two world championships, and enjoyed a prosperous 13-year business relationship with his LeMond Racing Bicycles and Trek before a falling out in 2008. With three grown children and a successful LeMond Fitness company, he seemed at peace for the first time in many years.

The same can be said for Boyer, now residing in Rwanda, Africa, coaching the Rwanda Cycling Team. After a fall from grace, Boyer was given a new lease on life from Ritchey, who invited him to Rwanda in late 2006, a couple months after winning his second Race Across America. Boyer helped organize the Wooden Bike Classic, a series of citizen bike races held in Rwanda to bring communities together and help identify any hidden talent. The goal: use their combined bike industry and racing experience (Ritchey-sponsored riders have won world and national championships in many countries over the past 20 years or so) to help Rwanda gain a more positive image after the atrocities of its 1994 genocide.

The ultra-competitive and focused nature of the two men hasn’t come without its troubles, though, and there have been some strong disagreements on how things should be managed. After a large effort to design and distribute coffee-hauling cargo bikes in Rwanda (Ritchey was a prolific framebuilder from 1974 through the mid 1990s, rides 10,000 miles a year, and designs all his company’s products), the logistics and challenges of working within a landlocked Third World country without a railroad took their toll, and the focus shifted toward bike racing and the Olympics.

Boyer decided to live and work among the Rwandans back in 2007, and has developed and trained a strong team of riders from the ground level. The challenge with bike racing is always financial (note the merging of several WorldTour teams the past two seasons), and Boyer is often stretched beyond his capacity. Ritchey had been a major financial source for the team, and sometimes the two don’t see eye to eye, but the Dino Ride allowed the men to set aside their differences and enjoy each other’s company for the day.

One of Boyer’s protégés, Adrien Niyonshuti, finished a strong 39th at the 2012 London Olympics cross-country mountain bike event in the yellow, blue and green colors of his country on August 12. Former Ritchey-sponsored pro Thomas Frischnecht supported Niyonshuti before the Olympic Games, and silver medalist Nino Schurter trained with the 25-year-old Rwanda leading up to the race.

Trampleasure, now a school teacher near Berkeley, raced alongside Boyer on the Sidi-Grab On team in the 1980 Coors Classic, which Boyer won. Nicknamed ‘Haystack’, he won an amateur race in France and got many Top 3s in Belgium, drug free.

“Plenty of access to speed and steroids at the time, but I rode clean, except for the warm coffee in the bottle on some cold, grey Belgium days,” he added. “That was part of the 1978 season, part of ’79 and most of the ’81 season.

“The path of heart, the hero’s journey; cycling first got me on that path,” Trampleasure explained. “That initial discovery of part of my authentic self was on two wheels, and has continued in many ways since then. At the Dino Ride I get to feel that passion, love, and connection that fuels my soul daily.”

Suffering and healing
It’s been well documented how much suffering is done on the bike. I’ve also been witness to the healing process of the bike, and the nearly miraculous powers of staying fit.

Journalist and race announcer Bruce Hildenbrand, a usual Dino Ride participant, struck a stone wall while descending near Alpe d’Huez in France in early September of 2011 while guiding on an Andy Hampsten tour, breaking his collarbone, hip, both legs and some ribs. After two weeks recovering in a Grenoble hospital, Hildenbrand flew home to Mountain View, California to begin some gruelling rehabilitation. He was walking without the aid of a cane or walker by late October, announcing local cyclocross races and emceeing the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition fundraising dinner in early November, where the guest speaker was none other than Hampsten, LeMond’s teammate on the `86 La Vie Claire team.

Former track racer and Shaw’s Lightweight Cycles shop owner Terry Shaw was hospitalized after battling a heart infection for a few years. His prognosis looked glum, and the family decided to close the shop he ran for 35 years in Silicon Valley. After a successful heart transplant at Stanford Hospital in late July of 2011, the father of former Ritchey Design’s retail sales manager Nathan was back on his feet. By mid September, he was back on his bike, and enjoyed the Dino Ride from a whole new perspective.

“Bicycling is just the best sport in the world,” Hardy said from his San Francisco office near Union Square. “Even long hours on the bike can be enjoyable since you can ride on beautiful roads and have adventures along the way. Imagine what it must take to be a swimmer staring at the bottom of a pool for hours and hours… and, I’ve got lots of interesting friends that I’ve now known for close to 40 years through cycling. My uncle rode 80 miles on his 80th birthday and I’m hoping to maintain that tradition.”