Lance looks thrilled

A couple years ago Trek unveiled their 2008 Madone road bike in Madison, Wisconsin. This new Madone was a break from the OCLV frames we’d seen from them in the past, so it was a big deal for the company. The Madone was launched with a lot of fanfare in a theater in downtown Madison with not only word wide press but their dealers as well. After the presentation was over, myself, a friend and a few marketing people from Trek decided to go out. It was still early and we’d heard Main Street was the place to be. Long story short – we stayed out to a point that the company’s marketing people who were with us and our ride back, called it a night. I’ve been lost in all sorts of foreign countries and found my way to my hotel so I wasn’t worried about getting back to the ours in Madison.

When the bars closed my buddy and I found a cab that would take us back to our hotel for the remaining amount of money we still had in our pockets. Good times.

The following morning all the attending journalists were going to ride the new Madone and the recently retired Lance Armstrong was going to join us. Needless to say that was like throwing chum into the ocean. All the journalists were worked up into a frenzy about getting a chance to ask Lance something. As we prepped our Madones in the hotel parking lot, Armstrong, out of the blue, rolled over looking to get the ride started and over with. I actually don’t blame him. He must have known he was going to get hammered with cycling questions during the whole ride. I had another idea though.

We rolled out of the hotel and immediately it began- the jostling to be next to Lance. I snuck my way behind him and I could already hear him fielding such questions as, “what was your favorite climb?” Finally, I slid in next to him and introduced myself. I asked the obligatory questions about the Madone, he responded appropriately hitting all the bullet points in describing the bike. After his replies I deviated from the script.

I launched into telling him about our time on State Street. He seemed to be honestly interested in the good time my BFFand I had. Perhaps it was the welcome break of describing over and over the ride qualities of the Madone that made my conversation interesting. By the time I was done regaling him with stories of passed students in the gutter, tossing a sofa into the street, running up bar tabs and waking up CyclingNews’ James Huang for cab money, it was well over five minutes. I knew that it was better to end the conversation on a high note of our stupid late night antics than just puttering out with a lame story of eating hotel breakfast food. I told him thanks, slid off the front and back into the group of quote hungry journalists.

Lance gives the low-down on the Madone

An American journalist rode over to me and asked me how I was able to spend that much time talking to him. I said think about it, he’s rich and (at the time) single, what do you think we talked about?

On press junkets the company educates journalists on their new product. But I like to think that on that trip I educated some people on the potentiality of the good times to be had on State Street.

Once you see this sign abandon all hope

The Interbike bike show for the working media is a complete shit show. There’s really no other way to explain or sugar-coat it. Each year I went as an editor I could have written a post about all the shenanigans that occur: from the photo shoots in our hotel room, to hanging out to all hours of the night with various pros, but I thought I’d pick this story out of the hat.

The first year I attended as working media I was actually excited about attending. I was going to hang out in Las Vegas and see the latest and greatest bike stuff. What more could I want? By day three I was destroyed from all the walking from meeting to meeting. At one point my BFF who works at another magazine saw me collapsed on the floor behind a booth and severely reprimanded me. I tried to explain to him that I was exhausted. This wasn’t exhaustion due to late night partying, but from the whole day of zig-zagging the expo floor, bouncing from one appointment to another and subsisting on free sugary energy drinks and heat-lamp cooked hot dogs. I’ll always remember what he said, “Suck it up! Everyone here is playing hurt!” The following year I promised myself that wasn’t going to be “that guy” who pulled the ripcord on day three.

The years following “playing hurt” became my motto and I lived it. Back before Cross Vegas dominated the Wednesday night scene there was the epic Sinclair party. And as I look back at it I wonder why it was such a big deal. We were all crammed into an overflowing nightclub at the top of some casino, with music so loud you couldn’t talk to the same people I had to have meetings with throughout the day. However I had a plan. We would arrive at the party early as I knew that later in the evening trying to get to the bar would be an almost impossible task. From there phase 2 of my plan was that I would immediately start pounding drinks to take advantage of the open bar. By the time it was 11:00 I would have drank myself mostly sober and be able to continue with that night’s activities, whatever they may have been. However, it all went horribly wrong.

The show floor - where the magic happens

As planned Tim and I got to the Sinclair party with passes in hand and I headed to the bar. A few British journalists were already there with probably the same idea I had: take advantage of the open bar, pound free booze and then take off. I started drinking and chatting. I know a few of them – in particular Ellis Bacon of Pro Cycling. Ellis is a great guy, but whenever I see him I can’t help myself by saying, “What’s shaking Bacon?!” With a few drinks in me I’m now over the top with my enthusiastic greeting. I’m sure to this day he probably considers me that ugly American. But seriously, I can’t be the only one who has said that to him? When the open bar ended I thought I was done too. However by this time the marketing people have started to arrive and began handing me free drinks. Before I knew it I was plowed. There have only been a few times when I was black-out drunk. This was one of them.

I vaguely remember getting into a taxi to get back to the Venetian hotel where we were staying. I awoke to the room spinning and the uncontrollable urge to get everything out of my stomach immediately. For the next couple of hours I hovered by the toilet praying to God that he would end my life. Tim graciously stepped up to cover my morning appointments. Finally around 11:00 AM I could stand up and make my way to the show floor. I dragged myself down and started to make my appointments. At one point I felt something trying to come up and I hurried to the men’s bathroom. I quickly walked over to the nearest one, trying not to make it seem that obvious I was going to hurl. I rounded the corner, entered the bathroom and was hit with the stench of vomit mixed with urine and other human waste. The floors were slick with god knows what and every counter top was wet. And you can forget about paper towels. In the far stall I heard the unmistakable sound of someone bent over a toilet yacking their guts out. I’ve smelt all kinds of foul odors from dead bodies, baby shit to burning flesh, but few things smell as bad as that bathroom did. It was as if I entered Dante’s fifth layer of hell. I choked back any urge to vomit and quickly spun around on my heels. I would rather at this point go to the PowerBar booth and stick my head into their garbage can to puke then stay in that hell hole of a bathroom.

