yustyoking

 

          I’ve been so self-absorbed and depressed lately, I haven’t written about last summer’s Bicycle Spokes for Peace tour. A hanger-on, a sometime participant and a hireling, I accompanied the famous cyclist Terry Reid to thirteen venues in 24 days.

Part speechifying, part “cycling with the star,” we raised money for world peace and any particular issue of importance to the location we temporarily inhabited.

Here’s a summary taken from my diary entries:

We begin in New York City, God only knows why. Crazed New York cyclists almost miraculously peel Terry apart from me, their elbows as sharp as carving knives, their hands as subtle as meat cleavers. Uga, uga, caveman style, they snottily drawl “Welcome tah New Yawk! ” Then they laugh at my awkward silences. The guys keep raving about how pretty their girls are. When I try to converse, I find the damsels are less mean-hearted than in New Jersey, but still more interested in themselves than they are in me.

Outside Washington, D.C., Terry cycles laps around FedExField in Landover, Maryland. The heat is sweltering. The humidity forms a thick miasma that clogs our sinuses and makes our eyes itch. “First heat wave of the summer!” my fellow Marylanders assure us. Not helping.

The guys who show up to cycle with the champ are all of a type: slim, self-assured, dressed in black cycling shorts, a jersey and MTB shoes with insets that fit the clipless pedals on their bikes. Watching them, I wonder when I last smirked and strutted with such self-congratulatory pride. Were we that way when we were 30 years old? Or is this particular to the cycling culture? I need to do like Marty McFly and grab a time machine back to my golden youth. When I slip up and call them “bikers,” I get strange, hostile glances. Nobody wants to be confused with motorcycle gangs.

Their brightly colored jerseys bear various high-end logos. Jaggad, Kirschner, Louis Garneau, Canari, SUGOi, PEARL iZUMi. Some dudes even wear jerseys printed in Cyrillic, advertising bike-a-thons in St. Petersburg, Russia or Sofia, Bulgaria. The farther west we travel, the more Asian and exotic the logos.

And, of course, they sport polystyrene helmets in every style and color: Moon Professional lightweight racing helmets, Bell Javelin contoured racing helmets, Giro heavy duty helmets, Mavic Syncro ventilated low wind resistance models, Nutcase touring, bern helmets you can sit on without denting them. You name it. Everyone has a well met helmet.

Female cyclists, bulging with muscle, blatant as gypsies, are even more focused than the men. Trying to flirt is totally wasted on this crowd.

In Detroit, the city center resembles a cross between the shanty towns of South Africa and the bombed out rubble of Syria. Our local guide leads us on a quick biking safari, shouting over his shoulder, “Don’t worry, we own the road! No one ever comes here anymore.”

In Milwaukee, we cycle a tour of the city early on a Sunday morning. Averaging 30 miles per hour, everyone rides in a pack, forcing automobile traffic into the left lane. “Isn’t this a little dangerous?” I ask Terry, stopped at a traffic signal.

“More dangerous than what?” he replies, that hollow, other-worldly look in his eyes an indication that our man is once again zoned out on his own endorphins.

I long for a Schlitz, the beer that made Milwaukee famous.

When he sweats, Terry glistens with a preternatural sheen. “The otter” his fans call him with great affection.

Everybody’s on a $4,000 bicycle but Terry and me. They ride brands like Yeti, Fuji, Storck, Giant, Merida, Bianchi, Orbea and Cannondale. Terry’s custom built velocipede tops out at $50,000. My classic 26” Schwinn is occasionally on sale at Target for $149. When the local cyclists don’t leave me in the dust, Terry’s security team keeps shunting me to the back of the pack “for my protection.” It makes me wonder what instructions Terry’s manager has given them.

In addition to getting me out of the house and out of my funk, the Reid Organization is paying me an obscene amount of money. Into an off-shore account. Things can’t get better than that. I’m in.

Hey, Maryland’s former governor Martin O’Malley is running for president. Like I always say, anything is possible in America!

I write a daily blog post for Terry’s site and grind out press releases for the local newspapers. I’m the wordsmith. Another SUV contains the TV production crew, a group of professionals who record the epic video of our travels. “How ’bout narration?” I ask their director, Freddy Prince, at lunch one day.

“We’re filming cinema verité,” he explains, slightly bored. “Everything else of a pertinent nature will be shown in subtitles. Location, time of day, ‘day eight of the tour.’ We’re in the digital age. No one uses narration anymore, old man.”

This has the desired effect of sending me back to my side of the hotel dining room.

