Spring break

Kids are on spring break this week.  I'm taking a couple of days off to hang with them--I'm really looking forward to it.

As usual, I chased the N2 group this morning and hooked up with SuperDave, who was headed my way.  We chatted about riding and racing, especially when we were both newbies.  He stuck with it, I took a 15 year break.  Wouldn't have made a difference if I had put in the time.  He's THAT good.   We split off at River when I went to intercept my group, and he and Cheryl and someone else went east.

Talking with someone who's been riding that long made me think of those college years when I started getting into this cycling pastime seriously.  I remembered the following series of events, which unfortunately has a sad dip in the middle.

 After racing a summer at the Westgate series at Tysons on my trusty Peugeot PH10S (or was it a PF10?  I don't remember), I bought a sweet Cilo with Shimano 600 EX from the Bicycle Exchange in Falls Church.  At $538.18 (I do remember writing that check), I felt like I was stretching it, so buying Dura Ace (with the revolutionary new SIS "Index" shifting) seemed to be a luxury I could ill afford.  The guy who sold it to me was one of the mechanics who did it right--made me feel at ease with this enormous purchase, talked to me about racing, and gave me some tips on how to tweak and adjust this gleaming new machine.  His name was Benjamin Chapell, and he was a Cat 3 who trained consistently and did OK racing for (I think) Whole Wheel Velo.

I bought the bike over the winter break, using the money earned from a few weeks slingin' plates at the Red Lobster up the street.  Took it down to W&M for the 2nd sem of my junior year, started some winter training, and looked forward to racing that summer, maybe even with Ben.  When spring break rolled around I brought the bike home and dropped it off at the shop for the obligatory tune-up.  They told me to come back midweek--they were pretty stacked up.

Tuesday rolls around, and I decided to swing by the shop to see if maybe the bike was ready a day early.  Handwritten sign on the door says "Shop closed today".  Strange.  On Wednesday I called to see if my bike was ready, and it was.  So I asked why the shop was closed one day in the middle of the week.  The woman on the other end said "We had to go to the funeral of one of the guys who worked here.  He was training out in Ashburn and got hit by a drunk driver in the middle of the day".  Pit in the stomach.  Who? I asked, knowing the answer.  "Ben Chapell."

I was spooked from riding for a while.  While I posted last week about how irritated I was on a group ride due to sketchy riding, at least most of that is correctable and/or avoidable.  Drunks on the road, cell phone yakkers, texters, that stuff still freaks me out.  Today I read this post about a car on car accident involving a drunk asshat that rendered a family without a loved one and it indirectly reminded me of my spring break in 1986.

I knew Ben long enough, though, to keep on riding and eventually worked as a mechanic for a couple of years.  The last race I did at Westgate was a weekend race sometime in the late summer of 1989 that had been dedicated to Ben, all proceeds going to a fund in his memory.  

So as I rode with Dave today I was reminded of how quickly time has passed, and how the events of the intervening years shape us.  Other than that we had a great ride, and I put in some extra miles since I won't be on the roads tomorrow and instead I'll be eating with lots o' family.

Happy Easter.