System of a Down

Before we moved to Folsom, we lived at the top of a hill in Shingle Springs. The view was nice, but every ride from that house ended with a tough climb. After 20 years, that grew tiresome. A typical elevation profile looked like this:

Here things are pretty flat for the most part, but we can climb some hills depending on the direction we choose. Today we rode east on a route I've been fine tuning, and now we have perfected the elusive ride that front-loads all the climbing and ends with a long descent.

Except for the short climb at the end, from the lake back up to our house, it's a whole lot of downhill for the last 40 minutes. It may seem like a small thing, but after around 4000 rides that ended with a tough climb, it's quite a treat to coast into home.

Later.

The End

At the end of the 1988 racing season I was at a crossroads. For three years I had focused my life on mountain bike racing, and I didn't have a whole lot to show for it. I was drained, disenchanted, destitute and my knees hurt. It didn't have to be that way.

In late 1987 I met a guy named Don McElfresh. We worked together at Frank's Bicycle Lane in Roseville, and we quickly became friends and training partners. Don was a very good Category 1 road racer, and he greatly influenced my training for the '88 season. At the time Steve and I had conflicting work schedules, so our riding time together was more limited than it was before. And when you start riding with a road racer, you need a road bike.

I had already purchased a beautiful orange Colnago from my manager Tony shortly after I started working at Frank's, but even back in 1987 it was considered old (I think it was a 1974 model). Don convinced me I needed something new.

I bought the Faggin and before I knew it I was spending far more time on a road bike than my mountain bike.

When Don and I first started riding together, I thought it would make me faster. He was powerful, and just staying on his wheel in flat terrain was nearly impossible at first. It was only on climbs where I could hold my own. Even going downhill it was very difficult to stay with him because he had such a huge engine. In fact, my all-time max speed record of 60.5 miles per hour was sitting behind Don on a descent into the American River Canyon. We didn't wear helmets in those days, either.

Emulating him was a huge mistake. I figured a guy getting numerous top-5 placings in big Pro/1/2 road races knew what he was doing. He did not. I realize now that Don was simply very gifted and did well despite his horrible diet and terrible training habits. Even back then we knew Don rode too much. The guy just loved to ride his bike. In hindsight, given my current understanding of training practices, I know he rode WAY too much.

We did some long rides, man. Sometimes we rode from Citrus Heights to French Meadows and back, which was 150 miles. Other times we would ride in the foothills for 6-8 hours. He knew all the quiet back roads in the region and some days it felt like we rode every single one of them.

On weekdays when we worked at the bike shop, it wasn't uncommon for us to ride before work and again after work. I remember a number of occasions when we rode over 100 miles between the two rides in one day.

For Don there was some justification for doing these long rides. Many of his races were 90-120 miles, so he needed that big base to train his body to still be firing at the end of those long races. However, I was a mountain bike racer. My races were usually around 25 miles. I needed to go really fast for a couple hours, and that's it. There was really no reason to go on a 12-hour slog up to French Meadows and climb 15,000 feet. I would have been much better served by riding 2-3 hours with some intermittent speed work. This is exactly what Steven and I were doing on our typical mountain bike rides in 1986 and 1987.

And I needed a little rest.

I just didn't rest that year. I was young and stupid and I thought that more training was better. I know without any doubt it was by far the highest mileage year of my life. I didn't start documenting annual mileage until 1995, so I don't have data from the big racing years from 1986 to 1988. But I do know I cracked 6,000 miles in 2024 for the first time since I started keeping track. I arrived at that number by doing lots of rides in the 25 to 30 mile range, and almost all of them were on a mountain bike. In 1988 we were doing lots of rides in the 60-90 mile range on road bikes. I believe I rode over 12,000 miles in 1988.

When races came around, I was terrible. Although I was in the best shape of my life in many respects, I wasn't fine tuned for mountain bike racing, and I was probably suffering from fatigue and nutritional deficiencies. On most training rides I felt great, so I didn't understand why I wasn't seeing results. The self doubt creeped in. I started coming to terms with not being good enough. I wanted to be a professional racer, but I wasn't even cracking the top ten as an expert.

As I alluded to in the first sentence, I finished the season at a crossroads. I felt internal pressure to succeed at racing, and plenty of external pressure to move on. I was 21 years old, poor and undereducated. I saw the disappointment in my parents' faces whenever the subject of my future came up.

In November of 1988 Don and I went to the Interbike trade show in Reno. All the big bike and component manufacturers and distributers were there showing the latest and greatest equipment. We were supposed to be representing Frank's Bicycle Lane, our employer, but we had other ideas.