I know bicycle enthusiasts are by now gnashing their teeth over what a hash job I am making of this piece. I’m not a cycling writer. I claim no expertise in the sport. I know derailleurs only by name. I have been invited specifically to handle press relations. The whole doping scandal thing left over from the Tour de France has to be buried. My only credentials: I was a journalism major in college and a spokesperson for the U.S. Army.

Terry trusts me since I pulled his Aunt Penny out of Grenada in October of 1983. It’s not like I was on my own. We had 1,900 US troops and were accompanied by 300 soldiers from Barbados and Jamaica.  Invading the island, we threw out the Revolutionary Military Council of General Hudson Austin, allowing Eric Gairy’s GULP political party to come out of hiding. My biggest firefight took place around a woodpile. Feel free to google additional irrelevant details.

Military operations are not a competitive sport. It doesn’t matter who gets over the finish line first, as long as you bring everyone home.

Apparently, as a friend of Terry’s family, traveling in the convoy is as close to fame as this weasel is going to get.

“Hiya!” Terry announces from the podium at every event. “I am not running for president!”

Once he gets a laugh, he offers his aphorism of the day.

New York City: “You are going to take a trip to the seaside.”

Philadelphia: “No man is Rhode Island, cut off from Maine.”

Washington, DC: “The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that sprouted roots.”

Tallahassee, Florida: “See ya later, alligator. After awhile, crocodile.”

Detroit: “If you don’t succeed today, let nothing deter you from tomorrow.”

Milwaukee: “Beer is a gift given to us by the gods.”

Chicago: “Be smart, but never show it, Obama baby.”

San Antonio, Texas: “A man finds wealth in the oddest places.”

Tucson, Arizona: “A gun in the hand is worth 20 to life.”

San Francisco: “Your household will soon experience a blessed event.”

The tour practices yin and yang. The yang is what we’re in favor of: world peace. The yin is some particular issue we oppose. For example, in New York, it’s domestic violence. In Philadelphia, it’s limiting access to women’s health care. We’re opposed to that. (I didn’t know this was such a big deal in Philly, but apparently it is.) In Washington, DC, we oppose right wing agendas. In Tallahassee, failing to curb man-made climate change. In Detroit, we’re against the forces of darkness blocking national legislation for equal pay. We demand handgun safety in Arizona! Our shopping list goes on and on: We oppose discrimination against the LGBTQ community and I don’t even know what the “Q” stands for. Queer? We oppose wage stagnation for working stiffs. Rising health care costs. Anti-abortion groups. Tehran getting the bomb. People with German surnames getting all the breaks. (Naw, I made that last one up!)

At these rallies prior to the bike ride, we spout all the facile, light-hearted, do-gooder bullshit that appears self-evident to any lib. The fluff. Unattainable, yes, but hardly brain-busters. You are opposed to gun violence. Oh, really? What’s the alternative? To be in favor of gun violence??? I… don’t… think… so. Spread love, not hate. Don’t beat up on others. Well, d’oh. I guess I’ve become cynical, but I feel like I’m back in third grade.

Terry’s fans love him. I know that he is popular in Europe, but I had no idea how important he is to the American cycling community. I harbored hopes that by being part of his entourage, some of Terry’s gold dust would sprinkle onto me. Not happening. I’m reminded of the poor schlub in the rockumentary who’s always bleating “I’m with the band!” and never gets a nibble. C’est moi. “I’m his press agent,” I brag to a Lithuanian legal immigrant who sits astride his English racer. He sports a ponytail and a washed out jersey displaying a caricature of Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Oh?” he comments. “Presse? Where’s your hat and cigar?”

Grinding out press releases on my laptop in the back seat of the van, I face each new day in a blur of activity.

“Dateline: Chicago. National cycling icon Terry Reid spoke out today against wage stagnation among the middle class. ‘Our middle class is shrinking as economic inequality rises. It’s time to make our voices heard. Demand livable wages. Demand income equality!’ Terry suggested to a crowd of several hundred biking enthusiasts, here to experience the Bicycle Spokes for Peace tour and take a ride through the city with their champion.”

I am free to roam backstage, but if I ever approach Terry in public, a beefy guy in a suit always intervenes. Placing one huge paw on my shoulder, he murmurs a polite “Sorry, sir…” as he pushes me out of the way.

Halfway through the tour, I announce my clear intention to turn on my heels and go home. Not even a pep talk from Hal the Manager can dissuade me, until he unleashes his secret weapon: Agnetha, the Swedish masseuse. She begins sharing my bed on a bi-nightly basis. Her busy fingers arouse and deplete me with the efficiency of a milkmaid, which I believe she might have been in an earlier incarnation. More bleary-eyed than ever, I agree to stay.

“Today,” Hal assures me grandly, flashing gold rings and a diamond-encrusted Pearlmaster 39 Rolex Oyster Perpetual wristwatch, “everything Terry does is non-profit.”

