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My buddy Jim Widner and I. We've been friends since about 1970. He lives in Bisbee, and met us BFers at the coffee shop and hung out. He was curious about all those small-wheeled bicycles...
Maynard Hershon needs no introduction to people who love to cycle and love to laugh. Read about him here and about what he did on a Friday at the inaugural PACTOUR/Bike Friday Training Camp
Even If You're Not a RAAM Type
Frankly, m'dear, I've never wanted to ride across America. You may not want to either but, like me, you love to ride your bike. PAC Tour's not just for mega-mile super-people. Even old codgers like this writer have big fun. If you've ever been jealous of pro training camps, where the racers only eat, sleep and ride, PAC Tour's your ticket.
I'll describe the fifth of PAC Tour's annual four weeks in Arizona in March: Bike Friday Week.
I rode a Bike Friday Pocket Rocket Pro with 25 other PAC Tourers, almost all of them on small-wheel BF folding bikes. If you haven't ridden one, trust me: I wouldn't have gone faster on anything I own. The 20" wheels are no hindrance to performance or handling. You forget you're on a "different-looking" bicycle.'Nuff said.
We met on Sunday at a hotel near the Tucson airport. Getting to the hotel from the airport is easy. As the week progresses, you're surprised again and again at how easy other logistical steps turn out to be. PAC Tour has seemingly thought of everything. When you get to know Lon and Susan, you see that it's true: They HAVE thought of everything.
Monday morning, we rode 85 miles from the airport hotel in Tucson to a motel in Sierra Vista AZ, the hub from which we were to do our day rides. That first day, by the way, was the hardest day on the bike; we took a roundabout route to avoid weekday traffic.
Late in the ride, we pedaled through Fort Huachuca, over many short but steep hills. Even this writer, a bronze god of cycle-sport, grumbled incoherently as he labored over those hills. (We rode back to Tucson the following Saturday on a more straightforward route, avoiding those *%%$ hills. I hardly grumbled at all.)
By noon the first day, you've discovered that some of the riders were a bit faster than you and some were slightly slower. Thankfully some were traveling just about your speed. You discovered that they were pretty cool people and you had a hunch you were gonna have a fun week with PAC Tour among your new friends.
On that ride and the subsequent ones, we'd connect with PAC Tour staff three times per day for rest stops or lunch. We'd have breakfast at the hotel. I'd eat, oh, three times what I do at home. If we rode 70 miles (I believe ride mileage was shorter Bike Friday week than during the other four weeks), we'd stop at 20 miles for liquids and snacks, at 40 for lunch and maybe at 55 for more Gatorade or water and bars or gels.
Lunches were remarkable, by the way, burgers grilled at the roadside or fajitas, salads, good tasty food, and pie or cake for dessert, often with ice cream! Imagine!
When we reached the hotel, PAC Tour would have assembled racks for the bikes, filled buckets with soapy water and provided brushes for bike-washing. Floor pumps, lubes and tools appeared. Skilled mechanical help was there for the asking. You could sign up for inexpensive but effective massages, even during the evening presentations.
We stayed two to a room in Sierra Vista. Each day, if memory serves, some rider would go up and down the hall collecting several riders' mesh bags of laundry to wash in the motel's machines. Others washed their shorts and jerseys in the shower and hung them over the fence around the pool. It was Arizona, after all: they dried in no-time.
Each evening, we'd assemble in the motel's meeting room where we'd be enlightened and entertained by cycling luminaries. Those luminaries would be riding with us, mind you, and they too would become our friends.
Each morning, we'd leave the Sierra Vista hotel and do loops in the desert countryside. We'd leave roughly at the same time, all of us, but we'd split into groups soon after we rolled out. A few of us would opt to ride in the PAC Tour van out to the first rest stop, thus cutting the days mileage. One or two people took a day off to sightsee or just to rest.
I was ALMOST fast enough to hang with the fast group,but not quite. I really liked the guys in that group, but alas, I chased for miles on those sparsely traveled desert roads. I probably rode harder than I had in years or decades on that silly looking small-wheeled bicycle, God bless its articulated heart.
I'm sure I am fitter than I've been since the Eisenhower administration.
Since my early April PAC Tour week I've heard from several of the people I met there. The bonds you forged with the fast guys who dropped you and the slower folks you saw at the rest stops seem to me to be genuine, lasting bonds.
Perhaps all the PAC Tour weeks have the same effect on people, or maybe there's something about Bike Friday owners. I'll try to do a non-Friday week next year and let you know. Or maybe I'll do Lon and Susan's week in Wisconsin: 100 miles a day with stops in small-town cafes for lunch and stops for ice cream each afternoon. Let's see.
Copyright 2004 Maynard Hershon All Rights Reserved