Chance Friendships Can Change Your Life Forever: Guest Blog by Tommy B.

It’s warming up outside. It’s mid July now, Tour De France time, and Lance Armstrong is back in the news. After a four-year absence from cycling, the cancer-survivor and seven-time Tour winner finished in an amazing third place last year. Almost all of those he rode with—and against were long gone from the sport. He got so close last year, and was coming back to claim an eighth win this year. On the first day, he had a stellar fourth place in the opening time trial, and for days raced near enough to the front that he could rely on his skills to improve later. Yesterday his bike racing fortunes changed. The flat tires and crashes he miraculously always seemed to avoid in the past, pretty much dashed his Tour hopes, as he was involved in three crashes and a flat tire, putting him far out of contention. He’s on the verge of retirement from the sport.

But ten years ago, he was in his prime, about to win his second Tour De France. He’d transformed American cycling, as we who rode bikes regularly watched scores ride and race bikes because of him. Just before the Tour that year, I had a meeting that introduced me to another world.

‘Who’s this hotshot?’ I thought to myself. I watched a rider streak West on Tower Road across Green Bay. He must have come east from Sheridan. I was riding north on Green Bay, and turned onto Tower to chase him. He rode a Celeste Green Bianchi with Mustard yellow trim. I recognized it as the bike of Mercatone Uno, the Italian bank which sponsored Marco Pantani and the rest of that team. Who’s this guy who’s so bold as to ride this European team bike? He was moving, pedaling fluidly. As I followed him, I thought, I, on the other hand, earned the bike I was riding. Yeah, right. I was sitting on a bright metallic blue and red and white trimmed Trek carbon-fiber United States Postal Service team bike, the same frame which Lance Armstrong rode. But the only reason I got to ride it was that when I broke my original carbon-fiber bike, Trek warranted the frame and was nice enough to offer me the Lance Armstrong USPS edition as a replacement. Of course I said yes. I was probably the first person in Chicago with one.

It was a hot, Sunday mid-afternoon in June. And now I was Westbound on Tower following this guy on the Marco Pantani bike. He wore a Euro-looking lycra outfit; not Mercatone Uno, but colorful and obscure nonetheless. I wanted to check out his bike. Then I thought, ‘He’s probably some Euro-bike snob,’ Would he even talk to me? That bastard! Who does he think he is? So haughty! I’ll smoke his ass. I accelerated, and after maybe half a mile, and a few more hard pedal strokes, I was riding next to him going 24 or 25 miles per hour.

“Isn’t that a Marco Pantani bike?” I yelled over the wind, trying not to sound defensive. “Yeah. Hey, that’s a Lance Armstrong bike!” he exclaimed in return. “Let’s stop up ahead.” We pulled off the road onto the sidewalk after the next intersection. “Nice bike!” He said. “My name’s Clay.” None of the bike snobs I’d met, and I’d met plenty, ever had a name like “Clay.” What kind of name was that? He had a little, just the slightest twang to his words. He drew out the syllables just the slightest to tell me he may not be from the northern suburbs where we were riding.

We stood there in the hot sun on Tower Road in Winnetka and talked about bikes for probably 15-20 minutes. It felt good to get out, to be moving, to be on my bike, and to talk to someone who turned out to not be snobbish at all, but pretty much a regular guy from Missouri who loved bikes and riding.

It felt good to be out of the house. I’d spend my last few weekends sitting inside watching TV, despite the gorgeous late spring weather, not doing what I loved, which is being outside riding my bike, my new bike. What was the point of having it? It became easy to stay inside, alone, and watch sports replays, despite the amazingly brilliant sunlight shining on the newly painted bright aqua and yellow walls of my new place. Much too easy to be lazy— and lonely, thinking of my ex-girlfriend, who’d come back into my life merely to push me away and torment me—yet again. “Tawwwm…” I’d hear that UK accent and just melt. But I wasn’t “spiritual” enough for her. She had a “deep con-neeec-tion” with the dolphins she’d ridden, and the Shamans and Native American chiefs she visited. She had, I think, every new age book ever written on her shelves. And she’d regularly gone to Native American sweat lodges. Despite my being native to America, I wasn’t con-neec-ted enough to come along to sweat lodges.