“That’s it?”

After a lengthy pause, he adds sotto voce, “Thoroughly off-the-record, the tax breaks for non-profits are astronomical.”

I promise him I will spin this concept appropriately. In no way am I involved in the monetary aspects of the tour: the sponsorships, the individual and corporate contributions, the fundraising that so obviously accompanies us on our travels.

“You don’t wanna know,” Hal insists, dictating a daily statement which I include verbatim in that day’s press release.

“Play the Lottery. Lady luck rides with you,” Terry growls the one time I mention finances. “What is your problem? Hal can cut you a check today. Concentrate on sportsmanship. I do.”

Terry is so touchy, I never bring up the subject again.

Standing in the back of the crowd by the lake in Chicago, I watch as a young lady in a black dress, brown sweater and shawl approaches. Listening to Terry, she turns and asks me, “A political rally?”

You would think the sea of bike helmets would indicate otherwise. “It’s a bike tour,” I explain. “That’s Terry Reid, world-famous winner of the Tour de France.”

She frowns.

“You’re Muslim?” I ask gently, pointing with my notepad at her shawl.

“Palestinian.”

“Oh,” I exclaim, excited. “This will interest you!” Nodding at the phalanx of parked bikes to the side of the crowd, I say, “It’s the Bicycle Spokes for Peace tour!”

With a look of total disgust on her face, she asks me, “When have you ever seen a Palestinian on a bicycle?”

Touché.

A lady named Morgan Bach has written an indignant and inadvertently hilarious blog about this very issue.

If you give a Palestinian the right to bike in the Jordan Valley….

For us, on tour, every night ends in a local tavern, where the riders propose endless toasts, quaffing craft beers and IPA’s, Indian Pale Ales. Non-alcoholic O’Doul’s, Buckler, Clausthaler, Beck’s and Kaliber allow me to party with the best of ’em. Don’t tell mom. Do the boys and girls pair off, follow each other home and make endless love? You better believe they do!

I’m just grateful to have a room of my own. Originally, I was supposed to share with Hal, but he decided— thank God! — that he wants his privacy.

On a Wednesday night, as the crew becomes ever more blotto, I stoke up my courage and edge my way up against a short, stocky blonde. She has gorgeous freckles and a cute face. Rule No. 1: Never start with a question. That makes you seem nosy. “Lime and lager is worth a try,” I suggest, as if we’ve been comparing drinks for the last hour and a half.

“I know that. It’s British,” she drawls in a flat Midwestern accent. This girl is the full package, a total poseur, every gesture as theatrical as Rita Hayworth. Fingernails bitten to the quick, she waves a little white hand in my face and asks, “Whaddya ride?”

“Peugeot. Definitely Peugeot,” I extemporize, based on an article I read in a biking magazine, circa 1999.

“A Peugeot PX10 or a Peugeot Reynolds 531?”

“PX10. All the time PX10. How ’bout you?”

“What… do… I… ride?” she asks, expanding her eyes with every word. A total turn-on, she’s got me. Hard as a rock, I ain’t leavin’. “Kestrel. It’s a great bike for the money.”

Her name is Suzanne and after horsing around with a company van to transport her Kestrel home to her folks’ house on the roof rack, and helping three dudes unload their gear from the van, she and I finally end up in my hotel room at         1 a.m., sitting on my bed. “How old are you?” she asks coyly, reaching for my crotch.

“As old as the day is long. Old as the river. Old and horny.”

“Oh, goody!” she squeals. My kind o’ girl, Suzanne! We tear off our clothes, both fully aware that it’s the woman who cries “Rape!” Men never take women to court alleging rape. So while I am gentle, she has me on my back, putting her pedal to the pavement. She rides me. Except for the 30 years’ age difference and not sharing a single common interest, it’s a great first date!

By now, a small mountain of used towels and accumulated laundry fills the back of the SUV in which I reside, giving the tour a slightly putrid air. I ask Hal if we’ve scheduled a time-out to run laundry. “Sure,” he assures me breezily. “We’ll take care of all that stuff as soon as we get Terry and you on the corporate jet to Belize.”

It seems biking in Belize is the key to resurrecting Terry’s brand. I know all about branding. The Playboy brand gets 40% of its revenue from China, a country so prudish, they cannot even sell the magazine there.

Departing the dear old USA, we arrive in Belize. At airport customs and immigration, stocky five-foot tall military commandos in olive green uniforms thrust rifle barrels in our faces. American greenbacks mollify them.

Once we’ve set up the event, Terry speaks extemporaneously to the crowd— mostly eco tourists—  telling them “Ancient Chinese civilization attracts you.”