Don produced a polished racing resume and cover letter (which I still have) to pass out to prospective sponsors, and he encouraged me to do the same. Don's was an impressive collection of top-5 finishes in many races—three whole pages of them. Mine was half a page of mediocrity.

(This is a 1993 edit I used to help get a "sponsorship" from Dean/Adventure Mountain Bikes.)

I can't find my cover letter, but it was equally pathetic. Each time I handed one to somebody at a booth, they would scan it and try desperately to say something kind or encouraging. A lot of them weren't very good at hiding a smirk.

The phone never rang. In that silence the message was loud and clear: "You are not very good."

I quit racing.

While the year was pretty horrible from a racing standpoint, 1988 still produced many great memories. Don and I had an absolute blast working at the bike shop (when Frank wasn't around) and I did some absolutely epic road rides. Some of the ones Steve, Don and I all did together will forever be some of my favorites. (One particular French Meadows ride deserves its own post.)

It was also a year that caused so much regret as I grew older. I still wonder even to this day what might have been if I had a mentor or coach who really understood what I needed at that time to achieve success. I'll never know.

Later.

Little Pink Velos for You and Me

I finally accumulated the parts to start building Jennifer's Velo Orange Neutrino mini velo.

It's very early in the experiment, obviously, but I can't help but feel one step closer to riding in Mexico again.

Later.

the Crash: Part 2

At the time of the crash, I was a busy guy. If there were such a thing as a three-ended candle, I would be burning it at all three ends.

After a brutal first semester in college carrying 18 units, I was now in my second semester carrying a slightly more manageable 16. I was also working full-time as the night manager at Round Table Pizza. On top of that, I was trying to ride as much as possible to prepare for the upcoming mountain bike racing season.

We raced around ten times in 1985 and had a blast, but this was during and after my senior year of high school, and up to that point it was only for fun. I intended to race a little in 1986, but I wasn't that serious about it. I was focused on school first, making some money, and riding when I could. Steve and Doug, however, were going to take it up a notch.

They had both just started the process of having custom frames made by Ibis. I was envious, of course, but I was fairly happy with the Fisher Montare I had purchased late in 1985. It would work fine for my limited racing aspirations, and it was a major upgrade from the Ross I had raced the previous year.

Then I crashed my car.

The path I had been on, the one that seemed so very clear the previous day, had now muddied up considerably. Being a responsible adult and working hard towards some unseen life goal somewhere on the distant horizon now felt very different. Working too hard had nearly killed me. I wondered what the point was. My path suddenly had multiple forks jutting off in all directions.

Steve and Doug visited me the day after my accident and told me about the ordering process for their custom frames. They were excited in a way that nothing in my life had been giving me. Suddenly the fog cleared and my life came into focus: I was going to be a bike racer.

I called Ibis and talked to Scot Nicol, and he described the process and sent me a fit sheet. When it arrived I took all my measurements and filled out the short questionnaire. I made it clear this was a bike purely for racing and racing only. I even had them remove all the eyelets on the dropouts just to emphasize that this would be a sleek racing thoroughbred that would never have a rack or fenders bolted to it like some lowly pack mule. I went to a local autobody shop and picked out a Dupont Imron color—a metallic purple. I threw the fit sheet and a check for $300 in an envelope and mailed it off.

In a matter of weeks a pretty purple killing machine arrived, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

In the meantime, I was gathering the parts to build the most perfect racing machine possible given a relatively low budget. There were boutique parts out there that may have been better—WTB roller cams versus the Suntour version I was using, for example—but it was all very solid equipment at the time.

Was I a bit detail oriented at 18 years of age? Maybe.

Even at 18 years of age I was a fairly seasoned mechanic, having built many BMX bikes from the frame up. I already knew enough to buy my own hubs, spokes and rims to build my own wheels. I got them pretty close to the finished product, and my local bike shop fine tuned the spoke tension for ten bucks each.

It all added up to produce my favorite racing bike of all time and the one I had the most success on. Unfortunately, I would get less then two seasons out of the frame before it broke.

I went back to school around 10 days after my accident, and obviously I had fallen far behind. My heart was no longer in it, and within days I dropped out of college entirely. My candle suddenly had only two ends, and the racing end now burned with the fire of a thousand suns. I eagerly looked forward to the first race of season with a new focus. Being a responsible adult would have to wait. I was now officially a bike racer.

Later.

