“I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name”
After a year and a half of riding my bike everywhere and trying to break into the racing scene in California I was totally discouraged and ready to quit racing. I still loved riding but there was no available coaching that I knew of and the local riders of the San Diego Bike Club were not about to share their secrets with the long haired hippy with hairy legs riding the wrong sized bike.
I had given it a good shot starting with local time trials on my Supercourse and then borrowing $250 to upgrade to the top of the line Raleigh Professional bike with all Campagnolo parts that sold for $330.
The Old Mission Beach Athletic Club, OMBAC, knew I was out of my mind at this point but when I had the nerve to ask them, a National Champion Rugby Club, for sponsorship into a sport they knew nothing about, they were so shocked they agreed.
Strategically this was not a good move for new guy in the sport because there was already a very strong racing club in San Diego that could have taken me in and taught me the ropes. But then again they might have required me to get a shave and a haircut and that wasn’t going to happen. So now I had a team that I trained with and raced against each weekend working against me in ways that would take me a few years to figure out.
Placing in the first three novice races I entered did not impress them but OMBAC was blown away that I was actually staying in nights and getting results.
That is where the progress stopped cold as I was upgraded by the American Bicycle League from Novice to Class B which essentially threw me into the longer races that included guys with Olympic team aspirations.
I would show up for group rides with guys like Ralph Elliot, Alan DeFever, and former world champion Audrey McElmury without knowing who they were until we were 50 miles from nowhere and I was hanging on to the back of the pace line for dear life hoping not to get dropped because I had no idea where we were or how I would get home.
For some reason Alan De Fever, the 1969 national road champion who had raced in Holland had taken an interest in me as a rider and when he dropped to the back to see if I was still there, I blurted out, “who is that woman killing me on the front?” Oh, that’s Audrey and she is impressed that you are riding so well as a “Novice.” Now I had to hang on and dig even deeper this was as close to the big time as I had ever hoped to be. She had been featured in a Sports Illustrated article I had read a few years before I had a clue about bike racing.
A few weeks later in the spring of 1972 I entered a 100 mile Olympic Development Road Race in Palos Verdes and the whole US Army team which was essentially the US Olympic Team was there. The course was on a hilly 5 mile loop and I was lapped by the two leaders, John Howard and Bill Guazzo at the 50 mile point and eventually by the whole field but I never quit and finished alone about 40 minutes behind.
Two weeks later Sports Illustrated ran a story with pictures about the race, the sport and Olympian John Howard who had won that day. I was working a shift at the Beachcomber at the time and could not wait to show fellow OMBAC members the article so they might understand why I was no longer getting top 3 placings.
I scribbled off a letter to the editors about my thoughts on the article and it was published in the 19th Hole section the following week.
Sirs:
A fine article but, like the sport long overdue to catch the public’s eye. I fail to agree with John Howard who is being quoted as saying, “The best athletes aren’t usually in cycling.” John is usually too far ahead to get acquainted with those of us who make up the group. As for the “enterprising public-relations man” who observed, “This thing has a future,” we will forgive him for we welcome everyone to our fine sport.
Signed, Bill (Amber) Humphreys, San Diego
That fired me up to race one more time that year in a local criterium where large contingent of OMBAC guys showed up to root me on. I rode my heart out that day with no regard to tactics or my own fitness level and ended up dropping out about ½ way through but not before bridging some gaps and getting in some breakaways that were doomed.
The club guys were blown away by the speed and cornering and could not believe I stayed in the race as long as I did.
That was cool to expand these rugby guys consciousness on another sport and earn some respect for myself even though I knew I had reached the end of the line as far as racing was concerned.
July 1st 1972 Skip and I left Point Loma on our bikes to ride across the country to Connecticut. Skip was not a racer but a touring type rider who I had ridden with on a few AYH rides. He was more mechanically inclined than I (which didn’t take much) and he was game for the trip once he had finished up some classes and his Peace Corp application.
As for me, I had hitchhiked, taken busses, and driven a Jaguar XKE and 18 wheelers across the country in previous lives. I was looking for some statement to make on the bike now that racing had not worked out and this idea of riding my bike across the country became a goal that required a partner. Skip was a little younger than I sporting a beard and long hair while living at home and hoping to get into the Peace Corps. We got to know each other in the 8 weeks before our departure date by building wheels, and sewing the tent and pannier bags ourselves.
Our bikes pannier bags were loaded with clothing, tents, tools and spare tires as we started at sea level rode up to 4000 ft at Julian and then dropped down to 120 ft below sea level into the scorching desert on our first day. We would ride through the desert on our horses with no names in 120 degree heat for the next 4 days, sucking on pebbles and coins to keep our saliva glands working until we made it to the next small town for water.
The cheap Condor sew-up tires we had bought in Tijuana were puncturing right at the valve stem because of the heat causing the tire to slide on the melting rim glue. We had 2 punctures each on day one which did not bode well for the remaining 3000 miles we had ahead of us. I do remember stopping to take a quick shower at campgrounds in Borrego Springs and we were dripped dry before we got back on the bikes. We picked up a strong tailwind and virtually coasted for miles over the rolling sand dunes at speeds that made pedaling useless.