So challenging to overcome inertia. Easy to stay in the routine of going to work, coming home and watching TV, getting to the weekend and repeating, sometimes actually looking forward to my job at a gym again on Monday, when I’d see my friends. That routine got so boring. Yet there had been at least two weekends of beautiful weather, where I watched the sunlight—and the day slip away, as nighttime started to fall without my ever leaving the apartment. I just had to put forth the effort to do something different. I didn’t really feel like getting up off the couch, but if I didn’t do it soon, I was about to squander yet another weekend without doing anything different, anything new, anything creative, any contact with anyone other than that girl, if she decided to call. It was June 21, the first day of summer. I wasn’t calling her. I was going riding.

Just start, the rest is easy. I roll the bike by the door. Pull the water bottles from the cages. Always sniff before filling. Yikes. Scrub very thoroughly and fill. Pump deflated tires. Slip on bike shorts. Reach for a jersey. Which one? (Pathetic! Just like a woman! Grab one dammit!), slip into the cleated shoes. (Such a f’ing ordeal. If you make it one. Just go)! Not bad, it’s only about 12:30, and I have the day ahead of me. I open the door holding my bike, and step into the light.


I roll out easily at 18-20 mph, and then pick up the pace to 21-22-23. (Oh, pushing the pedals hard is hurting my legs, after sitting on my ass all morning!) Now I’m asking something of these legs. But what? There’s no plan today, other than just breathing deeply and feeling good. Yet feeling good is it’s own reward. Just starting, making a shift and taking action is it’s own reward.

I headed north from the city up Green Bay Road, up toward Winnetka, where I saw the rider with the Euro Jersey and the Pantani bike crossing Tower and accelerated…

After we talked, we started rolling west, then downtown. Clay asked, “How many miles do you have in on the bike so far this year?” I knew he was looking for some huge number. I sheepishly replied, “I think about 275 to 300. How ‘bout you?” “About 4,500.” Yikes. Yet Clay and I rode over 80 miles that day, at a good pace, chit-chatting most of the way. He was patient and when I needed to stop and stretch, he was fine with it. He told me how he lost almost 100 pounds through cycling; how cycling saved him. Noticing his husky but powerful build, I couldn’t believe he’d been that heavy. I thought, cool, what a great training ride, just enough pain, and just enough pleasure. Afterward, he casually mentioned a ride through Iowa called RAGBRAI, a week-long bike ride of about 500 miles across Iowa. He wanted to get a group of guys together to go there and do it for training and fun. The idea of riding town-to-town for days, actually getting somewhere, transporting yourself to somewhere far away on your own power, not merely going out for exercise for an hour, was intriguing to me. But while it was nice riding today, no f’ing way am I riding across Iowa, I thought. Within a couple weeks and more quick rides, Clay said to me, “You are going to Iowa. I am NOT taking no for an answer!”

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

This year, the first day of summer, June 21 fell on a Monday. On my way to work, I saw a text. It was from Clay.
“It was ten years ago today you chased me down off green bay road.”
-June 21, 2010, 6:39 am.

Oh, yeah. that day was the first day of summer, like today. And it was 2000. In that span, we rode across Iowa six times. He was the ringleader who put it all together. He instigated training rides to prepare for RAGBRAI and after it each year. Clay literally got me back into cycling. And back into connecting with other people, and life.

Ironically, that first year, I really didn’t want to go. Even after we started rolling westward in a huge Suburban, my bike locked down in the trailer behind, I thought, “What did I get myself into?” Here was Clay, the high school classmate of Senator Roy Blunt’s son, and as far from my liberal stance as anyone I’d ever met. And Mike, this cracker guy from Ohio. And Todd, who’s Dad owned a sex club. And our driver, Andy, this pencil-thin, lily-white guy who barely spoke. All of them except Clay seemed like alcoholics. I was the health freak who didn’t even drink.

With sometimes 20,000 riders on the road at RAGBRAI, and often no cell-phone connections out there in those Iowa cornfields, it’s not difficult to get separated from your group. But you get found. After the first day, Mike, Todd, Clay and I were beaming with stories of blue skies and smooth sailing propelled by tailwinds on fresh black tarmac—and hot girls in black lycra. So that night our driver, twiggy Andy, who hadn’t been on a bike in 15 years, decided he wanted to ride the next day. So we took him to Wal-Mart and bought him their cheapest mountain bike. Then, I lent him a pair of my bike shorts, the ones that were so tight on my legs they hurt. They nearly fell off Andy. He chose his best oversized black T-shirt, with a huge green Herman Munster head in the center. It looked like one of those massive paper mache heads in Carnival, this one Herman Munster’s, supported by two toothpicks sticking out of a pair of baggy bike shorts. This all-black, heat-attracting outfit contrasted quite nicely with his thin white arms and legs. We all admired his ambition. Unfortunately while day 2 was not the longest day of 105 miles, which came later in the week, it was the hardest 73 miles you could imagine. All day we felt nearly 100-degree heat, quad-burning vertical hills, knock-you-down headwinds, and sweltering humidity. Everyone would suffer that day.

