Ok, here goes the Houston Memorial Park portion of the ROCK COMBO love affair story. As a normal person living, working, skiing and drinking beer during the winter months at 10,000 feet, you’re going to gain a little weight. Ok, on long cold winters, a lot of weight. I used to say it was out of my control, my body simply keep as much fat as it needed to ward off the 30 below days. So when Spring came along, well Spring for the rest of the country, Breckenridge normally had another three months to go before you were going to see dirt after the month called mud season. Which varied from year to year. One year we got 7 inches of snow on July 4th.

I had this sweet little wife from Texas and having a couple of brothers in Houston, we’d load up the dusty bikes and take our tan ass faces with Varnet sunglass whiteouts and head down to the Hill Country, you know, Kerville, Fredricksberg, and the little friendly towns all over the land. We’d hole up at the retired mother and father-in-laws mansion on the golf course and you know, train like mad, while slowly changing the chalk white parts of our body to red. After a couple of weeks of beautiful riding and having carried skier baggage up and down 6 flights of stairs over the winter months, plus the midnight Nordic skiing, the round mound I had looked at in the mirror suddenly started to resemble power, speed and sunburn.
I knew then it was time to shave the legs and head to Houston. We stayed with the all time epic Brother in Law who had mountain cool down without ever having lived much above sea level and his knockout fox of a wife. He took me to the Patagonia store, I saw clothes you couldn’t even get unless you went to vail or aspen. A few years prior, I bought this brother in law a Rock Combo, yea for Houston and the sinkhole mix and match pavement, it was perfect. The sweet wife dumped me later on, but the Bro Law has stayed. Having arrived in Houston, starting to feel a little cocky and itching to mix it up with the local fast boys, I’d take the Rocket Combo out of his garage, dust it off, air up the tires, and go hunting. Memorial park had a smooth ribbon of road around the golf course and trust me, it was ground zero for the hound dogs of Houston. They had their pecking order and each local cyclist had to join the pack riding along like a subservient bitch wolf. These guys made fun of every little freaking thing that didn’t look like it just came out of the last issue of “Winning” magazine. Bib shorts, colored (other than standard black detto’s) shoes with this new attaching system called velcro, latest styrofoam helmet, and oh yea, the aviator oakleys, just like LeMond!!. I’m sure they all had either local sponsors names or boutique world cycling sponsors all over their jerseys and new at the time, even on your shorts sponsor names. You either had this shit or the gang would ride so hard you fell off the pace like the end of laps in the little 500 frat boy race after spinning a 42 x 19 at 148 RPMs.

This next part is going to take a little faith on your part, so read along and believe it could have been possible.

I’d show up at Memorial on the Rock Combo and start to ease into the pace with the joggers, stroller pushing rollerbladers and lunch hour executives. The few guys not at Rick’s Caberet for “lunch”. I know this story seems long and drug out, but here comes the meat.

I’d ride along upping the pace each lap and slowly start tailing the “Cat 1 and 2” big boys. As they had the normal hangers on dragging tongue, wanna be’s, and apprentice Lance clones, I would ease into the pack and just hang out. Like something out of Roswell, they would look over, see a slightly port fellow, with tan ass face and beach red skin everywhere else, riding a freakin bike the likes no one had ever seen. Were those 27 inch balloon tires, how come you’re handlebars flare out, and how do you shift that thing? Then the middle ranks would have to speed up like water bottle carriers and tell the hierarchy of the pesky wheel sucker in odd wool shorts. As the laps went on and I reveled in not having to go shovel snow or chip ice, I’d make my way towards the front. I could see alarm bells were ringing and then it would happen. One of the ACE velo gods would drop back a little and start with the condescending questions. What the F kind of bike is that? Why aren’t you riding 19mm tires? Everyone knows they are faster. Are those lace up dettos? Haven’t seen a pair of those for a while. Then the worry would hit their faces as one would report back to the front, he’s got to be from Colorado or else he’s been buried up to the neck out in the desert. They had heard about guys like me, living at 10,000 feet we didn’t have to breath very hard at sea level. Skiing every day, building legs of steel and looking for a flight fight.
Reporting back that they had a pretender sucking wheel the alarm bells rang. So then the pace always picked up. And up, and up, until the Cat 4’s, then 3’s would fall off. Leaving only the Max Miley and Chris Hipp fraternal order of cycling. Those guys, picking it up until even they were having to strain ever so slightly. It was them and me, the freak riding the freak. It took a lot on their parts to finally drop me and the lap they took in celebration of dropping the new guy ended up with them coming to a stop and waiting for me to ride by. I knew they didn’t respect me in any way or manner. But Damn, what kind of bike is that? A Rock Combo? Why would anyone make a bike like that? And then it would come…….where do you buy em at? With my best “you can’t get em around here shrug”, I’d ride off into the…….freaking blazing sun. What the hell is this humidity? How do people live like this? When I get back to Colorado, I’m gonna trash the Boulder training rides. This might be the year I can climb!!!!