Chapter 18

Sunday morning dawned overcast and gray. The clouds loomed ominously full of rain and the wind had picked up a bit. In other words, today’s criterium looked to be epic. The guys all stumbled out of their rooms, many of them still smiling, remembering the evening before. Meredith wandered out of Gilberto’s room a few minutes after him, wearing a very skimpy dressing gown, and nothing underneath. Frankie came down to breakfast whistling with a glowing ‘well fucked’ Anne on his arm, and after a few minutes Chu Chu came out of his room with a very happy looking Lizzie. I think perhaps that teams for the future should include women who know what they want and, more importantly, know how to get it on staff! I’m pretty sure a well fucked team is a happy team!

“So, boss, what’s the mission?” Frankie asked as he settled into a chair at the kitchen table, and Anne brought over a bowl of Muesli and a glass of juice. She settled in next to him and lovingly ran her fingers through his hair as he smiled up at her in thanks.

“Well, the weather looks to be pretty shitty today,” I said. “Looks like wind and rain are on the agenda, all on a very tight racecourse. Somebody is going to graze on pavement today, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me if I can help it!”

“Hey, you leave the fast stuff to me, okay? All you clowns have to do is keep them off my heels.” Gilberto said, as Meredith handed him another plate of pasta.

“Take it easy, ‘Spiderman’, we’ll take care of the riff-raff as long as you deliver!” said Frankie with a smile.

Gilberto, being young and Italian, had always been something of a clothes horse on the pro circuit. With his penchant for flashy finishes and even flashier team kits, Gilberto had made both the ‘Spiderman’ and the ‘human anatomy’ look very popular, and as a sprinter, he was pretty much untouchable. That that same team had been excluded from this year’s le Tour hadn’t sat very well, and he seemed a bit at odds over what to do since he wasn’t on a grand tour. That he was here for this sort of still blew me away, but he seemed to have gathered his dignity together and decided that a little Don Quixote was good for his soul. Anyway, I was damn glad to have him along for the ride. That he was rattling around San Francisco when he got the e-mail (forwarded from who knows where) and had called me to insist that I include him had blown me away too. Frankie and Chu Chu I had ridden with before, and both had only recently retired as well. I knew of Gilberto from riding for so many years, but I didn’t really know him until this last week.

Gilberto sniffed and then said, “Yes, well, as long as I am near the front of the field when we enter the last turn, I don’t think anyone I rode against yesterday is likely to give me much of a challenge.”

“Okay ‘Berto, amp it down a bit and let’s see if we can get this right. I don’t think it wise to count your earnings before you race, do you?” I said.

He nodded and said, “No, no, you’re right. Never win the sprint before you race. But if I am there at the end, I plan to win it and win it with style! No?”

“Speaking of style, can you now tell us what the big secret is for your kit today?” Frankie asked, and everyone at the table got quiet and turned toward Gilberto.

“Not a big secret, more a secret weapon. I will ride today in the rainbow, of course!” Gilberto said with a grin. “Should scare the, how you say, crap out of them, no?”

Meredith and the others looked a little confused, but Frankie, Chu Chu and I got it right out of the gate. “Ladies,” I said, “What Gilberto means is that as the current World Sprint Champion he is entitled to wear a rainbow stripe on the sleeves and torso of his jersey in a sprint race, which the criterium technically is.”

“So?” said Anne with a confused look on her face. “I’ve seen all sorts of jerseys on the Burke-Gilman trail with rainbows on them?”

Frankie reached up and gently caressed her face, then said to the other ladies as a group, “Well, sure any ‘poser’ can wear a jersey with a rainbow on it. You can get them at any bike shop in the country, just like all the guys wearing Nate and my old team kit, or the Maillot Jaune from the Tour for that matter. It shows fan loyalty, and it doesn’t hurt anything. However, a racer would never be caught dead wearing a jersey that he wasn’t entitled to wear. So, when Gilberto rolls up to the start line showing the colors, he is going to remove any lingering doubt about who he is and what he is. The cat will well and truly be out of the bag at that point. You can’t hide the identity of the current World Champion after that.”

“Anyway,” said Gilberto into the silence, “I had my guys whip up a little something just for today. Here, let me show you.” And he wandered back to his room. When he emerged, he had a pale red jersey over his arm. When he shook it out and held it up, everyone gasped. The jersey had the playing cards on the front just like the ones we had worn yesterday; however, there was a brilliant jewel tone rainbow ribbon below the cards, and the ruff on the King of Hearts looked like it was also made of rainbow fabric and the heart on the playing card was surrounded by a rainbow rosette so that it looked like a jeweled heart pin on a rainbow. It was stunning, and all three ladies got up and rushed over to give him great big sloppy kisses. Gilberto couldn’t decide if he was embarrassed or pleased.

The staging area at the criterium was pretty crowded. The location was different, as they needed a shorter, tighter course for this type of race. Also, it appeared that word had gotten out to the local cycling community, as there were cycling fans all over the place. Once again, the vans were set up to provide something of a buffer, and the ladies were all busy keeping ‘look-i-loos’ out of our area. The crowd around our staging area kept growing as the morning wore on, and the threat of rain didn’t seem to slow them down a bit. We were all on our rollers in the staging area, working out the kinks and warming up our legs. Race organizers had led a steady stream of sponsor bigwigs by to casually point out the caliber of racers they could draw. We didn’t mind, as we had sort of taken over part of their race for our own purposes. If the race organizers could squeeze a few more bucks out of a sponsor by giving us the caged animal treatment, it was okay by me!