As we rolled out on our carbon-fiber or aluminum steeds, Andy rolled out right alongside us his steel Wal-Mart bike. After we hit the first bend going 25 or 26, we looked back, and didn’t see him all day. Later in the day, someone told us they saw a guy with a Herman Munster head at a rest stop, so we knew he was making forward progress. But long after we’d been in, eaten and showered, and the sun went down with no Andy at the truck, we were mostly all concerned.

It had been an exhausting day in the saddle for everyone. Earlier, I was drenched in sweat, my dehydrated quads burning on the skin from the hot sun, the muscles inside burning from the lactic acid with the intense hills. I climbed the hills alongside a rider from an Italian team, communicating in gestures and my broken Italian as we rolled together for mile after mile, and passed more and more people on the way up the longest, steepest climb of the day. Right at the crest, we simultaneously grimaced and yelled out; I felt my vastus medialis, the inner, tear-drop shaped part of the thigh muscle lock into a cramp. His did too. We both stopped to recoup at the top, while a long line of those we’d just passed somehow soldiered on ahead. We’d pass them again soon enough. Brilliantly, there was a water and Gatorade station at the top. I bought, and he said, still grimacing, “I crampi! Vastu mediale!” I know, dude! Si! Nice to know the Iowan hills could bring pain to a guy who rides in the Italian Alps too.

Clay said that even Todd, the perennial State Champ and our fastest guy, reluctantly admitted he’d stopped to rest and fell asleep under a tree that day. Later, when everyone else was in, we drove the Suburban around the destination town hunting for Andy. We were ready to back track and drive to each town to the last town he’d been seen. We’d ridden our bikes into the finish town hours and hours before. Eventually we found him in a bar, his dry, lobster-red pipe-cleaner arms and legs sticking out of his black and green Herman Munster outfit, dehydrated, delirious, drunk. And grinning ear-to-ear. He rode all 73 intense miles. It seems Andy, too needed to change his life.

Every night there is a huge party in the end town. But the real party, where the fast people go, is often in the town about 15-20 miles before. So while everyone else is grateful to squeek into the final town, Todd and the boys find the party with the naked beer slides, camp out there and drink in the hot sun till it starts to set. Then after hours of umpteen beers from the keg and shot-gunned cans of beer, it’s time to rally the troops and get back on the road. Then, with all those beers in them, they’ll start out with a 30 mile-per-hour sprint into the sunset toward the campsite. After sitting or standing around for hours, my legs burn and I grimace as I hang on the pace, while these alcohol-fueled guys take off grinning and yelling, “Yeah, Baby!” Maybe it buffers their pain. Crazy.

Soon enough, we could count on a nice hot shower, where most people got ice cold water out of hoses. That’s because Mike, who turned out to be an amazing engineer, rigged up a series of hoses and pipes from our truck’s engine, which, along with the sun during the day, heated the water. Everywhere we went, bike nerds, engineering geeks, men with tape on their glasses and grimy jerseys swarmed over Mike’s creation and worshipped him. He was in his glory.

It worked. It was just what I needed. As the week wore on, I remember feeling such a connection with these guys (and the gals we’d meet) as we did what we loved, being in the moment, bonding on cycling and our friendship, than I ever did with the spiritual girlfriend. I may not have been suitable for her sweat lodge, but I did more sweating that week in that heat than she could do in a lifetime of sweat lodges, as I purged pounds of negative energies. I’ve never felt connected with, or even ridden a dolphin, but I’ve ridden thousands of miles under my own propulsion, and felt a great connection; with humans. Maybe the problem wasn’t her confusion, but my needing to get out and find myself. Nature abhors a vacuum. I came out of the darkness and into the sunlight.

I got over that girl and met a more compatible woman, and got in a healthier, long-term relationship. Clay went through 4 or 5 women and plenty of torment. I introduced him to the law of attraction, that concept of putting attention on what you want; not what you don’t want. Put out confusion, you get confusion. Put out clarity, you get that. He’s now back in Missouri, married to his long-lost army sweetheart with two instant kids. We’ve kept up.

Each summer this has become something to look forward to, this ride across Iowa. The years I didn’t go with them, I was thinking about going.

Amazing how a meeting can change your life. Amazing how by being open to who comes into your life, you can head in a whole new direction, and enrich your life.