January 2002

Sponsor Camp.

Finally, the taboo of the Postal Sponsor camp is broken. This year the team, for its annual Sponsor camp, ventured to Scottsdale, Arizona. Last year we attended Tucson, Arizona for three days only to have it rain on the team twice and snow on the team once. Bad weather was known to follow this team's early season gatherings. This year there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the temperatures were slightly higher than normal. No one was complaining, as many of the riders were able to shed their leg warmers for the first time. It became obvious that some were not used to riding in such warm weather when Matt White practically took down three guys after getting his leg warmer caught in his front wheel. A lesson for the young: don't try and strip while riding your bike.

Some would argue that the Sponsor ride is the highlight of the event. This year that would be a hard case to argue because of the superb video that Dan Osipow and Tailwind Sports produced. It was a motivating capture of the classics and the Tour de France starring all the guys of the team. The annual Sponsor banquet was attended by, I'm guessing, four hundred people. A surprise in the audience was ex-Vice President Dan Quayle, who resides in Arizona. I'm not a very political person but I know my wife is so when I found out that Mr. Quayle was sitting a table away from me I had to give her a phone call. She immediately told me to go and have my picture taken with him but instead I opted for a greeting and a handshake. Because Mr. Quayle was at the dinner that meant some sort of secret service security must have been there. I spent half the night trying to figure out which wait person was Dan Quayle's security. Do they actually wait the tables at the same time?

As tradition has it each of the sponsors got to stand up and say a few words. Also, as tradition has it, everyone was waiting to hear from Lance talk about the upcoming year. This year I sensed something different from Lance's talk. Instead of reflecting on last year's Tour and predicting this year's Tour with motivational words Lance seemed nervous. Not nervous because he was speaking in front of a crowd, his words were nervous. Lance talked about the troubles we are in today and how cycling is very fan friendly. Maybe too fan friendly considering it only takes one lunatic to spoil everything. Lance is very, very aware of this, his safety is out there for anyone to take. What is usually a known factor, his fitness, seemed secondary as Lance spoke with tension in his voice about the unknown factor that is his security in Europe and in the races. Maybe I read more into it than someone else but I've known Lance a long time and that was not his normal start of the season talk.

The day after the banquet was the sponsor ride. On Saturday morning we must have had a group of eighty riders. It had to have been the biggest group ever for our sponsor ride. Even better than the big group was the fact that we had police escorting us the entire way. We had 100km of uninterrupted cycling through the city of Scottsdale. Imagine that! Whoever picked out this ride made a great ride for the team but not for the sponsors. The slight grade on the way out sapped everyone's legs and this was before we turned to go on the rolling hills towards the lake. Before we even made the turn towards the lake the only riders left were the team. After the turnaround we met up with most of the sponsors who waited at their water stop for the team to return. That was the best decision they could have made.

On the way home we averaged 50km/hr on the slight downhill and the cops had us flying through every light just like we were in a race. It was awesome. It was so awesome that the finish of the next day's training ride was just like a race. Everyone was so pumped from the day before that they had to get it out of their system and there was a full on field sprint coming back into town on Sunday. The bad part was that during the ride three or four people ended up crashing, there was just too much testosterone flowing. Lance even got caught up in the meleé. After braking to avoid the crashes in front of him, someone plowed into Lance from behind, bringing him to a stop. Lance's rear wheel got tangled with someone's handlebars.

A bonus of the weekend, that many riders got to enjoy, was checking out and driving a new 2002 BMW M3 with the shifting paddles on the steering wheel. The car belonged to a local guy who was also a fan and he was nice enough to let a few of us try out the shifting paddles. It was hard to get used to but nonetheless it was a blast to try. No, none of us got a ticket but that doesn't mean we didn't speed.

I'd have to say Scottsdale got thumbs up as one of the best sponsor camps to date. The Fairmont-Princess was a beautiful resort, I can vouch for the water slide, and the weather turned out perfect. It may have been a long way to travel, for only three days, for the Euro guys but they had plenty of time to sleep on the way home. The next stop for all the riders on Jan 22 is the training camp in Spain. The first race of the season, Qatar, was cancelled due to security reasons. Now the first race will be in Algarve, Portugal. At training camp the riders will get all their new race clothing, and the team pictures will be taken there. I'm sure everyone is itching to start racing but before they know it the spring classics will be arrive. This will be the first test of the new team and I guarantee no one will be on the start line with leg warmers on.