The Crash: Part 1

Thirty-nine years ago today I woke up early on a cold Friday morning feeling very tired. I worked late the previous night closing up at Round Table Pizza, and I had arrived home well after midnight. At 6:15 the next morning I walked out to my car and climbed in. After starting the car, I pulled the two levers that opened the primitive heater vents, then noticed the radio was off. I attempted to turn it on, but it was dead. I suspected the fuse had blown again. Replacing fuses was a common occurrence if you owned an old Volkswagen. I cussed a little because I didn't have time to fix it. I often wonder where I would be today if I had taken five minutes to replace that fuse.

I made the drive in silence without the music that normally pumped me up for class. I arrived at Sierra College in time for my 7:00 accounting class. After a long week of suboptimal sleep, I promptly dozed off as the instructor droned on about debits and credits. The same thing happened the next period in English. I also took a snooze in Trig class.

At 10:00 I was free and on my way home. I looked forward to getting a little sleep before heading back to Round Table where I would be manning a huge oven; its two conveyor belts would be spitting out pizzas non-stop for hours and hours during the coming Friday night onslaught.

I turned right from Rocklin Road onto Sierra College Boulevard and climbed the hill up to the plateau that overlooked the valley. Up top there was a long straightaway followed by a curve to the left. This is where I fell asleep.

Everyone has pivotal point or two in their past when the direction of their life changes abruptly. This was definitely one of mine.

Without the music I was accustomed to, I had drifted off, ushered into slumber in much same way my parents had done when I was a baby. Legend has it when they were unable to get me to sleep, a ride around the block in our blue bug always did the trick.

I woke up as I left the roadway when the road curved. The jolt when the car bumped down the shoulder brought me back from slumber land, and I saw in front of me a barbed wire fence running along the road.

It's funny how our brains work in those situations. This all happened in a split second, but I distinctly remember thinking about how mad my dad would be if I hit the fence. I yanked the wheel hard to the left and felt the tires biting into the soil. I barely avoided the fence and briefly ran parallel to the road before climbing back up the slanted shoulder. As I entered the roadway the sliding tires grabbed the asphalt and suddenly I was on two wheels.

Again, it seemed like I was perched precariously on my passenger side wheels forever, long enough that I tried to work through the physics of what to do. Right or left? Unfortunately I was still a couple semesters from taking a physics class. I turned the wheel to the left and the car flipped.

The sounds will forever haunt me: the screeching of metal scraping on asphalt; the silences when the car was airborne; the loud, crashing impacts as the car slammed back down to earth; the weird and difficult to describe "doink" sound as my head struck the road; the tinkle of broken glass; the tap-tap-tap of blood dripping on my jeans when I finally came to rest.

The car rolled over and over, the sky repeatedly trading places with the ground. Towards the end of the cartwheeling, the front end caught in the dirt on the other side of the road. The car flipped one more time end-over-end, ultimately coming to rest back on its wheels. I unbuckled my seatbelt and somehow opened the smashed driver door. I exited the car and tried to look around as blood poured over my face. I didn't see anyone around who could help, so I started walking back toward the college.

Before I took maybe 20 steps, someone grabbed me from behind and tackled me to the ground. I couldn't see him well, but he yelled, "Stay down!" So I did.

He quickly returned with a black bag. I had wiped enough blood from my eyes to see he was an older cop. I looked into his eyes and he looked terrified. Up until that point I wasn't in any pain, so I thought I was okay, but this cop's eyes told a completely different story. Yet, I felt strangely at peace. I began wondering if this was how it felt before you die.

He put a large dressing pad on the top of my head and wrapped it down tightly with gauze tape, going under my chin and all around my head. He again told me to stay down and ran back to his car. I peeked up to see it was a Highway Patrol cruiser. He called in on his radio and reported a single car rollover, one victim, massive head trauma. "Fuck," I said out loud. My head was clearing, the pain kicking in, and I finally grasped the seriousness of the situation.

The officer talked with me as we waited for the ambulance, and I felt eerily focused and clear-headed. The more I talked, the more the cop seemed to relax. His eyes softened and I felt like he might believe I was going to live.

The paramedics showed up and knelt down beside me. "How you doin' buddy?" one asked. I looked at the three guys gathered around me and they all had the same mustache. I ignored the question and asked, "What's with the mustache? Is that a requirement?" The cop and the paramedics looked at each other quizzically before bursting into laughter, and it took the stress level down another notch. Without realizing it, I was trying to comfort the cop.

