Chapter 1

After a quick shower at the club, I climbed into my jeep and headed up to Marymoor Park in Redmond to meet the UW Ladies team for a training ride. Unlike the Starbucks team where I had at least a couple of months of work invested, and a strong coach and athlete relationship built up over the past several months of gym time, meetings, and miles on the road, the UW team had only just started their training plan following winter break. I was still learning personalities to go with the names I still had to search to remember. With the exception of Melody, I had only recently met the rest of the team.

The UW team was divided into two squads: “A” and “B”. The ‘A-Team’ was composed of Melody a senior who had just turned twenty-two, Megan who was a twenty-one-year-old junior, Jennifer a nineteen-year-old sophomore and Stephanie a twenty-year-old junior. The ‘Killer B’s’ consisted of Grace and Rachel, both eighteen-year-old freshmen, Sarah who was a nineteen-year-old sophomore, and the most truly amazing member of the B team: Monica. Though only seventeen, she was not only a college junior but also the only scholarship athlete on the squad. She was an advanced placement student, as well as having lettered in women’s volleyball at the UW.

Melody had integrated readily into the A-Team, and was an accepted member of the squad. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that she was a good sprinter and an unholy climber ... oh, and being the coach’s girlfriend didn’t seem to have hurt any either, though I had nothing to do with her being chosen to be a member of the A-Team. She earned that honor all on her own! And it was funny how she earned the spot, really...

The team had an early season training ride along the shores of Lake Washington, an area that Melody had trained on quite a bit with me and the other members of the ‘Road Queens’ over the summer months. There is not much in the way of technical riding required to circle the lake; it’s mostly a matter of endurance and perseverance. There is one section, just past the Leschi area heading north, that gives a brief look at what it must be like to climb in the Alps ... a short section of heaven on earth that is full of switchbacks and a nice even climb to paradise. It was here that Melody made her place on the A-Team a given.

On a gloriously crisp and clear fall day, the ladies of the UW cycling team had gone out for a ‘get to know you’ ride with all the new members. Melody was riding with some older girls, ahead of the younger riders, when they came to the switchback section, and what happened there is the stuff of legends. Without even a moment’s hesitation, let alone a conscious thought of showing off her climbing prowess, Melody stood and danced on the pedals to the top like she always did when she rode with me. She didn’t even notice the gasps and the looks of astonishment as she motored to the top without breaking stride or once shifting down. She just rode that section like she had ridden it all summer long: smooth as a French TGV on rails. To hear the other girls discuss it, you would think it was a near religious experience.

After everyone else puffed and gasped their way to the top, they looked at Melody in a wholly different way: She was now the mythical climber they had always needed to complete the team. Additionally, Melody was also a quiet and careful leader who knew what she wanted out of cycling, and out of life, and it simply showed in her actions. Only after the ‘get to know you’ ride did they discover that she was dating their new volunteer coach. That seemed to seal the deal for everyone. Somehow they had heard all about me, and someone had even researched me on the Internet, so the fact that she was my girlfriend seems to settle everything into focus for the team. Not only was she a member of the A-Team, she was now a team leader who had brought this wonderful coach (their words, not mine!) with her to bring them to the Promised Land. The ‘A’s’ were now talking Collegiate National Title!

So, there I was standing next to my jeep with eight bright and eager faces all waiting for pearls of cycling wisdom to fall from my mouth ... yeah right!

“Okay, ladies,” I said as they all gathered around my Jeep, “we are riding two missions today: On the way out we’ll work on our group riding skills, and practice a bit more on a rolling pace line. And on the way home, I have a little challenge for the two teams, but I’ll fill that in for you more when we get to the turn around point. Today’s ride should cover roughly fifty miles, so we’ll be turning around on the outskirts of Carnation near the dairy. Any questions?”

“Nate?” came a voice from my left. Turning, I saw it was Monica, with her hand dutifully in the air. “Melody told me about some of the challenge rides you had during the summer,” and her cheeks turned the brightest pink in embarrassment. “I was kind of wondering if there was a reward at the end of this challenge?”

I glanced quickly at Melody, but she was studiously avoiding looking at me, and therefore neatly removing herself as my only hope for an escape. “Well,” I said, and honest to God my mouth was suddenly very dry, making it hard to speak, “we’ll have to see now won’t we?” I tried to make it sound light and tensionless, but ... I’m not certain that Monica caught that part. Her eyes were pretty bright, and she seemed a bit more flushed than normal.

This was sort of unusual for Monica, who though only seventeen, or as I corrected myself, as of last week eighteen, she was a junior in college and normally sharp as a tack. At a little over five feet, eleven inches, she was also the tallest of the ladies on the team, and as a varsity volleyball player in incredible shape. Small pert breasts on a slender frame that flared ever so slightly at the hips. It wasn’t that she was boyish, oh no, far from it, she was simply incredibly slender. And up to this point totally off limits! I had been to a couple of volleyball games with Melody, what with the UW being the defending National Champions in women’s volleyball it was a pretty good show, and I had seen Monica in her volleyball uniform. If cycling kit left little to the imagination, then varsity volleyball uniforms left even less. So, if I was honest with myself, Monica was a beautiful young woman. But she was more than twelve years younger than me, for God’s sake! What the hell would she see in an old fart like me?

To be honest, I didn’t really think of any of the girls, outside of Melody that is, as potential partners. Hell, I had three girlfriends already, why get greedy, right? And although Monica acted far older than her chronological age, she was still, at least until last week anyway, under eighteen. I certainly wasn’t going to be involved with a minor, and most certainly was not going to screw up this gig by causing problems in the team with the perception of playing favorites. Melody was an exception, as I had been dating her before I joined the team as a coach, but I really wasn’t even considering anything with any of my other riders.

Anyway, it didn’t seem that any of the other team members caught the tension that I felt, and they all headed to their bikes to mount up. Monica kept glancing back at me, then she leaned over and whispered something to Melody, who listened carefully and then nodded with a saucy little smile in my direction. Now it was my turn to blush, even though I wasn’t at all sure why!

I was going to follow along in my Jeep and carry extra gear, water bottles and such. I also had planned on the ride back being very different from the ride out, and I needed the Jeep, and more importantly, the two-way radio I had added when I took on coaching the Starbucks ladies team. It was just like the ones that were used on the pro tour, as it had a total of four channels that I could use to talk to various parts of the team as required, plus one open push channel that would let me be, as Johan used to joke, ‘the voice of God... ‘ I was beginning to get a real appreciation for all that Johan had to juggle to be a Director Sportif, and I had already resolved to call him up and thank him. Anyway, my other team had one just like it in the team cars we used on race day, but for the UW team I would have to use my Jeep.