 |
| Moto official behind one of the women's fields |
A whiff of the past: Mother Neff State Park, 8 miles, said
the sign on my drive down toward Temple (where I stayed with Martha and Alan in
their new home). Mother Neff SP
was the site
of the last Texas State Championship in which I participated as a racer, and that was
sometime shortly before the turn of the millennium. Now it is 2013, and I just
finished two days of working as an official the premier (at least from a boasting standpoint)
bike race weekend of the season.
 |
| The Juniors are lining up for their race start |
Andy Hollinger, the promoter of this event and publisher of
The Racing Post, had asked me last fall why I never worked any of his races,
and I told him that the long drive (and the associated mileage charge) was pretty
much the deal killer for most road races, where more often than not the organizer
takes a financial hit when fewer racers show up than expected. But Andy had
responded that for this race he had lots of financial sponsors and that he
could afford bringing me in. Mind you, a road race requires a much larger
number of officials than a mountain bike race or a triathlon, and the costs are staggering. To give you an idea: We had
a crew of 15 paid officials for a total of 849 registered racers over two days.
For the HHH mountain bike race, we had two paid officials for about half that
number of racers. You see the financial ramifications for an organizer.
 |
| RD Andy discusses race results with some finishers |
For the past few years, Andy has organized the State
Championships (both skills- as well as age-based) in the perfect venue: the
largest military reservation (in the
free
world, as was mentioned by several people this weekend), Fort Hood. For two
days, racers have access to the car-free roads of this truly vast installation,
which covers something like 160 square miles. Our race loop was a whopping 33
miles long, completely closed to traffic and with wide, well-paved roads. Go
government, go. Of course, you better stay on the road since there are
unexploded bombs waiting for the unsuspecting civilian, or there could be some
live ammunition exercise in the underbrush. Ample signage lets you know that
this is, essentially, a war zone. And somehow Andy managed to secure this venue
for the benefit of all Texas racers.
 |
| Doesn't need a comment, does it? |
I was thoroughly reminded (no, it wasn’t a reminder, it was
a cold slap in the face) that not everybody in this country has a pacifist, why,
even liberal view of the world; you need to understand that as somebody who
left his home country partly to not serve
in the military I have a somewhat dark view of everything having to do with
guns, tanks, and yes, soldiers as well. So it was not an easy three hours with
one of my drivers who quite obviously had convictions diametrically different
from mine. A self-proclaimed red-neck and lifelong construction worker she
continued to complain about the high price of ammo, the impending take-over of law-abiding
civilians by the government, and the fact that Glocks jam too easily when you
fire too many rounds. Whenever I tried to direct our conversation back to bike
racing, she’d manage to find a link to her life: “By the way, the first-prize winner in
this race is going to get something like $400 or so.”— “Hell, with that I could
rebuild my M4.” She was a tough woman, obviously, and her anger-management
program for her teenage son consisted of buying a watermelon or a pumpkin and
his using one of his two swords to “slice ‘em up.” Or she’d just take him to the
shooting range, but you know about the price of ammo because of that President
of ours….
 |
| With these ... |
 |
| ... they blow things up here: Little Baghdad, as it is known, replete with fake mosque |
So, that was the cultural component of my trip. In all
fairness, my three other local drivers were not made of the same survivalist
wood as she or spouted off racial and sex-oriented epithets. But Ft. Hood
certainly has an influence on the area, as I found out during those long hours
of conversation while sitting behind a slow-moving field of racers. Interesting
stuff, I tell you.
 |
| One year, Apache helicopters flew a strafing run right next to the race. Seriously. |
Apart from learning a little more about an area one hasn’t
really visited before, races also present the opportunity to reconnect with old
friends, and a state championship attracts its share of familiar faces. The
names may not mean anything to the casual reader, but some have featured before
and I certainly don’t want to forget about whom all I saw: Of the old guard, there were
the ageless Fred Schmid and his wife, Suzanne; Jack and Esther Weiss, who had
just sold their triathlon production company; Todd Mann and his former roommate,
Stephen Crewe (who’s been married for 7 years and has a darling 3-year-old
daughter); Cath and Ian Moore with their
wild daughters, Daria and Sophie; my former student Bridget Alford, who is either
married or strongly liaised with Lucas Brousseau, one of the TMBRA regulars back
when; Jim Slauson; and finally all those
guys against whom I used to race, among them Willie K. Allen, Frank Kurzawa,
Tom Bain, and George Heagerty. There were others, of course, but with all these
I exchanged long handshakes and often hugs, and we were able to catch up with
one another, time permitting. It was interesting when the chief mentioned to me
that lots of people had said to him, “Oh, Jürgen is here—I recognize his car
and coffee cup.”
 |
| Part of the crew at lunch on Day 2 |
Incidentally, Sunday was the 3-year anniversary of Judy’s
departure. Lots of people mentioned her, not realizing that this was the day.
She still lives on in people’s memories, and she still elicits a smile and a
heartfelt “we miss her badly.” As do I, and not only on race weekends.
Jürgen
No comments:
Post a Comment