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.
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 