Determined to stay fit this off season and get a head start on making the Pan American Games team later that summer I had managed to escape another winter as a ski bum in Vermont and got myself back out to San Diego where this whole odyssey started.
It had been a tough season with mixed results for me. Having to come back from 5 months off the bike the previous winter (this is another story) had cost me a spot on the Milk Race Team and ultimately a chance to ride the Worlds Championships in Montreal.
I had managed to lose 25 pounds and find enough form by June to make the first team our new national road coach, Butch Martin would select for the six day 575 mile Tour of Newfoundland. Then by placing seventh in Fitchburg and winning the Sugarbush Road Race in September I earned a roundtrip ticket to the first Boule/Mich Criterium in downtown Chicago that October.
I used the return ticket to fly to Little Rock, Arkansas with the charismatic Australian Jeff Leslie who had been barnstorming the race scene in New England after riding the Worlds Championships in Montreal. Splitting prizes and helping the promoter in Little Rock got us free hotel room for a week before we hooked up with a “drive away” car to deliver to San Diego for a winter in sunny southern California.
Broke and sleeping on my sister’s couch in Point Loma where Skip and I had started our cross country bike trip 2 years earlier, was pretty surreal. The long haired hippy that rode out of town towards the east coast was back and had earned the total respect of San Diego Bike Club riders, and at the same time had reached legendary status among the “Fools” of South Mission Beach. It was a proud and unbelievable feeling to ride my bike right into the Beachcomber Bar where I used to work, wearing my USA jersey. All the boys at the bar went nuts, and the beers kept coming my way for several hours.
I was the guest speaker at the SDBC and Old Mission Beach Athletic club banquets where I showed the Tour of Ireland film. They were still in shock that I had surpassed any of their own personal goals and become a legitimate international level rider by relocating to the east coast, being taken in by the Century Road Club of America and taught the proper methods of racing and training.
I had run out of money, and spent my last dollar on several occasions this past season. The added pressure of having to win a primes or place in the top 10 for gas money to races had really stressed me out.
I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I wanted to make some serious money in the off season so that I could focus totally on racing in the spring but jobs were really hard to come by as the unemployment rate was reaching 9% that winter. I was riding a borrowed Raleigh Record clunker to different military basis stocking toys at commissaries, part time for an OMBAC member, Ed Quigley who was a regional sales manager for Mattel Toys. My Cinelli frame was in dire need of a new paint job after 2 seasons and over 20,000 miles and a local frame builder was holding it hostage until I could come up with the money to pay for it.
At this point I was stopping by the tuna fleet docks on rides to see if I could get a job on board for a couple of trips. This is a tight knit community of fisherman who don’t let outsiders into their profession without some connections of which I had none. Each time I stopped and climbed on board looking for the captain I was scared that I might actually get a job because I could be at sea off the coast of Africa for 5 months before catching enough fish to return. But I was desperate, the memory of being broke in mid- season was so embedded in my brain, that I was willing to give up half a season of racing just to have some serious jingle in my pocket.
I got to know some tuna fisherman when I was tending bar at the Beachcomber who would go out for months and come back with enough money that they would not have to work again for 6 months. I also remember how dangerous the work was because Vince and a few other’s never came back to the bar when they drowned at sea.
I kept telling myself that one trip is all I needed. With a couple thousand bucks in the bank I could focus on training and racing, get some good results and start making traveling teams without having to worry about money again.
Fortunately the tuna fleet left port for the season without me and I got a bike riders dream job driving a van delivering aquariums to pet stores in San Diego. The beauty was I got to keep the van on weekends which meant I could travel to races with a van full of riders to pay the gas. I could train before and after work and live an almost normal life with money in my pocket. What a concept, life was looking good, I might actually stay in one place long enough to have a girlfriend, the possibilities were endless.
Then the phone rang.
It was Fred Kuhn, the president of the Century Road Club of America back in Princeton, New Jersey asking if I could be ready to ride a stage race in South Africa on March 1st which was only 4 weeks away. He knew I was not spending the winter in Vermont and that I probably had good form left over from my late season racing in Chicago and Little Rock.