Bob Roll - Bobke II

Bobke II is a compilation of articles and journals published in VeloNews since 1996. Part I was previously published as Bobke (VeloPress, 1995).

Bobke II

Copyright 2003 Bob Roll

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America by VeloPress, a division of Competitor Group, Inc.

Distributed in the United States and Canada by Ingram Publisher Services.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Bobke II / by Bob Roll.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-931382-28-1

ISBN 978-1-937716-58-5 (eBook)

1. CyclistsUnited StatesBiography. 2. Bicycle racingHistory.

I. Title.

GV1051.R65 A3 2003

796.6/2/092 B 22 2003062139

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Cover: Front cover foreground photo by Malcolm Fearon/Bliss Images. Front cover background photo by Tom Moran/Singletrack Photography.

Cover design by Erin Johnson.

Version 3.1

Praise forBobke: A Ride on the Wild Side of Cycling

Bob has a fine eye for the absurd nature of racing a bicycle for a living.

Ned Overend, professional mountain bike racer

All things considered, Bob is a pretty damn good writer.

Daryl Price, professional mountain bike racer

Bob Roll is the consummate team player and one of the most gentlemanly riders that I know of in the peloton. He has suffered through countless races helping riders such as Andy Hampsten win the Giro with nary a whimper about how little exposure he gained for his toils. He followed the code of respect that the European profis demanded of their peers. Bob was always there when you needed him but never in the way! The consummate professional.

Alex Stieda, former 7-Eleven teammate of Bob Roll

Not a day passes in the life of Bob Roll without a little good time commotion.

Todd Balf, Outside magazine

OWN THE ROAD, DANNY BOY! OWN THE ROAD! This was the momentdriving my non-high performance Honda Civic wagon down Interstate 5, heading toward the annual bike industry trade show in Anaheim, Californiathat I knew the maniac screaming directions in my back seat was somebody I wanted to be friends with. Bob Roll had been staying with a mutual buddy, and hed hitched a ride with me; all I knew about him was that hed raced the Tour de France, then gone on to become a pro mountain biker. Id seen him the summer earlier at a World Cup race in Mammoth, California. He was contending for a top-10 placement, just a few hundred yards from the finish line, when he flatted. I watched him as he struggled to change his tire. There was a furious look on his facethat mask of pain, determination, and anger that all bike racers wear.

Get to know this guy? He scared the daylights out of me!

Ten years later, Im still happily afraid.

Bob scares me with his wit. Talk to Bob, and youll feel youve been given the key to a bank vault filled with a currency youve never heard ofbut which you know is priceless.

Take Bobs instant assessment of the difference between European and American pros, an impromptu five-liner as we ogled passers-by in a New York City coffee shop: In America, bike racing has the veneer of speed and elegance; mostly educated, bourgeois types are attracted to it. In Europe, cycling is grittier and more real. The preconception in the States is that the sport is very Continental, very romantic, but the fact is that the sports main nature is working class. The Tour de France, especially, exemplifies this. The public loves the event because they know what the riders are going through for them, and that the sporta concentrated version of the struggles they endure every dayadds value and hope to those struggles.

One of the greatestand most exclusive, until recentlyexperiences a bike fan could have was to watch the Tour de France with the sound turned down, as Bob offered his hilarious, insightful, substitute analysis (with his current gig at the Outdoor Life Network, now millions can share this sublime experience).

Bob scares me with his ability to be himself, which often means bucking authority, taking the harder path. He never won a stage in the Tour de France, never won a NORBA national mountain bike race, but he established one of the longest pro careers in the history of the sportbecause he didnt know when to quit, and didnt want to. (For the record, Bobs official stats are staggering, despite the lack of podium time: He began road racing in 1981 and went to Europe in 1985, competing for team 7-Eleven, Motorola, and Zin four Tours de France. He raced the Paris-Roubaix seven times, and a Graham Watson photograph of him, nearly skidding off the cobbles, is one of the most exciting cycling action shots Ive ever seen. Bob was the first American bike racer to compete in both the French classic and an off-road World Cup race. His only podium appearance? At the 1995 Spokane NORBA national as the fifth American.)

In other words, Bob is that archetypal cyclist/laborer he describes: somebody who workshardwith what hes been given and stays in the game longer than the elite, gifted naturals who seem to think their success is predestined.

Bob scares me with his talent. In 1997, I was hired to edit a new action sports magazine; the first thing I did was to ask Bob to write a few guest columns. One of the editorsa non-cyclistapproached me when Bob turned in his copy; it was fragmented, scrawled on napkins and scraps of paper. This is unacceptable, he said, dumping the mess on my desk.

Mess? It was pure gold. Bob was exhorting all riders to find their inner... something. I didnt totally understand it, but it was brilliant:

You, too, can regain the floating equilibrium of your womb origins. Go out to the trails. Get down on your hands and knees and feel the soil, smell it, run your fingers and toes through it. Divine intervention will come and, like me, you will transcend the constraints modern living imposes on every post-aquatic human embryo. But let me admonish you also to give back what you take from nature, or we shall all perish in a car-mageddon fire, one thats already threatening us from every direction. From his footprint we know Hercules. But for the divine flyers we want and really need to become, the whole is revealed by each, separately and together.

Real writing is prose that reveals something about the person who created it, and that tells us something more about ourselves.

And cracks us the hell up.

Bob is the real deal. I consider myself lucky to know Bob Roll, and I remain an awestruck fan. And it has almost nothing to do with bikes. It has to do with the life hes led, in which bikes happen to be included: Hes been a loyal friend and an amazing teacher. Most of all, hes a reminderto all of usthat we should do what we love, and rigorously steer clear of drudgery, ennui, the grind; if were not lucky enough to die wealthy, we will at least die very, very happy.

Own the road? Impossible. I only lease it from Bobke. Keep reading, and youll get in on that rental, too.

Dan Koeppel

D riving north on I-5 in a hippie-mobile loaded to the gills with the bikes and bikers. Me, Phil Woo Woo Wosley, and Allez Mark Cahn are traveling north to the biker metropolis of Etna, California, to stay at Mike Neels house and prepare for the Coors Classic. In Yreka, we stopped at the Roach Diner for the greasiest gut-bomb burgers I ever ate. They make the swill I serve at Perkos Koffee Kup taste like filet mignon at the Cordon Blue. Got to Etna at 2 a.m. and remembered I forgot to get Mikes address. Sheeit. So I go to this bar and ask. Open the door and forty lumberjacks all stop what they are doing and look at me. I look back. I guess I look white trashy enough and dont get chainsawed in the Trinity Alps, shit. The bartender says Mike lives over there. Thanks, etc.... As I hit the hay, them hamburgers are doing triple-back sommies in my belly. Geez, I feel dizzy.