They strapped me to a board and taped my head in place. The bandage around my head and under my jaw was so tight, I couldn't open my mouth. I was having a difficult time breathing through my nose and it felt like I was drowning. Thankfully they put an oxygen mask on me once I was locked into place in the ambulance.

I was completely immobile for the long drive to my hospital in Sacramento. It felt like hours. I'm not sure why my arms were strapped down like a serial killer. I kept taking deep draws of oxygen in an effort to control my breathing. I felt the panic creeping ever so close to the surface.

Once at Kaiser they assessed the damage. I had scraped off the top of my head, torn my left ear, damaged my neck and sustained a serious concussion.

Cleaning up my head wound wasn't much fun, at least for me. The nurse happily hummed her way through it like she was Mary Poppins. My head was a mess of dried blood, matted hair, gravel and glass. The nurse placed me on a gurney with my head at the very edge and started irrigating the wound with a clear liquid that burned like hell. She then scrubbed as gently as she could. Then irrigated again. The process repeated over and over until she was satisfied with the results—about 10 songs worth.

At some point during the clean-up my parents had arrived. As the nurse finished up they came to my side and they were white as ghosts. I can only imagine what the trip to the hospital was like for them when so little information was provided: a phone call, a brief report, and a long drive while hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

At that point I had been very busy almost dying for most of the day, and I told the nurse I had to pee. My dad and the nurse got me to my feet and made sure I was okay to walk. I made my way to the restroom and the nurse told me not to look at the wound under the bandage. This was very sound advice that I did not heed. Once inside, I immediately lifted the bandage, seeing in the mirror what looked like raw hamburger where my scalp used to be. My hair was gone, and all that remained was a huge scrape with jagged cuts and gouges missing. I blacked out briefly and had to catch myself using the sink. I completely forgot to pee and went back to the ER in shock.

From there I was taken into surgery where a nice Japanese doctor pieced my ear back together. A nurse told me he was the best plastic surgeon in Northern California. He did a wonderful job and I am forever grateful. To prevent getting cauliflower ear, he placed a butterfly catheter in my ear to drain the blood. A large test tube collected the blood and stayed taped to my head for a week. It was a huge hit at the dinner table. I think my mom and dad both lost weight that week.

By that night I was released and resting at home. The next morning, my dad changed the dressing for the first time, as directed, and we both almost passed out—he from the sight, I from the pain.

On Saturday evening the phone rang. My mom answered and listened. Her eyebrows raised and she said, "Yes, he's right here."

I took the receiver and a man introduced himself as the officer who was first on the scene. He asked how I was doing, and I described my injuries. He told me he really thought I was dying, confirming my suspicions. "All I saw was hair and blood. So much blood." He revealed that he saw the whole accident happen from a distance, and that I had rolled at least five times. Maybe six. I thanked him for being there and for taking the time to call.

On Sunday we learned where the car was being stored and went to collect my belongings. After the accident I told my dad the car wasn't in bad shape. "We can totally fix it," I said. Once I saw the car again the reality of what happened hit me hard.

We obviously weren't fixing the car. It was smashed up, the wheels folded under, and most of the windows were gone.

I couldn't believe how much blood there was. It was even splattered on the outside of the car.

In the days after the accident I would make a decision that would forever change my life's trajectory. More on that in "Part 2" of this story. Don't worry, I will finally get to the point of all this, and it's definitely cycling related.

Note: I suppose it would have been more impactful to wait a year and write about the 40th anniversary of this accident, but I don't like to be predictable. Also, the number 39 is awesome.

My childhood love for Dave Parker is the reason I called my left-handed son "The Cobra" in his baseball days.

Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the story.

Later.

Bad to the Bone

As I mentioned before, I am slowly clearing out The Archive. As time goes on, the bike parts in my collection have less and less meaning to me. They are just pieces of metal sitting in boxes.

That said, these parts may still have interesting stories to tell.

In 1986 a kid named John Tomac decided to switch from pro BMX racing to mountain bikes. By midseason he was placing in the races I was attending (3rd place pro at the Rumpstomper in August), and by late season he was winning major races. His ascent into our consciousness was meteoric.

I have a magazine from December of 1986 and Tomac is nowhere to be seen. Endorsements at that point were dominated by Ned Overend and Joe Murray. In an October 1987 magazine, not quite a year later, there are four ads featuring John Tomac.

Although he and I were the same age, it was easy to look up to him. He brought a style and swagger to our fledgling sport that was hard to ignore. And he was already at the peak of the mountain I was trying to scale. I was only 19 years old and dreaming of one day being a professional myself.

