Sunday, February 13, 2011

Club of One?

In the run-up to last week's Superbowl, there were some communications between the founder of Pittsburgh's Dirty Dozen and the founder of Wisconsin's Bone Ride if the representative of the losing city/state might finally have to do the other's ride. This discussion was not resolved, but in the course of the back-and-forth it occurred to me that I don't know of anyone else who, like me, has completed both unique cycling events. The two founders could not name anyone either. In 1997 I tied for rookie of the year on the Dirty Dozen's thirteen spectacular hills in and around Pittsburgh (for those in the know: I got points on several hills using as my lowest gear a 39x26; didn't get the honor because unlike Mark Nicholl and Adam Pollock, I did not win any hills). At a much busier time in my life I rode it again in 1999, just to finish (but I managed to sneak ahead to the Liberty Tunnel passage to exit first). One day, I'll get my name on the list of people with three or more DDs to their name. Living in Milwaukee several years later, in 2005, I rode the 155 miles out and back between Wauwatosa and Madison along with about 100 others, divided into pelotons of 25. There are no points on the Bone Ride (other than for style and conduct, as on every group ride), but I remember that the pulls I took on the way home started to hurt more and more. The two founders raced together in the 1980s. When Tom won the national championship in1987, Danny also finished in the top 20 (Tom has a film that shows Danny). Which founder is going to have a harder time on the other's ride? Tom never liked climbing very much, but that championship course had a very nasty hill in it. By now, it really doesn't matter at all. It would be fun, however, to see the mutual guest appearances take place, so that I'm no longer in this club of one (or is there already someone else?)

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Reagan and the Netherlands

Ronald Reagan would have turned 100 years old today, and to mark the occasion the Dutch news weekly Elsevier's weekblad has published one of its special commemorative issues for which Giles Scott Smith and I provided an article on "Dutch" Reagan and the Netherlands. We drew on our respective archival research on the 1980s (and that of our friend James Graham Wilson), so even though the piece is very accessible, it actually contains some bits and pieces of material that are fairly unknown. The booklet (in Dutch) is still on sale at all newsstands in the Netherlands, and you can also order the abundantly illustrated and nicely produced booklet on-line.