Chapter 24: Educating John

John

It was the last Thursday in March, which meant it was time for our monthly meeting concerning the dastardly duo – Lydia and Meri. For most other clients we did that quarterly, but those two delivered enough news to require a monthly meeting, or even emergency meetings in between.

At the time of our last meeting we had to deal with the aftereffects of Lydia’s story in the yellow press and they hosted a friend they had met in the aftermath of the ferry sinking.

“Good morning, everybody,” I opened. “Since we have three attendees who are not permanent or first-time members of this panel, I’ll make a quick introduction.

Some of you will know James McIntyre from Pasadena, originally from Scotland. He was a member of the allied mission in West-Berlin and used to be part of the allied military liaison mission, which means he used to go snooping around East Germany. He’s our resident expert on East Germany and usually only attends when Lydia’s unique background comes in.”

Everybody greeted him and waited for me to continue.

“To my right is our newest employee Byron Haynes, an expert in cycling. He’ll help us make sense of that gibberish we’ve been sent about Lydia and Meri’s first race in Belgium.”

Quite a few of us were snickering. All this talk about pavé, pelotons, a Muur and baroudeurs had sounded rather French to us, but for most it could just as well be Greek.

“And joining us via video link is Horst, our man in Berlin.”

Horst gave a short greeting and the meeting could start.

“As you all know, our two most prolific clients have taken up cycling, which is why we’ll now have a cycling expert on the panel, but – for now unofficially – we’re talking about three people. Before someone gets too excited, no neither Lydia nor Meri is pregnant.”

That lead to more giggles around the table. Except for Horst – Germans don’t giggle.

“At the time of the last meeting, Lydia had a friend and her daughter over who are both survivors of the ferry sinking that nearly killed her sister. That daughter is six and a complete auto racing fanatic, so our dastardly duo came up with the idea of taking the little one to a karting track for her birthday.”

Of course I had to take a bit of poetic license here and leave Mark out of it. Nobody but Rhonda and I was aware of his identity and I intended to keep it that way.

“As it were, the little one made quite a splash, setting record times and more or less drove as if she has never done anything else. And now the expectation is that potential sponsors will soon be all over her. That’s why I have asked Horst to keep a watchful eye on it. So, Horst, what’s the latest on that front.”

“I have called the owner of the karting center and as I expected, he had probably hoped to get a managerial role himself. But I pulled that tooth out of him immediately.”

There were a few grins around the table. Like Lydia, Horst had a propensity for translating German phrases directly, which is why most of us knew that pulling a tooth out referred to divesting someone of a false hope or idea.

“Signing up a child is illegal in Germany anyways,” Horst continued. “Any contract would have to be signed by her mother. I’ve met her, and she seemed very concerned about the cost. I’m fairly sure she is not well off, financially.”

“Finances won’t be a problem,” I told him. “She’ll be on Lydia’s contract for the time being. It’s not like we’ll do any promo work for a six year old.”

“She speaks excellent English,” Horst reported. “The mother, I mean.”

“Okay, thanks Horst. Are there any news about this whole yellow press story?”

“None. We’ve worked with the lawyers that sued the people who sold the story. The court came down on them very hard. Damage payments in the hundreds of thousands, like they were sentenced to, are rare in Germany. They will never be able to pay that much, so they will literally live in poverty for the rest of their lives, any single Deutschmark over the existential minimum will be immediately confiscated.”

“Bet it doesn’t look like such a great idea now,” I said. “How did the public react?”

“The story didn’t work with the audience at all, but I think James will be better at explaining it. I’m from West Germany, so I don’t really know why it did not work with the East Germans.”

“Very simple,” James chipped in. “The rag that published this pish is made for an East German audience, but the people who produce it are West Germans. In West Germany, a young lassie getting knocked up in a nudist resort is a bonnie ol’ scandal. The East Germans just shrugged and wondered what the point of it is. Nudist resorts were state sanctioned in the East, and teenage pregnancies where not that rare. Okay, fourteen is wee too young, but a pregnant sixteen or seventeen year old lass was nothing unusual.”

“You make it sound as if East Germany was quite liberal. Somehow that doesn’t quite square up with my idea of a communist dictatorship,” Byron, our new cycling expert chipped in.

“The G.D.R. - that was the official name of former East Germany – was a country of extremes. On one side they held their entire population hostage and came down on dissidents like a pack o’ dogs on a three-legged cat, but at the same time they were remarkably progressive.

