Do I wish the bike industry would just fuck right off with its rabid zeal to sell more units at any cost? Yes. And I hope that statement pisses people off.ĭo I think it’s sad that some young people will never get to experience the complete joy of pedaling a bike to the top of a mountain under their own power? Yes. I’ve never met an earn-your-turns disciple with any talent for anything athletic. Foremost among them is the whole earn-your-turns thing. I think most of the arguments against them are mostly bullshit. I think I differ from many of my friends when I say I like electric bikes. What are the pros and cons of this current electric bicycle phase? Do you vote acoustic or electric? I’ve owned aluminum, carbon, and titanium bikes, but always come back to lightweight steel. And, well, since Roland isn’t with us anymore, it’s not going to happen. ![]() I envisioned it white with red, like the old Eddy Merckx paint scheme - like my DS was. I always thought that someday I’d have Roland build me a bike. I guess I’m just not all that nostalgic about my race bikes and stuff, and I don’t sit around thinking about how great it would be to ride any of them. Strangely, the bike I wish I still had was the Della Santa I bought second hand before going to Belgium when I was 19. He has an otherworldly understanding of the sport of cycling, for sure, but he also has this savant-level ability to read people, and to motivate them - even if they don’t know it. But José DeCauwer, my sport director at ADR and Tulip was - and is - nothing short of genius in my opinion. I’m still really close to Michael Herbert, who was my boss both at Castelli and Shock Doctor. I love it.Įvery boss I have had has taught me something special. December is UPS’s Tour de France, and it feels just like that: Every morning I feel just a little apprehensive by noon I am feeling the rhythm and the last 20-30 stops feel like the finishing sprint. And every week feels a little like a stage race. Our lease ran out this past September, so we closed the doors.Ĭurrently, I’m driving a brown truck for UPS and loving every second of it. We hung on, though, got the bar up and running, and kept pushing beer, booze and bikes uphill until working for free still didn’t cover the bills. The Reader’s Digest version is that we overestimated the town’s potential for such things, and then COVID-19 drove a nail in the coffin. Be like Joe and buy this one to show your true colors. The housing-market crash of 2008 killed the job, though. ![]() And it put me back into a competitive atmosphere. Race car drivers are the most switched-on human beings I have ever met. But I loved being at the track every week. Though I don’t think I accomplished what the company wanted. I left the company suddenly, and did a short stint as a barista for my friend Gene Oberpriller’s coffee shop/bike shop until going to work for Shock Doctor, where I helped launch their motorsports product line. I answered phones there, and packed boxes, and developed many of the systems they still use, and designed a fair amount of the stuff we sold. Castelli was the first cycling clothing company to use Lycra, and it continues to be, in my opinion, the most innovative clothing brand in the world. ![]() I guess you could say that my first real job was at Castelli USA, the North American arm of the iconic Italian cycling clothing brand. I can’t remember exactly when I decided to hang up the cleats, but it was midseason, more or less, and it was uneventful. And that’s what I did for a living until I was 31. I signed my first pro contract on July 4th of 1987, just a few months after my 20th birthday. I wanted to be a pro bike racer, so I moved to Belgium just after my 19th birthday.
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