Jonathan Edwards performs a Joe Dulce classic live.
My old comrade and colleague Steve Frothingham pinged me over coffee this morning, double-checking another velo-bro’s contact info (the one and only Charles Pelkey, star of stage, screen, and TV).
Seems the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame is assembling a fresh conclave to vote on potential inductees and thought of tugging on the Live Update Guy’s coat.
Now, I happen to think that Charles would make an even better inductee than voter. I mean, the man has been there and done that, wearing more hats than the performers at the annual Country Music Association Awards.
Asking CP to vote on HoF candidates seems kinda like ringing up Les Claypool and asking, “Hey, you know anybody who rocks?”
But what the hell do I know? I guess some of us are just destined to roam that old back 40.
One of the many books Sam Abt wrote about his summer vacations.
The great Sam Abt is finally done following the Tour de France. He went west this week at age 91.
I never met Sam, much less worked with him. He was an editor at The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, a real chain-smoking pro who worked on the Pentagon Papers and other top-shelf stories and covered the Tour de France — in his spare time — because he loved it. I was a editor at a series of lesser papers who read Sam at work (if the paper subscribed to the NYT wire service) and rode bicycles in my spare time because I loved it.
But my friends Charles Pelkey and Andrew Hood knew and worked with Sam, as did James Startt, who has a fond remembrance of him over at Velo.
Writes James:
Simply put, his writing was exceptional. It was at once efficient, witty, insightful and at times downright transcendent. Oh, and his fans went well beyond the press room, as at least one head of state would call him during the Tour to get his take on the race. All of this from a chain-smoking reporter who never really rode a bike. But he knew the sport like few others did.
Sam was covering Le Tour in those dark days when an American fan had to settle for a soupçon of “Wide World of Sports” coverage, a couple grafs from The Associated Press in your local paper’s sports section (if you were lucky), and Winning: Bicycle Racing Illustrated, which would hit your mailbox about three months after the race was done and dusted.
When VeloNews moved to Boulder in the late Eighties I latched onto the back of that breakaway and hung on for dear life, doing what I’d always done for newspapers — cartooning, writing and editing. I even helped cover a few Tours, from a distance, as an editor. The magazine offered to send me abroad a time or two, but I always declined, thinking I could get more done at home.
But that meant I never got to meet one of the titans of the Tour. Not a racer — I met more than a few of those folks — but Sam, who fed the monkey for all us bike-racing junkies.
Abt was a mentor and inspiration for a generation of English-language journalists who later came to cover a once-exotic sport that’s since gone global.
Peace to Sam, his family and friends, and to his many, many devoted readers.
“Is this how you’re spending your retirement money?” asks my old velo-comrade Charles Pelkey. “Check the sponsor at the bottom of the sign. Bwah ha ha ha.”
Apparently it’s a billboard in Michigan, though it looks like a Photoshop/A.I. kind of thing to me. Wasn’t my doing. Hmm, lemme think here … who do we know in Michigan?
Alice and Arlo, lifted from the latter’s Facebook page.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings just before Thanksgiving, but you can’t get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant. The restaurant is long gone, and now, so is Alice.
Extra Special Bonus Fact: Did you know Alice was a Pelkey? Neither did I. I’ll consult the Counselor, see if he was aware that he was related to criminal and culinary royalty.
We’ll give a thought (and an ear) to Alice and Arlo on Thursday as we have another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat.
Hm. The weather seems less than ideal for the old bikey ridey this morning. The weather widget says we’ve gotten 0.15 inch since I oozed out of bed two hours ago, it’s still bucketing down, and I am no Laura Killingbeck. I prefer my velo-adventures sunny-side up with some toasty 65°-degree-plus temps if I can get ’em. Just ’cause I have mudguards doesn’t mean I wanna use ’em.
We Duck! Citizens enjoyed a high of 81° yesterday, well short of the record — 92° in 2022 — with zero precip’. In fact, the National Weather Service reports that we have had but a trace of moisture so far in May, and just 0.33 inch in April, a mere dribble compared to the usual half-inch.
Up to 0.24 inch since I started typing this post. Woof. We could corral those missing April showers today.
Anyone who has forgotten/is unaware how important water is to us here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where the yappy purse dogs roam free, can become wise following the online musings of water wizard John Fleck. Buy him a coffee if you can spare the funds; I attended one water-board meeting in the Seventies, as a cub reporter fueled by vile percolator joe, and I can assure you John needs all the proper java he can get.
In other news, our man Charles Pelkey is working the early shift in Laramie as local host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and anyone who misses the glory days of Live Update Guy can catch his act on the Innertubes at Wyoming Public Media. That other fella he used to work with at LUG remains unemployable in print, broadcast, and online.
I do serve at least one small purpose, however. After my own cup of coffee I scattered some bird seed around under the patio cover so the tweeties could enjoy a snack out of the wet. Queuing up at the feeders today must feel like being a hobo outside a Seattle soup kitchen.
