When I first joined Portland Velo, I’d see Bob at the start of rides, and at Longbottom’s after rides, and occasionally on what was a recovery ride for him. I figured I must be riding well to be able to keep up, or he must be riding really slow. I’ve heard tales of him taking other riders under his wing to school them on racing, not bonking, and how to safely ride in a paceline. I figured this guy must really know his stuff. If you read any of his posts on the forum, they are sensible, informative, and well written. While riding with Bob, you can count on some witty banter and smack talk. Once at Longbottom’s while I was considering whether to try racing cyclocross, he patiently listened as I debated and made excuses. Straight-faced, he looked at me and said “just shut up and race”. Such wisdom. I’ll never forget one cold, rainy day we rode through Verboort last fall – it was miserable. I bailed and got a ride back to Longbottom’s, but Bob toughed it out wearing only a wool jersey and vest. When he came back he didn’t stop shivering for over an hour.
I finally caught up with Bob and convinced him to do a member spotlight article, so we may all learn and benefit from both his wit and his cycling wisdom.
How long have you been riding?
I’ve been riding for as long as I can remember, and probably a little longer. The training wheels came off at age 4 and I was hooked. As a kid, my favorite thing to do was just to go out on my bike and ride, but cycling in the Detroit suburbs during the 70’s and 80’s wasn’t very popular, so it was always difficult to convince friends to go as hard and as long as I wanted to. I can really associate with the kid in “Breaking Away” for all of his lonely training and friends that tolerated but never really understood his odd obsession. In grad school I had a fairly consistent riding partner, but I didn’t really start group riding until I moved to Portland in 1998.
How did you find Portland Velo, and what has your experience been with the club the past few years?
When I moved out to Portland in Feb. of 1998, it took me a couple of months to find the Portland Wheelmen, and that is really what got things started for me. After living in a part of the country where cycling was unpopular it was just fantastic to be able to go out on any given Saturday to a ride where a hundred people showed up with similar interests. Out of those Wheelmen rides, I was lucky to be able to occasionally keep up with a group at the leading edge, including Calvin Mitts, Gary Meinhardt, Phil Gunderson, Dave Suryan, Geoff Talbot, and Andy Peak. These were the guys who really taught me how to ride in a group. When Portland Velo formed out of a core group of west-side Wheelmen, I came along “for the ride”.
In the early days of the club, I really enjoyed going out on the “hammer and nails” rides. It was always a challenge, and sometimes I would get dropped, but it was a HUGE learning experience in cycling tactics, how and when to leverage my strengths and also how to use the group for shelter to compensate for my weaknesses. After a couple of years of those rides, Ty had the idea that maybe we should put a team together and actually go race and beat up on other guys instead of just ourselves, and that was my introduction to racing. The success we had that year I think was largely due to the tactics learned in all of those hard group rides the years before.
Describe the perfect ride.
Any ride without a crash is a great ride. I’m not crazy about temperature extremes. I hate having cold feet and when it’s over 95 I dump sodium by the truckload, but even under those conditions, it always feels good when it’s over.
As for the perfect ride, the Zen part of me likes a sunny 75 degree late summer day on rolling terrain as part of a smoooooooth pace line cruising along at 25 MPH or so effortlessly. There is something truly magical that happens when you really get that right and it doesn’t happen often.
Of course, for every ying there is a yang, and the competitive *** (a term of “endearment” my wife uses…) part of me is usually dividing the last five miles of one of those rides into how many rotations are going to happen to set myself up for the sprint at the end. Just barely pipp’ing somebody at the sprint line is the Cherry on top of the perfect ride.
What is the ride you consider your biggest accomplishment?
That’s a hard one… I guess the biggest measurable accomplishment was winning last year’s 40+ kilo state championship at the track. That was a goal I set and trained hard for over a whole year. I’m proud of being able to wear that jersey, but I think a bigger and more fulfilling accomplishment is having reached a level in my cycling fitness and skill that I can go other places and jump in to new groups and be able to ride safely and competitively and maybe even come away with a couple of new friends. Last summer I rode with groups in Michigan and in my wife’s hometown in Sweden and had a blast with both groups.
How has cycling changed your life, or what is it about cycling that you love the most?
For me, cycling has provided all of the obvious benefits of a group of friends with similar interests, and improved health and fitness. In fact looking at the 
way the rest of my family struggles with their weight, and my poor but improving eating habits, I would most likely be 300+ lbs. and riding a lazy-boy if cycling weren’t such a big part of my life.
Beyond those tangible benefits though, for as long as I can remember, cycling has always given me a sense of freedom, and a source of escape from both the hectic day to day grind and from the stresses of major change. When my parents dropped me off at college, the first thing I did was put my bike together and go out for a 60 mile ride out on the country roads. What a magnificent feeling! Through grad school, there were the 6:30 am rides with my friend there, which though obscenely early for me, but the feeling of the cool morning air filling my lungs, the sensation of quietly rolling through the farmland with the fog lifting off the fields and that little burning sensation in my quads that I hoped was a little less than my buddy’s, never failed to settle me down and remove some of the worries from the day before and the days ahead.
Cycling also provides a never ending opportunity to learn and improve, whether it be technical learning about the latest equipment, tactical approaches to race situations (at least part of every ride is a race, right?), or physical conditioning. It doesn’t matter how smooth or fast we are, how many times we’ve overhauled hubs or adjusted derailleurs, or how many races we’ve won, there is always somebody faster, or somebody with magic fingers that can tweak the bike just that little bit better, or somebody who has seen that tactical situation unfold before and knows how to deal with it. Those are all opportunities to learn and get better at something I’m passionate about, and as more and more of those little pieces come together (and I get older), occasionally opportunities to share some of the things I’ve learned. Those are the things I love the most about cycling.