Hi,
From when I first learned how to ride a bike at around age 5, I have always been an enthusiastic cyclist. I always enjoyed riding around the neighborhood or riding to town when I was in elementary school. My first big bike adventure was the summer after 5th grade. Times were obviously a lot different than now and my parents (primarily my Mom) let me ride with a friend to the Fish Hatchery which was about 10 miles away from our house. We were on standard, single-speed, coaster brake bikes and it was an all-day adventure.
From there, my passion for motorsports combined with cycling. There was no way that I could afford a go kart, but I was able to save up enough newspaper route money to buy a 10-speed with Campagnolo Valentino derailleurs. Forget about the fact that these were terrible derailleurs, I had done enough reading to already revere the name Campagnolo. I saw the Team Pursuit competition on television from the 1972 Olympics at Munich and the next thing I knew, I'd organized 7 other friends into 2 team pursuit squads in a large parking lot at our local park. Now I was racing around an oval and drafting just like my NASCAR heroes at Daytona. I was able to keep enough friends interested in having parking lot races on and off for a couple of years.
An elderly Italian-American gentleman, Tony Simonetti (who had been racing bicycles since the 1920s), saw us racing around the parking lot and took us under his wing. At the same time the local paper did a write-up on "The Racing Barber," Vito Perucci, who ran a local club and organized bike races. My best friend and I started racing at the Tuesday night races when were 15 and the next year we took out our first Amateur Bicycle League of America (now USA Cycling) licenses and the rest is history.
I never imagined as a Junior racer that I'd end up as a 55+ racer. Back then the Veterans (40+) seemed ancient!
Now I am combining my passion for cycling and racing into volunteer work for bicycle advocacy. I really believe that the butterfly effect of cycling on society can really help our country and the world move to a sustainable path of growth and reasonable prosperity for all.