Stopping for a puncture was a team effort as was everything we would do together in the coming weeks. One of us had to hold the other’s weighted down bike in the windblown sand while the other would take the wheel out from under the panniers and change tires pump them up and put them back under the panniers into the hard to find dropouts. These were steel frames and aluminum alloy rims that were boiling hot in the desert sun. Scorching our hands was becoming another casualty we had not considered.
It was us against the elements and we made it to the continental divide in eleven days before heading across the plains states of eastern Colorado and Kansas. We would tuck our long hair up under our cycling caps, (no helmets in those days) the movie “Easy Rider” and “Deliverance” were constant reminders for us to keep low profiles and be very careful where we set up camp each night.
We were fortunate to find refuge in many church basements in small towns but we always had to camp near a source of drinking water, so school yards with outside fountains became important to find and then wait until well after dark to not be seen.
People in the desert thought we were crazy to be out there in the heat and kept telling us that we would really be in trouble when we had to ride up over the mountain passes. We knew that there was green vegetation and water, streams, rivers, in the mountains and we said bring on the mountains, we can handle anything after these first 4 to 5 days baking our brains out.
Our plan was to head diagonally north to the upper peninsula of Michigan at Sault St Marie and cross over into Canada thus avoiding all the traffic and congestion of east coast cities.
There were times that our equipment got so destroyed that we had no other option than to sit by the side of the road and improvise on all types of repairs before we could continue on. Taking spokes out of our front wheels and putting them in our back wheels was one trick we used quite often. When rear spokes popped they would hit the panniers and then wrap around the rear derailleur totally destroying them. So making one speed work by taking links out of our chains was necessary a few times also. We would then limp into the next town in the middle of nowhere hoping that there was a bike store of any kind to resupply us.
There were not that many major interstate highways back then but whenever we passed over one on these tiny back roads we would occasionally look down and see some fellow long hairs on the highway hitchhiking and be thankful that we were making our own way on bikes.
It made a huge difference for our wellbeing to be on bicycles and not be walking or hitchhiking with backpacks. As we rode all day across rural America from one small town to another we became a topic of conversation among the local farmers, residents and sheriffs as they passed us in cars and farm vehicles.
Some days we would cover 125 to 150 miles and we would try to do 100 miles minimum and at the end of these long days we were fried while trying to focus on a safe place to bed down with water nearby. As we rolled into a small town at the very end of another epic day more than once we would be met by the local constable who had been hearing all day that we were headed in his direction. He would know more about where we had been that day than we did through the grapevine and he knew we were not fugitives, but that we were very fit and making our own way, that we had to be tired as hell hungry and thirsty and looking to camp. We had just passed the town park sign that said no camping or loitering after dark and the officer would role down his window and ask, “Where you boys plan on spending the night?” Skip and I would look at each other like what is the right answer to this without getting locked up? Then would come the answer from inside the car….”You guys can bed down in the town park, I will be on duty all night and you won’t be bothered.” We were all grins and humbled by this gesture and also glad that our hair was still tucked up under our caps.
I am almost in tears recalling this happening over 38 years ago. My how times have changed.
What we were finding on our trip across America would become reinforced in my travels over the next 38 years in all parts of the world is that THE BIKE MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
It made a difference then and it made difference when I traveled and raced in Europe, Canada, Mexico and South Africa…..I was there not as a tourist but as a cyclist and that opened more doors and broke down cultural barriers in places that did not always have great feelings towards America.
When we reached Iron City, Michigan to check general delivery at the post office for tires that were being sent to us from Skip’s parents there was letter of acceptance for the Peace Corp for Skip and he had to report back to San Diego as soon as possible for his assignment to Ecuador.
It was like a scene from out of the “Old West” as Skip and I reached a fork in the road to go our separate ways. We shook hands wished each other well, and rode off in different directions for the first time in 30 days of riding together, he was headed south to Milwaukee for a flight back to San Diego and I was headed north across the upper peninsula of Michigan to Sault St Marie, Canada and on to Connecticut alone. I would hear stories of his time in the Peace Corps and he would get word of my finishing the trip and newborn career racing but we would never see each other (as of this writing) again.
From this point the trip took on a whole new dimension. We were a tight team that had been at risk every day for the last 30 days. We spent hours talking, riding, sightseeing, eating, drinking, and repairing, while developing an unquestioning trust for a couple thousand miles from San Diego to Michigan and now I was alone sleeping on a picnic table somewhere in the wilderness on the upper peninsula hoping no bears were lurking nearby.
Crossing over the Mackinaw Bridge into Canada was a lonesome moment as I passed through customs, I knew I was a long way from home or more likely that I did not really have a home at this point. This trip was becoming a way of life that was expansive but insular at the same time. It was the first of many, “Stranger in a strange land,” moments I would have in the coming years.