Below is an excerpt from the introduction to the Memoir- more teaser stories to come…

In the spring of 2008, after a 40-year break, I was back behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer. I’m sitting there at age 65 wondering, “How the hell did this happen?” It didn’t make any sense, yet here I was on my first day back, much older, but apparently none the wiser.

The Bob Dylan lyrics, “Where have you been my blue-eyed son?” flooded my mind. I had to pull the rig over to the side of the road, I was so shaken by the moment.

As a young, 23-year-old, truck-driving rookie on a two-driver rig that never stopped moving I had no idea how many ways, and times I would crisscross this country before I would settle down. That was back before CB radios, movies and country-western songs made truck drivers into folk heroes. 

My dad was not overjoyed that I had become a truck driver instead of a West Point graduate, but he respected my work ethic and understood how hard the job was.

If you had told me then, that by my 28th birthday I would be racing eight-day 750-mile bicycle races in Ireland and representing the USA at the world championships in Barcelona, Spain, I would have looked at you in total disbelief.

Now, here I was decades later, sitting behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler, with my life flashing before me. It was like Deja Vu all over again. 

I had immersed myself in so many different jobs and lifestyles over the years that I had lost count. There was no end in sight, I had just gone with the flow of the shenanigans and adventures that kept coming my way, but now I was 63, married, with a 9-year-old son and a mortgage. 

Somewhere in my late 40’s it hit me that I was running out of time to attract the right woman into my life, and I could end up drunk and alone on the bar room floor. 

By the time I was 54 I had graduated college, got a great job in the cycling industry, was married, bought a house, and had a baby boy. I had finally joined mainstream America, but I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if I really belonged.

I have always felt pride in the life I chose to live, but at the same time I felt like I was an imposter or living in the witness protection program, especially when I ended up settling down in this quaint little Connecticut village. My most recent fling with truck driving, which would last nine years, confirmed those thoughts. 

The songs on the radio late at night brought back long buried memories, and questions about my audacious life that I never had time to reflect on until I heard that diesel roar once again. 

I had dined in palaces, drunk wine with kings and queens, hitchhiked across the country, been a seaman in the merchant marine, helped build jet engines and nuclear submarines, ridden my bike across the country, competed internationally for my country, then coached at the Olympic Training Center, produced world-class cycling races, graduated from college, written a best-selling cycling book, and done business in the Benelux countries. 

So how could I be a truck driver again?