I’ve never considered myself anything more than your average Joe, although I’ve often wondered about that moniker because, as a dude named John, there are a hellava lot more Johns in the his world than Joes.
That prompted me to get the nickname Raz, so I wouldn’t have to turn around anytime some said “John” to see if they were talking to me because, most of the time, they weren’t.
In any event, that’s a philosophy I applied to others in my years as a journalist so I never really found myself star-struck by someone I interviewed, aside from the time I went to cover the Green Bay Packers practice and stood paralyzed in from to Forrest Gregg, a Packer legend and one of the Lombardi’s great players.
Such is the life of kid who grew up in Wisconsin …
When the curtain closed on my career as a cycling journalist, I wondered if the average cycling fan knew what the life of a cycling journalist was like. Since I didn’t know until I started covering bike races, I figured it was kinda cool. At least the way I covered bike races.
So one day strolling through a museum with my daughters, looking at displays to give people the inside information on many aspects of daily life in the past, the thought hit me of someday creating a museum exhibit to share the life of an average cycling journalist.
Fast-forward many, many years later and I sit in my attic looking at boxes filled with cycling memorabilia that would fill my exhibit. I’ve come to that time in life to downsize.
My splash and flash through the cycling scene ran from 1989-2000, a period I like to believe was the Golden Age of cycling in the USA. That’s when so many of the movers and shakers got their start. The least of which, of course, was that brash kid from Plano, Texas who I met at the US Olympic Trials in 1992.
From that era I have a bunch of media guides that teams created: Coors Light, Chevrolet-LA Sheriffs, Mercury, Saturn, Shaklee, Motorola and other lesser known teams like Plymouth. I have team photos, individual photos.
I have race guides, including Tour DuPont bibles with my notes for various stages scribbled in the margins. I have more than 20 cycling hats ranging from a 1990 Race Across America hat to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which pretty much capped off my career.
I have cycling posters that I’ve accumulated including the 1989 7-Eleven team and the US Team Rules, circa ’92, with Bobby Julich, Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie and Jeff Evanshine.
I have posters from races in France, Redlands, Big Bear and more.
It’s great fun to dig through it all and remember all the great times. They were great times because of the great people.
I suppose someday I might have the great cycling memorabilia garage sale. Or in the not-too-distant future when my wife and I retire, I just might create some sort of exhibit and roll around to some of my favorite races of all time: Redlands, Athens, Snake Alley, Big Bear …
Who knows?
Time to ride
