Team Slurpee

I'm a day late and a dollar short, as they say, but in what is possibly my best defense, I was in fact out on a ride for a good chunk of yesterday afternoon, and running around preparing for an hour before that. And afterwards, I was in no shape for writing! :)

Between my BMX trick (freestyle) childhood and teen years, and the mountain biker you know now, I was in fact a bike shop rat and a pretty fervent club road cyclist- or as close as we had to that in western PA at the time. It hardly compares to the rides and clubs we have here in MA, even when I first moved here in 1994, but it was a great way to learn. I did manage to do one century with my friends from the shop and some of the guys from our club. I was 17 at the time.

This was before the internet, remember, but thankfully, Floyd, the usually absent owner of the shop where I worked (think Fred from Yehuda Moon and you've pretty much got the picture), had collected years of Bicycle Guide, and I was welcome to take piles of these home after work and study them. That was my education in the culture of European road cycling culture, and as a young adult feeling trapped in a small one-stoplight town (and that was actually a blinking light), that completely foreign experience was JUST what my soul needed. If the California culture of BMX seemed slightly sunnier than where I lived, Europe seemed like a dispatch from another planet. Paris-Roubaix? Alpe D'Huez? They were like code words to a club I'd never even heard of. 

Perhaps because it felt just a little familiar, or maybe because I could picture it as a way for MYSELF to escape America (in a figurative, not literal, way), I gravitated to the 7Eleven Cycling Team. They were Americans, but thriving in the Tour de France and the other monuments. I particularly remember loving Davis Phinney and---most of all---Andy Hampsten. Because while I loved LeMond and his burgers-and-fries, screw-you-I'll-do-it-the-American-way style, I could picture myself in Hampsten. When you saw pictures of the team waiting for a bus, he'd be the one laying in the shade reading a book. Looking back, he seemed a little less "BRO!" and a little more refined.

And something about that jersey spoke to me. Looking at it now, I see the complimentary "Christmas" colors (though I remember them as being a little more orange and less red) and the signature "Descente" (the clothing company) shoulder stripes add a certain panache.

I remember the night before my century. We were sleeping on the floor of the gym at Findlay High School that night, and a local bike shop had set up a sort of pop-up store in a lobby. They had, among many other things, 7Eleven jerseys, and I wanted one SO badly. Part of me STILL does, to be honest.  (in my defense, I did have a La Vie Claire "jersey", but it was inexplicably made of t-shirt cotton, not actual jersey fabrics. And I think that came later.) In fact, I was so low on the pecking order at my shop, I didn't qualify for one of the shop JERSEYS, but only a t-shirt with the shop logo. So that's what I wore that day. I was a grom, no two ways about it. So there I lay, nervous about what was to come the next day, longing for a taste of Europe, and lusting after the cheerleaders back at Mohawk High School (I was laying in a gym, after all).

But back to that jersey, so that I can stop talking about myself and perhaps offer some genuine information, "Hoonved" is a dishwasher manufacturer from Italy. "Wolber" is a rim manufacturer that was eventually purchased by Mavic, the far more famous manufacturer of cycling wheels. The AA is, of course, American Airlines. And the symbol opposite is the one-time logo of Eddy Merckx cycles.

So, that's what I'm thinking of on July 11---or any time I pass one of those mini-marts.

PS: There's a two-part episode of the Marginal Gains Podcast with Andy Hampsten that's well worth listening to if you're nostalgic about this team.