The Racing Chronicles

Bebe Rebozo; Calappalachia; Spy v. Spy; Reputations

by Bill Stone

July 2001

All the gold in California is locked in a
Vault in Beverly Hills
In somebody else's name.

So, if you're thinking of California
It don't matter at all
Where you've gone before
California's a brand new game.

     -- Stevie Nicks, before all the glitter faded.

Well before Jake Geddis encountered the Mulrays water was power in California. In the area South of LA and North of San Diego they used to grow oranges instead of hillside condos. At that time a great many long riders were out of work what with San Franciscans having elected a Mormon apparently in disbelief that he would actually clean out all the grifters. Californians learned from this mistake and believed that Bush Lite would in fact promote pollution and give his friends all the money, an act of intelligence for which they will be eating by candlelight for the next three years and six months. The dispossessed learned that traveling tent show preachers were making do in Kansas beating drums and having paid converts beseech the heavens for rain. Now, So Cal agricultural mavens were not about to pay for such low tech inspired precipitation so Professor Hatfield brought with him canons, fireworks and United States Rainfall studies. The Professor would be paid expenses and a fee based upon the annual rainfall with the payoff rising exponentially. This worked quite well for a season until the orange magnets figured out they could blow up their own fireworks.

Riding along the Pacific Coast Highway south of Laguna in preparation for climbing the housing development cliffs east of the I-5. Self is blocking out the pitch of MKA's constant self-ggrandizements by constructing a hermeneutic on the apposite that the importance of being right is proportional to intentioned refusal to learn and it's companion, arrogance. This important work is disturbed by a voice saying "I could help you with that leg of yours what with me having been a pro body builder until I became a Christian and a personal trainer and I'll be glad to work with you for a price and by the way I have ridden to Long Beach and back and am really hungry and do you have any food." So, in front is MKA doing pre climbing chants and behind a steroid swollen green Popsicle talking about all great European hotel rooms he destroyed before he was reincarnated as a muttering moron. Give the guy two cementitious super energy plus bars figuring that no one can talk for fifteen minutes with dried sand in his mouth. The guy inhales them without missing a vowel or slurring a diphthong and now energized he starts extolling the sinfulness of (more on this latter) holding a race on Easter Sunday. Now generally Self looks forward to hills as much as a mouse the arrival of the DW's cats, but there are exceptions to all rules, e.g., teens that drink alcohol should be punished except….. Mercifully MKA announces that the fun is over and that self should wheeze up and down the neighborhoods for ten climbs and then go toward the ocean. The body by EAS climbs even worse than Self and leave him behind to face fate in the loneliness of canyon walls lined by million dollar winter homes.

End up on the mean streets of San Clemente and drop down to the Beach. It is here you will recall that self's prototypical politician Richard Nixon used to sit with the surf up to his neck with his only friend BeBe Rebozo (wearing the knee high black socks) and admire through their Raybans California girls all dressed up in their bikinis. President Nixon was if not the explication for the power/ignorance Presidency at least the progenitor. He was pure power and arrogance in the presence of knowledge, a feat far more humbling than the stupidly powerful Regan and Bush II and I. Before Nixon Presidents did not leave office rich. Though he had always lived off the kindness of his friends, a house, a car, a few hundred grand, he didn't really cash in until he turned his money over to BeBe who in turn made Nixon rich while at the same time increasing his own net worth five times over despite recession. But Nixon was more than dishonest. He was full on hate. But even with all that he could not represent Orange County today. No, Nixon would have been far too liberal for these Freestater descendants of those who tried to close the borders in the thirties. You can get a county music station at four o-clock in the morning on any highway including I 70 through Kansas and you can get a lunatic white man Freestater on clear band at any hour and usually more than one. So, if you're going to O.C. stop, as did self at the Borders off the I-5 and buy a load of Fats Navarro discs.

The thematic connection is still taking shape as MKA announces there is no time for coffee as he is off to the Camp Pendleton freak ride. Somewhere North of San Diego all manner of miscreant racers and tri geeks coalesce. Every Wednesday at the ridiculous time of 7:00 a.m. an amorphous Borg roars through the military base to a sprint on the bike bath that connects with the PCH. The mass becomes a Blop when it exits the Camp through a tunnel of mica mud laid down by tank tracks. Two singlewide gates that are approached as if they were the gateway to the Ark precede the sprint. On the cool down receive a gratuitous offer of help. The guy gets all puffy when asked his name and responds: "Why, everybody knows I'm Olympic Champion Steve Hegg and for a mere $500 a month with a minimum six-month obligation I can help you fulfill your potential." So, here's a guy who has to get up at six to huckster his wares to a man whose athletic horizon extends somewhat short of finishing a training ride in front of the DW. Besides, Self has a major pause being as people who live by their wits rarely do anything before ten o-clock and then only over coffee. He huffs off something about that's what he'd expect from a hack friend of MKA and that Self probably didn't have the cash anyway. It is rare to encounter such perception.