At the time when the English prosecuted Alan Turing in 1952, for being homosexual, the G.D.R. had already decriminalized homosexuality. As I said, nudism was actually supported by the state. Kids were fully sex educated by age 12. And they started young, the state knew this. If you tell all fourteen year olds that they are now ‘grown-up socialist personalities’ and expect them to behave like grown-ups, guess what, they do. And grown-ups do the odd bit of shagging, ken? People sort of knew this would happen if you put a teenager in a nudist resort full of other naked teenagers.”

“In essence the whole story went completely over the heads of the audience, because it simply described what people knew as reality,” I summarized.

“Aye.”

“Thanks James, fantastic insight. Now we come to the French lesson. Byron, can you make sense of it for us. Most of us know what a bicycle is, but that’s where at least my knowledge ends.”

“Let’s start with the basics,” he started. “Both of them have joined a second-tier cycling team in Groningen, Netherlands.”

“Can you give us an idea about first-tier and second-tier?” I asked.

“First tier are the big teams – Lampre, ONCE, Telekom, Polti and the likes. They have around 30 riders each and race the big tours and Classics around the world. Second tier teams are smaller and race more regionally, so a second tier Dutch team will race in the Benelux, Germany and France mainly, but occasionally in other parts of Europe. Those teams can ask for an invitation to first tier races however. So it is not unusual to see two or three second-tier teams in the Tour de France, especially if they have a big name in it.”

“I wonder if two Olympic gold medalists count?” I said.

“It will open some doors, if they can back it up with results in the second tier races.”

“Well, it looks rather promising,” I noted. “What I could make out among all this gibberish is that Lydia finished second in a three-stage race behind a team mate, but that doesn’t tell me how that came about, what it means and why she looked in the winners photo as if she hadn’t run a race, but been dragged along behind the team car instead.”

“Three stage race means they run 3 stages in 3 days. Basically 3 races, each timed, and the rider with the overall best combined times wins.”

“I take it these races are rather short?” I asked.

“Not really. A typical stage is between eighty and a hundred miles. Men’s stages can go up to 150 miles.”

“Three of those in a row?” I asked back. “I mean Lydia is used to marathons, but she doesn’t usually run three of them in as many days.”

“The big races have up to twenty-one stages for the men and twelve stages for the women, so yes, this is a challenge, even for a marathon runner. Unlike in the marathon though, you do have ways to recuperate during races. You don’t go flat-out for the entire distance.”

“Okay, let’s go through the stages,” I said.

“Stage one was a 30 mile time trial. Quite long for a women’s event. Unlike in a normal stage you do go flat out all the time. Riders are on their own. They start one by one separated by thirty seconds. The one with the best time wins. In this case, a girl called Femke ten Haage of Lydia’s team won by fifty seconds over Lydia, putting them one and two in the overall classification.”

“Anything we can learn from that?” I asked.

“Only that Lydia must have quite a good natural coordination. Time trial bikes are difficult to handle, so it comes as a surprise to see her so far up after only training for a few weeks.”

“Okay, second stage?”

“The second stage was a long-ish flat stage that ended in a mass sprint. On such stages usually the whole pack, or peloton as it is called, arrives together and gets the same time, so such sprint stages rarely change much in the overall classification.

Now the bit that probably confused you was the bit about barroudeurs. A barroudeur is a rider who specializes in escaping from the peloton, hoping to create a big enough gap to win in the end. In this stage a group of five, including Meredith tried it, but with the other teams wanting a sprint finish they were reeled in at the end, just a few miles from the finish.”

“The third must be interesting,” I said. “So far I’ve not heard anything that explains why Lydia looked like she’s been in the trenches.”

“The answer is: pavé. These roads, mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and France are made of rough cobblestone, and many are preserved specifically for bicycle races. I’ve brought a short video of a pavé section.”

Byron put the tape in the VCR and we all watched the scenes wide-eyed. A bunch of filthy looking riders jumped and weaved over a rough road that I wouldn’t dare tackle in a truck. Behind them was a huge cloud of dust. Well, that explained while they were all looking like mud wrestlers.

“These pavé sections are scattered along the route and their purpose is to blow apart the peloton, splitting it into many groups. In the end a group of sixteen came to the finish section first with both leaders in the overall classification in it.

The finish was a so-called Muur. That’s dutch and translates to ‘wall’. It’s a short but usually very steep piece of road. Being perfectly suited to climbing Lydia managed to get a small gap on the other fifteen riders to win the stage. However, since that gap was only twenty-four seconds, she remained second in the overall as she had lost fifty seconds in the first stage.”

“Thank you Byron. Now this all starts to make sense. I’ll leave it to you to make a story out of it that’s comprehensible to the layman. Have it sent to our PR people so they can promote the hell out of this.”