Midweek Modicum

It wasn't until well past dinner time when I finally sat down to find hotel rooms and a rental van for the Tulane cycling team's upcoming road trip to Baylor for the SCCCC conference road championship. It seems that my credit card has become an integral member of the team this year.  There has to be a better way!  I ended up reserving three rooms at a EconoLodge (aka Magnuson Hotel) that I think is near campus, and then also reserving a large minivan.  Between the 7-passenger minivan and the Tulane 7-passenger van we hope to get ten people and ten bikes to Waco, Texas some time Friday night.  I decided to tag along to help with driving and logistics, and I am hoping to get in a good 60 mile ride following the Saturday morning "A" race.

So this morning was another breezy and overcast one up on the levee.  The Wednesday morning levee ride has evolved into the week's most civilized group ride.  The unwritten rule for Wednesday is that the pace stays in the 20-23 mph range and everyone takes nice smooth pulls at the front.  It's a little faster than a recovery ride pace, but definitely easier than a hard training ride pace.  The fact that we have the Wednesday evening training races out on the lakefront makes it easy to chill out during this ride without stirring up feelings of training level paranoia.  It also tends to attract a few riders who we don't often see for the faster rides on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Bob Perrin joined us this morning.  Bob was already racing bikes when I started, and I remember standing there next to his typewriter during a club meeting where he filled in my very first racing license, signed it at the bottom, and handed it over to me.  Considering the current controversy about the UCI requiring the USAC to enforce the rule about UCI licensed riders riding in unsanctioned events, you can see on that old license that the ABL of A had a similar rule back in the 70s that was rarely enforced and eventually dropped.  Some things never change.

So now we have OBRA trying to go national by sanctioning races outside of Oregon.  Of course that means that if you want to race both OBRA and USAC races you'd need two licenses.  The expensive one would help support Local Associations, national teams, international rider development, national coaching and officiating programs, affiliations with UCI and the IOC for professional and Olympic racing, etc.  The cheaper one would support the promoters who don't really care about that stuff.  I'd like to see the USAC develop a grassroots program for promoters of smaller events so their event costs would be lower. I'd also like to see them offer a much lower racing license fee for Cat. 5 (and Cat. 4 women) licenses.  The $30 collegiate license has been very successful at bringing new riders into the sport and would make a good model.  The bottom line for the small promoters, clubs and weekend warriors is that we need a cheap way to hold reasonably organized, easy to deal with, and safe local events like weekday training races.  At any rate, the last thing I'd want would be to have the USAC flounder and have to deal with OBRA, which, should such a thing happen, would eventually end up either like the present-day USAC, or some sort of upgraded version of the old Amateur Bicycle League of America.  I almost fear for OBRA as much as USAC because they may be biting off more than they can chew.  Their rulebook still looks like it was written by a 7th grader, IMHO, not to say that the USAC rulebook is a work of fine literature by any means, but at least the grammar has improved over the years.