Laguna Beach is an art gallery city complete with no end of shops men would enter only in search of a bathroom. It is then DW's paradise. It's not that men don't like art; they just don't see it. Put a man in a room for ten minutes and he'll report seeing a table, chair and maybe a picture of a sunset. A lady can be there thirty seconds and she'll describe the sunset down to how it varies from the typical palette of the artist. She'll also tell you the size and color code of the tile on the floor, describe all sixteen flowers that compose the wallpaper, point out that the china pattern was only produced for one year because of the Depression and that the china vase was one off the 1880 original in that it lacked a loop in the signature mark. It's just not a fair contest and it becomes distinctly off putting when the DW asks Self to explain something called an impression which is not to be confused with an abstraction and certainly not the same as a cube.

No beach town in SoCal is without a designer water store and drive through coffee bar. Now, self's only idea of drive up coffee is a hold your breath dash into a Tobacco Road Smoke and Chew. For fifty cents Self fills a never been washed non-leak coffee cup with yesterday's grounds. If the non-airy creamer doesn't separate upon entry the coffee lacks required integrity. It is then decidedly exasperating to accompany MKA and his wiser brother Hover into one of these bean stores. Max Kash requires more maintenance than Daddy Mercer. It takes him ten minutes to describe that he wants "a Mocha with an extra half squirt of white shaved not cracked chocolate with two shots of espresso that must be ground no more than thirty seconds before it is pressed into a freshly steamed cup. The rest of the white no pattern French cup is to be filled with one and half percent milk from an un-opened bottle and neutral flavored Chilean. The entire mess is to be heated to just below a boil. Self tries to order an instant Taster's Choice and the lady threatens to call the police. Settle for six shots of espresso but only after she calls Sainted Mother to see if it's okay. There are just some things Self is not to understand.

Whenever Nixon's mendacity was challenged and there was no one around upon which to paste the shame he and BeBe would change the venue and had not the Chinese insisted he go home he might still be President what with the press obeying some arcane sanctimony that a President involved in a ping pong game cannot be revealed as a scoundrel regardless of the overmatch. Figuring that a trip to a water bar would result in a jail term Self followed the BeBe plan and decided to go down market. Ontario is right in the center of CalAppalachia and the juxtaposition is revealed by the trip northeast. Orange County has highways for rich people. You buy a coded pass and you get to drive on a private six lane until you get to LA County when the road ends and you merge with the Fontuckians at twelve miles an hour.

The Ontario criterium is six turns in an industrial park. Dennis rode down from Pomona and during the twenty-mile ride he reports passing six strip bars, four-tattoo parlors three body paint stands and six prostitutes of varying flexibility. The trip took four hours and he no doubt would have missed the race had more than one of the bars been open.

Oh yes, they held races and they were very fast and while Self was not watching Dennis wrote later that someone won every race.

On the way to John Wayne Airport Self passed the Richard Nixon Museum. Fittingly, it is not in Orange County and had he and certainly his Cuban friend realized they would never be real Orangites he might actually have done some good for the people who honored him and for whom he claimed an affinity.

At a time when Bush Lite is busy unfreezing the cold war it is fitting that a Spy v. Spy story is being played out right here in Hooterland as the Feds try to make up in service the superior ABR venues. Each week the other promoter will ask "how many were at the other's race and was it any good and did people seem to like it and well I hope he does well because what he does is not important to me except in the sense that everyone has fun and as long as it is safe it doesn't matter who puts on the race but if you had to choose wouldn't you want more rules or less rules or well you know I'm just in it for the altruism and if racers don't understand that then well I'll just lie down in the road and scream. Fact is that both promoters have saved Hooterland from becoming Ohio where the only options are to race a combined all Cat race on three hundred meter courses with twelve turns over railroad tracks and forget about Masters racing as it simply doesn't exist. However, the Chronicle take is that the 317 area code teams will compel that no races will be held more than a twenty- mile radius from Conseco.

Regardless of who sanctioned the event the Hegemony has put proof to the Chronicle prediction that the Scientologists would lose their faith faster than a Faith Howling Congressman in the presence of a sorority girl.

