The Tuesday Night Hustle – Some New and Some Returning Faces
July 29, 2015 § Leave a comment
I got home early today. This week is VIP week at Fort Dix and I figured I would be tied up all day every day, but so far, this week is easier than the last two weeks! Once the VIPs come through, we can close up shop, and so we did and I was home by 4 o’clock. I have to admit, that today was pretty damn hot, and the humidity stuck to me like a wet drape. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood to go out into that mess and hammer for an hour.
Stung! The Tuesday Night Hustle Rides Again
July 22, 2015 § Leave a comment
Sometimes it is amazing what you can get when you cry Waa Waa like a baby and call out to your friends “Why won’t you come out and play with meeeeee?” Tonight was the first Tuesday Night Hustle after last weeks rant, and I was both surprised and relieved to see a larger turnout. In addition to Doug and myself, we started out with Maxipad and Jack who rode in with Dougie. Tony managed to make it out tonight and in spite of his already ridden that morning! We got Grant back out again, but he was recovering from an infection for which antibiotics were prescribed. Finally we had a new person show up who had just heard about the ride. Mike from Atlantic Highlands. I had never seen him before, but he was riding a nice bike. I did point out we would warm-up out to Sea Bright and then turn the gas on.
Thirty Years Ago – The Adventures of Frank & Stein – Part II
July 21, 2015 § Leave a comment
June 1st 1981 was the set departure date for the journey that would become known as “The Frank and Stein Route”. We had everything we needed, and the time had come to put the plan into action. We weren’t shipping our bikes and gear to San Diego, so we had to get bike boxes from a local shop, and disassemble our machines enough to re-pack them in these boxes. Fortunately there was room in the box to stuff many of the other items we had as well. What didn’t fit in the bike boxes we crammed into two other normal packing boxes, one each, so that we each had one huge bike box and one rather large box to manage at the Airport. We didn’t need suitcases, because we couldn’t carry them back with us, so disposable cardboard was the way to go.
What Happened To The Tuesday Night Hustle?
July 15, 2015 § 1 Comment
If you are a bike nut, and of course when I say bike I mean bicycle, and not a motorcycle. Really we would say a cycling nut because we are “cyclists”, and not just “bicycle riders”. What is the difference? WTF knows, but there is a difference! So, if you are a cycling nut, and you are nuts enough to race your bicycle, and by race that could be race in mass start events like weekend criteriums, or road races, or it could be race as in you are a tri-head, but you really really really love the cycling portion of the event, and to go fast on the bike is something that you think about all the time when you aren’t riding.
Along comes a weekly ride that you have been waiting for. A ride that you have read about in other parts of the country, or friends of yours from Ogalala post to their Facebook accounts every week about this ride that totally kills them, and you think “Damn, why isn’t there a ride like that at The Jersey Shore?” Sometimes you have that ride on weekend if the right people show up, but generally you want something like that during the week. Something to break up the week and give you a decent workout mid-week, and prep you for whatever the weekend will bring. Something that has you just on the limits of your abilities, until you fall back and drop back in behind the last person of the pace line and ahhhhh, just enough relief that you realize you can hold on for another turn.
The Adventures of Frank & Stein Part I
July 3, 2015 § Leave a comment
Every year is an anniversary of “The Adventures of Frank & Stein” played by myself as Stein, and a college friend and roommate Frank Falcione. The name really has to be credited to Thomas Dudek, another college friend. Tom was a somewhat streetwise Philadelphia fanatic that played a great game of pool, and lived in the same student housing slum as both Frank and I. We were in the same small Engineering Science department at Penn State, and we spent a lot of time together in class, at the Rathskeller shooting pool, at The Hub shooting pool, and drinking lots of beer. Somewhere along the line in this friendship Tom gave me the nickname Stein. Pretty soon that was how my circle of friends knew me. Very much the same way that I am known today amongst my cycling contingent as Bird (yes, it is short for Big Bird). I don’t really recall how Tom came up with stein. It was not like we were all looking for nicknames. We weren’t sitting around drinking and smoking dope thinking out loud “We should all have some nicknames….Eric you be stein”. Suddenly it was there, and that was who I was. So the following (and subsequent posts) is a recollection of an adventure that was hatched by me, and drew in Frank so that by the time we left for this adventure it was already being called “Frank & Stein’s Big Adventure” or something like that. “What route are you taking?” “It’ll be the Frank & Stein route.” “What the hell is the Frank & Stein Route?” “It will be the route that we travel, where ever that takes us.” Mostly it should end up being a tale of friendship, and the people we meet along the way. What are stories, but the recollection of past events shared with friends? So here is the recollection of one of my major past events.
Big Bird's Adventures 