Thank You Junior Miller

Inspiration Comes From Strange Places

140 plus pounds ago

2 years and 140 pounds ago, before I started riding, I really knew very little about cycling other than once a year they have a big race called the Tour de France and guys rode ridiculous distances every day up and down huge mountains very fast. Lance Armstrong woke the sport up in America but as a guy incredibly out of shape, I kind of assumed that was something I wouldn't do. That being said, the marathon and the long rides always fascinated me, for a guy with an incredibly short attention span, the idea of a marathon intrigues me, I don't know why. It certainly isn't something that translates to TV very well, even though I ride a lot now, I don't follow the sport that closely, like a lot of riders do.

Tour de Pac 12 at Cal

I do know that not much was said about the sport other than some friends of mine who rode and a radio host in Dallas named Craig (Junior) Miller. He did more than talk about it, he lived it, he went to France and rode the course after it was done. He is an incredible story teller and he would spend several segments of his morning radio show talking about the ride and it got me interested. One of the things about Junior that struck me is there weren't stories of his athletic achievements when he was young, he tells a lot of stories about electronic football, collecting baseball cards, and things like that but I have never got the feeling that he was an all-state three sport athlete that things like this came naturally to but yet he could ride the toughest courses in the world and he did it at my age. He is now an incredible athlete, through hard work and determination, in fact, he just completed his first Iron Man a few weeks ago when I started this ride from Canada to Mexico aka the Tour de Pac 12.

17 Mile Drive in Carmel

So almost two years ago, when I started my cycling journey he gave me that bit of confidence that the fat kid, me, that didn't make the cut in the sports that he tried out for, could ride a bike. Probably not as well as he did, but at least I could try. I have always dreamed big so the fact that Junior rode the rides they ride in the Tour de France got me thinking along those lines. It gave me the perfect mental backdrop in 2012 when I saw a group of riders when I visited the Rose Bowl on our first trip to California and they just glided down from the mountain and majestically swept around that venue. I thought "I have to do that" (and I will on the UCLA leg of the Tour de Pac 12) in part because Junior Miller told those funny stories about lost bikes, big rides, and continuing on after his friend said he couldn't go on. Those kind of stories stuck with me and made me think those things a month before I dusted my bike off and took it to the shop. I have listened to that station since the first day it aired and been a fan of the morning team since they made the shift from afternoons so it has been something that just kept coming up every summer when the Tour de France came up. He got that ball rolling and for that I am very thankful. 

Tour de Pac 12 w
Oregon State Players

On Friday I head to Santa Monica Pier in LA from Santa Barbara and on that ride I will pedal through Oxnard California, where the Dallas Cowboys are holding training camp this year. I tried to ride from LA up to Santa Barbara last year when Linda and I came out to renew our vows on Venice Beach and I couldn't get it finished. I did make it through Oxnard and, candidly, the part of Oxnard you ride through on a bike is kind of a dump, I wondered why the Cowboys would ever leave Thousand Oaks for Oxnard so Friday I can see why and ride by where they are practicing. Additionally if I veer off the path there I will actually make my ride 100.2 miles, so I can vindicate myself for last year at the same time. 

Of course the Ticket will be there covering the event, so it's the perfect way to ride by and get a selfie with the Ticket setup in the background in what I am dubbing the Junior Miller leg of the Tour de Pac 12. It's hard to say thanks to someone like that who you really don't know so this is my way of doing it. It will be fun, I will be sure and post a picture or two on Instagram and Twitter so follow @fordbaker on either and maybe you can get a chuckle out of it. 

Tour de Pac 12 – University of Colorado – Folsom Field

Lessons learned and things I saw on first ride in Tour de Pac 12

What a beautiful place to start the ride and what a great reminder that the best laid plans often don’t pan out. I didn’t get an email that was supposed to update me of a new start

After ride at Folsom Field. #todayican

point and therefore the ride started much later than planned. I had to jump into my ride right in the middle of the route I laid out. I couldn’t tell if the Garmin was picking up the route in midstream or another route and it seemed to lead me all over the place, when I thought I should be turning right, it told me to turn left and it took forever to get rolling.

#todayican at Mile High Stadium en route to Boulder

It was a great reminder because while on the way to Mile High, where the Broncos play football on Sundays, the Garmin told me to turn left and I could clearly see the top deck of the stadium stands sticking out on the other side of a building in the opposite direction it told me to go, as I went up the street it told me to turn again and I was not heading to Mile High, of that I was positive. After all the stands were sticking out of the building behind me now so I turned around and headed back, got back on the trail by the river and headed to my destination while my Garmin screamed OFF COURSE! OFF COURSE! OFF COURSE! I was certain it was giving me the wrong route or trying to lead me away from the stadium instead of toward it, after all I had been in Denver all morning and that pretty much made me the expert on where the Broncos play football. Since I rode the trail by the river I really could not see much of the landscape up along the road so I worked my way back up right where I thought the stadium was and that is when I found out that thing sticking out was not part of the stadium  but actually was a unique

River trail by downtown Denver

piece of architecture protruding from a museum I later learned. It was not even close to the size of a football field and several miles in the opposite direction from Mile High Stadium. In fact, as the pictures from my ride show, there isn’t really a top deck of the stadium that sticks out. Not only did I not know where the stadium was, I did not even know what it looked like.

What it reminded me is how I so often live my life, I’m pretty sure I know where I am going and that the man upstairs does not really understand the best way to get there even though He has a view from above that actually knows what is behind the next corner where I think I want to go and when I get warnings that I am off

Haunted Colorado State Capitol in Denver

course, I plow ahead and ignore those messages. I got a lot of those messages from a couple of Doctors that told me to lose weight or suffer the consequences and when canes and sore backs and high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels showed up, I plowed ahead and just took more meds that put a different Band-Aid on my problem without ever stopping the bleeding. Thankfully in 2012 I listened and even though I did to that message I find it funny how frequently I still miss those messages.

Victor Davanzo with All My Sons Moving in Denver 

Colorado Rockies home field 

Enough of my deep thoughts though, how about some pictures from the ride, after all Colorado is a pretty state and a lot more interesting than my rambling. I got some good climbs in but I picked a route that would challenge me but not wear me out. I had a rough spot with the weather toward the end but I felt really good about getting up and down the hills and fighting through some wind. It’s on to Salt Lake where I am going to ride one of four state rivalry rides I am going to do, where I ride between two rival schools, this time it is riding from BYU to Utah. We are plowing through Wyoming now and cutting over to Utah and Linda is ready for me to shut up, hope you enjoyed my thoughts and the pics from the ride. 

Beautiful lakeside park outside downtown Denver

STATS FROM THE RIDE:

Ride #1

Saturday, June 21, 2014

41.7 Miles ... 2,489 feet of elevation 

Colorado Football

To Date

41.7 Miles ...2,489 feet of elevation 

Total rides 1

Pulling up to Folsom Field

doing the airplane thing on my bike

 

Folsom Field in the Summer