At one point I caught up to my friend and I told him what had happened. He had done something similar but he was not looking that worse for wear. It was then that I realized I was still a rookie at playing hurt at Interbike.

The following years I calmed down a bit when attending Interbike. I met some great people at the show and did some more normal mature activities like going for a drink instead of emptying every bottle behind the bar. It also helped that I talked a lot of shit about how I was going to win Cross Vegas and was trying to impress at the industry criterium race, so I needed to at least keep myself in check.

I didn’t attend the 2009 Interbike because I had just left ROAD and to be honest I didn’t miss it. I thought I would, but the thought of walking up and down the aisles listening to advertisers drone on about whatever product they have, no longer holds the same magic for me. That said, it looks like I’ll be attending the 2010 Interbike in some sort of media capacity and I expect to have plenty of stories to tell.

Beloki during his brief tenure at Sanuier-Duval

Over the five years I was editorial director at ROAD Magazine I went on some really amazing trips. I rode in the VIP car at Paris-Roubaix, and I’ve seen the Vuelta as well as the Giro. And then there were the product launches that were held all over the world. Often I would come home with a story that wasn’t suitable for the magazine and were best told over a few beers. These stories range from hanging out with pros and journalists and seeing what goes on when the stage is over, to staying out late at night and crawling back to the room, getting into a bar fight, rally racing rental cars, and just stupid stuff that goes on at the after-parties. When I told these stories to people they asked why didn’t I write about them. For one it would get me, and possibly the people I was with, in trouble. However, every once in awhile I’ll dig up a story from the past and post it. Like this one…

In 2004 I was a guest of the Saunier-Duval cycling team for the Vuelta. To be more exact, I was the guest of Scott Bicycles who were sponsoring the team. This was the beginning of Scott’s entry into ProTour cycling, so they were looking for some publicity and I was there to write a story about the team. Saunier-Duval, in a Hail Mary attempt for GC success, signed Joseba Beloki during the mid-season. He was attempting to come back from his horrific crash during the 2003 Tour de France. Clearly he was damaged goods and with hindsight his stage 9 crash in the Tour was a career ender, not to mention later being linked to Operation Puerto, which put his cycling career into a death spiral which he never pulled out from. But hey, that was Spanish cycling…

I was in the Saunier-Duval team car following Beloki during stage 15’s individual time trial. The course started off flat, but for only for a short distance, and then kicked up. In theory, Beloki could do well here. However theory is a lot different than practice. We clicked along at a reasonable pace, but the director was doing a lot of communicating with Beloki, which was surprising. I thought Beloki would be going too hard to carry on any type of conversation, but he obviously decided to make this a rolling rest day. As the hill steepened the directors yells of “Venga, venga!!” became less demanding to almost pleading. With my limited Spanish it became clear that Beloki wanted to drop out. At one point we pulled up along side him and the director told him to just finish the stage. We dropped behind Beloki as he begrudgingly continued.

The mood in the car became tense. I could only imagine the thoughts for the directors at that moment, “What the hell! We bring this guy onto the team and he can’t finish the time trial!” I decided to keep my mouth shut, not ask any questions or try to impress them with my limited Spanish. Up ahead I could see a Postal team rider. Beloki passed him and as we approached I could see that it was fellow Long Beach resident, Tony Cruz. As we passed him I leaned out the window and yelled at the top of my lungs, “Do it for Long Beach!” His head snapped toward me and he had a stunned look on his face like, “What the fuck?” Here he was, time trialing up this slope in the Vuelta, and out of the no where someone in the Saunier-Duval car is yelling in English something about Long Beach. I thought I had screwed up and had ruined his time trial concentration. We continued past Tony to the finish where, thankfully, Beloki finished. I found Tony the next day to apologize for yelling at him. Luckily, he didn’t care and he was just surprised to hear me yelling. For him the time trial was just something to get through.

The following day the mood was a little tense. Beloki kept hinting he wasn’t feeling good. I was back in the team car for stage 16 and about 30 miles into the stage Beloki coasted back to the car. There’s a lot of discussion going on between him and the director. I can’t understand any of it, but I know it isn’t good. He rides away and I think, “Okay, he’s going to continue.” Nope. He swings off to the side of the road and gets off his bike. We pull over, Beloki opens the car door and gets in beside me. It is awkward because what do you say at this point? “Hey, nice try.” At this level of racing there is no “nice try”. There was conversation between him and the directors in the front seat, but I’m just sitting next to him thinking, “Man, this was the guy who had Armstrong on the ropes last year at the Tour.” Then, out of the blue Beloki comments that he likes my white Nike running shoes. I didn’t know what to say other than, “Thanks.” I’m not sure if he said that to just break the silence in the car as we drive alongside the peloton. Riders look into the car and seem surprised. Beloki sheepishly waves to his fellow racers as we drive by. We drive ahead of the peloton and our car pulls over. Beloki transfers to another team car that was going to take him to the finish line hotel rather than being stuck in our car for the entire stage. I’m relieved. The tension was thick and no one was happy in that car. If I could have I would have sat in the trunk. Plus, he stank.

The next day Beloki was gone and the team continued like he had never been there. To pull the Vuelta out of the crapper for Saunier-Duval, Constantino Zaballa won stage 19. However for Beloki, that was it for him at Saunier-Duval. David Millar was the next big hope for the Saunier-Duval team and for Millar, Saunier-Duval was his entry back into professional cycling. Maybe my next post will be a Millar story.