More conversation with Maynard

Maynard: I lived in Marin County from '75 until '84, so I watched the mountain bike revolution happen. And I sure knew Charlie Kelly, as did anyone who rode a bike in Marin in those days.

Thinking about Charlie makes me think about Phil Brown, another cyclist, rock 'n' roll roadie and later a sound engineer. He and Doug White, who makes some wonderful bike parts today, built road frames called Brown and White. 

Phil was just here in Denver with his old friend Paul Stubblebine, another cyclist and sound engineer. Paul and Phil tell great stories of working with music business folks back when. 

You ask, "Who was the smartest personal manager, Phil?" Or, "Paul, who was the greatest waste of talent?" The stories just roll out of those guys.

Guys like these, Charlie and Phil and Paul, would be great guys to know even if we hadn't met them through cycling. But cycling introduced us to SO many super people, men and women....

I'm afraid that the social aspects of cycling, the opportunities to get to know people, are not so frequent today. People drive to the rides and take their bikes out of their cars.

They look at their phones when the rides break. They're so connected that they have to get somewhere right after the ride ends. No hanging out for coffee. No getting to know their own Charlies, Phils and Pauls.

Earle: Especially in the early season, rides could be at a "conversational" pace, meaning nobody was working so hard you could not talk to the person next to you. 

Rides also ended at a destination, not a parking lot. In Berkeley, rides began or ended at Peet's Coffee, either the Northside location or Domingo Avenue, at the start of the Tunnel Road climb. The conversations continued there, sometimes for hours.

A day off work was a day to hang around with your bike friends. A ride might last a few hours, but nobody was in a hurry to part company.

Some of this can be attributed to the small world we lived in. Before Greg and Lance, before the Ironman, the world of high-end bikes was small. Small enough for no more than one or two degrees of separation from virtually everybody who mattered.

A personal example: When the economy dipped in 1981 and the Bicycle Exchange might have to lay somebody off, I was also ready to leave Cambridge. Rich Olken, the owner of the BiEx, and Mike Zane, one of the founders of Kryptonite Locks, each told me that I would probably get along with Peter Rich of Velo Sport in Berkeley. 

So I called the store, talked to the manager, who was from the planet known as Southern California, and he said, "Yeah, we need somebody, can you send a resume?"

I said I would, but also suggested that the manager check with other friends in the business. I got a call the next day. Somebody from Velo Sport had made a few calls and I had passed muster. More important than a resume was the recommendation of friends in the business.

The bike world is a lot bigger than that now. The small world we lived in hangs on in small pockets, but we get together for rides only a couple of times a year instead of a couple of times a week.

Continuing the conversation

Picking up where the conversation ended on my last post:

Maynard: As Earle suggests, there's not all that much to say about bicycles. I know that the online and paper bicycle publications fill their pages with content about stuff issue after issue.

But -- it's just stuff. Stuff won't guarantee a great ride. It won't climb the hill for you or set a new PB on your usual loop. 

Actual skill, fitness or genius isn't for sale. REI doesn't offer them. You have to have them or earn them.

What can be sold is stuff. Selling it means convincing you that using that stuff is the equivalent of possessing skill, class or genius, qualities that can't be sold.

Earle: There have been a few publications that were not ‘stuff’ driven. The best of these was Fat Tire Flyer, the first ever mountain bike magazine, edited by the incomparable Charlie Kelly. Here is everything you need to know about ‘stuff’ and complete bicycles, for that matter: http://www.sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/bike_review.htm

SeeKay was there when mountain biking took off, and one of the inaugural inductees into the Mountain Biking Hall of fame. But he never got so caught up in himself that he forgot that it was just stuff, and the ride was the most important thing.  He was also a first-class rock ‘n’ roll roadie and a decent guitar player with an eclectic repertoire.  I met SeeKay through bicycles, but we had much more to talk about.

Charlie is just one example of the great people I have met through bicycles.