The Butler Race is apocryphal. The Hegemony attacks, Billy Bedtime for Posers of the Estrogen Burgundy Lime Slimes bridges and a Professor latches and the rest of the Scientologists and Slimes shut down. The Professors go into a special egghead meeting to make a list of matters to consider ten laps later. Unfortunately, they are going around a corner at this time and fall down. Then before the next conference their rider returns from the break because he forgot his lesson plan. To compound their flail the Eggheads then protest that it is unfair for Shake and Mercer to receive both fifty-plus money and thirty-five plus money in the in the same race what with guys over fifty having such an experience advantage over guys fifteen and twenty years younger. They then carried this sallow crusade to their website where it was offered that the ABR combined 35-45 plus races should also prohibit such shameful attempts by AARP racers to take money from young working men. When self pointed out that the 45 plus money was always to be a bonus to encourage more participants the response was it would be more egalitarian to limit the amount a geriatric could win. Apparently, egalitarian means that if you can't win make sure no one else does either.

Nevertheless and Distasteful as it may be the Chronicles must report that in the absence of the Hegemony Professor Murphy did win the Lafayette Road Race ahead of Bedtime. But more cheery is the news reported to the Chronicles by three Profs that they essentially are not a team even when they do show up which is not often, e.g. New Albany. Even the NRA draws the line at shooting a cow for sport and forbearance requires that this be the last mention of the Scientologists.

The Trickster never failed to disappoint those as Self who cynically and mostly correctly assume there is no bottom to the depth of prevarication of people who descend to power under the shattered lives of those they accuse of being less than American. Unfortunately, living down to an unearned reputation often catches out even the most innocent. The extremely well organized and conducted New Albany DaVinci race had a course with a downhill turn. There was a crash in the last laps of the Master race and the Swope of Swope.com fell down. Now, as good a climber he is as bad in a corner so the flail was not for lack of potential. Nevertheless, in true racer fashion he took advantage of the convenience that Daddy Mercer was in the race and accordingly deflected the flail in Daddy's direction. When it was pointed out that this always easy culprit was four bike behind him at the time, the felled gained Chronicle immortality by noting that "well, I knew he was somewhere and that he'd do something and well he would have so it was still his fault." It was a beautiful moment.

Likewise, the Shake himself came to ridicule at the Butler race for living well down to his insouciance. It seems that during the race a first year Cat III asked him to move over before a turn, and of course Grant was at the time ordering Chinese take out and listening to Busted Bitches and as such missed the request. After the race in which as noted above he was deeked out of thirty-plus five place money and correctly was not in much mood to have his choice of music much less his intransient insensitivity to Cat III prattle put to examination it was suggested to him that the Molly Manners of Bike Racing Etiquette Handbook proscribed ordering anything but post race polymer peptide drinks during a racing program which is defined as a race or series of races in which bicycles are used to go forward on a road surface. So, Shake asks him why it mattered that he had a hankering for snow peas and rice cooked without oil and was told that it made Shake ride badly because he couldn't respond to polite requests that he move in a direction advantageous to those behind him to which the ever polite and contrite Shake pensively questioned why he should care in the slightest what was going on behind him which engendered the enjoinder that it was well just not nice which is of course the defining point of bike racing. Grant congratulated his tormentor on working through to the answer to which it was said that Shake had done nothing to improve his reputation. This news left him tearless.

Even Self's unassailable reputation was put to test at Butler. Bilko announced throughout the race that there was a racer from San Diego continually at the front which was a far from Self as he could have been except for maybe being in the break. After the race Self is calming himself by singing a slightly altered lyric of "If you're going to California" and for some reason the pierced and pre-cancerous lesion takes offense and offers some expletives about Self not doing anything until the sprint as if Self has ever sprinted except to the bathroom and then even not. Regardless, Rachel hears it and immediately tells Self to go away and later writes to the Hackpack that not for one minute did she buy the truth that Self was just singing his song and riding his bike with no intent to provoke. Fortunately, the Hackpack admires the ability to pass under an ever-lowering bar. Besides while making up the California Master Dreamer commented "everything I'm doing is directed towards one day in July in Spokane" and this metonymic fluff will comprise the theme of the next Chronicle on Nationals, Cascade and Stupid Week.

Self has fallen down several times this year. All the crashes were no one else's fault, and on one occasion Grant provided transportation to the hospital. Upon looking at Self's exposed knuckles Grant passed out on the floor in front of our long time surgeon friend who commented that both of us needed guardians. Self's take was that Shake tried to upstage the event. Reputations are hard to kill.

Ride fast and take chances.

Bill Stone