I’ve never understood the concept of bicycling in the jungle. Belize is beautiful, but Terry spends most of the afternoon posing for snapshots and carting his set of wheels through shoulder-high foliage. At the sea shore, I get overrun by iguanas.

From Belize, we fly to the final leg of our travels, Bolivia. Here, we ride in protest over military coups. Bolivia has had over 180 military coups since 1841.

Terry’s aphorism in Bolivia: “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

“I don’t get it,” I finally tell him, holed up in our hotel lobby in La Paz, awaiting our posse. “Who writes your fucking aphorisms?”

“Oh,” replies Terry, his slacker persona fully on display. “I get these deep thoughts from Chinese fortune cookies.”

Less than cerebral, he will cycle halfway around Lake Titicaca at an altitude of 12,507 feet.

Impatient, I go outside to scout up our vehicles and drivers. The street in front of the hotel seems eerily empty. Suddenly, I get shoved rudely from behind. A scratchy gunnysack smelling strongly of coffee is roughly pulled over my head and tightened at the waist. “I prefer espresso!” I bellow, which muffled by the burlap probably came out as ” Mmmf! ” My abductors frog march me, tripping, to the curb and tip me into some ramshackle vehicle belching fumes and misfiring on at least two cylinders. We take off with a roar and head outta town.

When next I see daylight, I’m tied to a chair in a shanty. My three captors wear homemade hoods with eyeholes sloppily cut in the fabric. They speak surprisingly good English, but with heavy accents. “You have been kidnapped by FART,” their presumptive leader announces, legs spread wide and arms crossed in front of his chest. I guess to make himself look more authoritative.

“You mean FARC.”

“No,”  he replies, very angry now. “Not FARC. We are FART, Free Anarchists of the Rural Terrain.”

If these guys are jungle guerillas, I gotta say their leader—  in his raggedy clothes— looks less like Che Guevara and more like Sancho Panza. “Aha! You mean like Shining Path in Peru or the Tupamaros in Uruguay?” I ask.

“You are bicycle star. We demand big ransom!” he grunts.

“Oh, shit!” I groan. “You grabbed the wrong American.”

“You are wrong American?” he gasps. “Where is bicycle star?”

“Back at the hotel? Out at the dog track?”

“You make jokes! We torture!”

Somehow it seems a bad idea to tell him that just smelling him is torture enough. I keep silent.

They telephone the hotel on a cell phone and seem dumbfounded to hear that no one is prepared to pay any ransom for me. My market value equals zero.

I can’t believe how they keep arguing among themselves. This bodes ill for yours truly!

“I keep trying to tell you,” I plead. “Yes, I am an American, but I am Mr. Nobody. I’m your ordinary dude walking down the street. The average wealth of an American family of four in 2012 was $66,740 according to the Census Bureau.”

“¡Ay caramba! What are you saying?”  screams their comandante.

A blow to the back of my head knocks me out. I awaken in a ditch by the side of the road, headachy and vomiting. Once I get to my feet, I walk toward what I hope is civilization. Passing cars all but bowl me over. When I wave frantically— ¿cómo no?  — they wave back. Two miles of trudging later, I reach the edge of town.

“Where have you been?” Hal demands when I stagger into the hotel. “Ugh! You need a bath and a change of livery.”

“I got kidnapped!” I bleat unhappily.

“C’mon, don’t clown around,” he admonishes me. “We’re on a really tight schedule at this point and won’t have time to bail you out if you wander off again.” Dressed in his sun hat and alpaca suit, he looks like a bad Hollywood portrayal of a plantation owner.

Sighing, I go upstairs to fight with the centipedes and scorpions for possession of the shower stall.

The Reid Organization is so pleased with the tour, they add Brazil to our itinerary!

Once again, I do not understand bicycling in jungle, but we do protest the decimation of the rain forests.

It is deep in the jungle of the Amazon, hanging out with blowpipe toting, slings and arrows Stone Age people living in trees, that I finally find myself at peace.

Eventually I return home to Maryland $10,000 richer from a month’s work. Tax free. I thought this was a righteous amount of cash until I read about the Newark, New Jersey school system that— upon receiving a $200 million grant— burned through the money by hiring $1,000-a-day consultants.

Hey, guys! I’m over here!

As I exit an airport taxi at my front door, my joints audibly creak. It’s 10 a.m. of another beautiful day, the sun a glorious yellow orb rising above the tree tops. In the house, my mom sits in her favorite chair, glowering. “We need to go grocery shopping,” she informs me. “The freezer’s empty and I’m tired of subsisting on canned goods.”

“Let me take a shower,” I protest.

That afternoon, we buy a ton of groceries, including tortillas and Coca Cola that is Hecho en México.