Our cycling clothing up to that point was pretty boring, so when I saw the AXO gear, I really liked it.

And before long I was wearing the jersey and gloves.

It didn't make me any faster, but hot damn I looked good.

When he signed the deal with Tioga, suddenly a part nobody really cared about became a thing: The stem.

It was just a stem, but I needed it. Had to have it. I wanted to be bad to the bone.

I bought one and used it. It didn't make me any faster, but hot damn my bike looked good.

For a long time it was one of the "untouchable" parts in my collection because of the connections to the racing days and the culture of the time, but things change. I sold it the other day on Craigslist for a paltry $15, and another piece of my history is gone. I could have auctioned it on eBay and made more, but that's too much hassle for me at this point.

I actually made the decal using letters from some other sticker. You can see the "T" is two pieces. So custom.

Anyway, that's the story.

Later.

Moving On

I was born and raised in the Sacramento area, and I am still here today, but for most of my adult life my emotional home has been in Incline Village, Nevada. Home is where the heart is. And right now my heart is aching just a little.

I could make a case for Incline Village being the greatest place on earth for a cyclist to have a home base. Obviously that's a bold statement, but greatness is personal and subjective. For me, the combination of riding opportunities, scenery and vibe is second to none.

View from the Rim Trail: Marlette Lake foreground, Lake Tahoe background.

My introduction to the area was the Great Flume Race in 1985. It was my first race at elevation and it killed me, but the riding was incredible. The Flume Trail was unlike anything I had experienced to that point. It sparked something inside me.

Anyone have some oxygen?

Shortly after that race—in a completely unrelated move—my dad, uncle and four friends chipped in and bought a condo together in nearby Incline Village. I now had an opportunity to explore the area. And it was so, so good. I vowed that one day I would own my own place in Incline.

For years it would be our home base for rides and Tahoe-area races. Good times.

I have so many blurry selfies from film camera days . . .

When Jennifer and I met we began going up there together.

The year 2000 or so on the first of many bikes I would build for her.

Happy guy.

Fast forward to 2011. The country was in the middle of a mortgage crisis, and we saw the opportunity to achieve my dream. We made an offer on a foreclosure property in Incline and got it. You can read about that here if you care. It's not lost on me how lucky we are. The situation was terrible for so many families who lost their homes, and that crisis is the only reason we could pull this off.

At first the condo ownership was great. We spent a lot of time up there, and I was living my dream. Paying a second mortgage was tough at times, but we offset it a little bit by renting it out to friends and acquaintances.

A couple years later in 2013, a couple things changed. One, we were finding it difficult to find time to go to Tahoe due to all the sports.

Basketball, February 2013.

Baseball, June 2013

Cross Country, September 2013

Baseball, October 2013

I have zero regrets about the sports. Our baseball journey with my son is one of the highlights of my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The other change that happened that year was our HOA outlawing vacation rentals. This killed our meager revenue stream. In October 2013, unable to use it much and with no ability to make part-time income, we decided to rent the condo full-time. It has been rented out full-time ever since, but that era comes to a close in a few weeks.

A few years ago, our original plan was to start using the condo for ourselves again, with a target date right around now. I can't begin to express how excited I was for this to happen. Then the fires came.

The Caldor Fire came perilously close to Lake Tahoe, and it was only a shift in winds that saved South Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe faced a new reality. Up to that point no fire had crossed the peak of the Sierras. The relative safety we thought the bowl of Lake Tahoe provided had been shattered.

More fires came in the years since. They were larger. They burned hotter. They burned faster. We were mostly powerless to stop them. Many people still do not believe in climate change. But you know who does? Insurance actuaries.

Three years later the Tahoe Basin is suffering from an insurance crisis. Premiums are skyrocketing and for condo owners, HOA fees are doing the same. My insurance went up 43% and my HOA only 37% because I was one of the lucky ones. My HOA is now $604 a month, but other area HOAs are well over $900.

This situation is eerily similar to the one we fled in Shingle Springs. By moving to Folsom we saved about $6000 a year for homeowners insurance, and that was a couple years ago. We have friends and neighbors who are now paying in excess of $10k per year and will have difficulty selling their properties if something doesn't change.

For these reasons we feel like it would be best to get out of the Tahoe market while we can. Our tenants vacate at the end of the month, and on March 1 we will start the renovation process with the goal of getting the condo on the market as quickly as possible.

It's a painful decision, but the right one. Our hope is to find another place with the same kind of magic Incline Village provided for so many years.

Later.