He's back...

He's back everyone. Of course I'm talking about Slave Ekimov of course. This man, Russian hard man from the cold war era, fell off his bike during a training ride earlier this year, and broke his back, literally. Broke and or compressed some vertebrae in his freakin' back, and now, only a few months later, he's riding in the World Championships this year. Sure, he didn't win (he finished 26th I think) but damn, that's a comeback. He's already retired once in the recent past, only to come back, and be a key player in the Tour for Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service squad that year, and now, now he comes back from breaking his back, and he's riding at what is a high level once again. And of course this is after not racing much this year at all, because of the injury. There were lots of people who claimed that he was done after this fall and subsequent injury, but he's back. He's awesome, and his is without a doubt my most favorite rider ever in the professional peloton these days, and even in days past, he's still great. Make no bones about it, I'd have to agree with Jason that Sean Kelly is probably the coolest badass ever to ride a bike, but Ekimov, comes a pretty damn close second place in the badass category. If anyone says different, you've been smoking the rock my friend, the rock. Lay down the pipe and pay attention to what has been going on in the world of professional cycling. I hope that this guy keeps riding for years on end here. YEARS!!

He's been around riding, and being a hard man for years now. He can't stop himself. Ekimov is a cold war veteran. What can I say? I dig his style. Maybe it's his Russian sensibility and that I once rode a race with him in 2001 when he was hungover and had spent the night at a local Greenville, SC strip club with George "I need a sandwich" Hincapie. I saw him chase down a break by himself that had a 10 minute gap on the rest of the field. The rest of us just hung back, and went along for the ride on this one. We didn't have a choice really, nobody could pull through, we just had to hold on, and the group kept shredding as he kept the power down. Of course, as it came near the end of the race, he set his own little ambitions aside, and lead out the final sprint for the remaining 10 or so guys in the race to push for the line. I think that was really classy actually. He didn't contest for the win, not that he needed to (seeing as how at the time of this race he was the reigning Olympic time trial champion), but he could have won easily, but instead, shut the engines down, and rolled across the line last out of the final front group selection. I think that was seriously classy without a doubt. Hincapie was in the race as well, but I don't think he was used to riding/racing with a large hangover, so he pulled out of the race early, and rode around the course backwards for training. Of course, the 2 of them were stuck in Greenville that weekend because of the events that transpired on September 11th of 2001. They were supposed to be racing a big ass criterium in Dallas that weekend ($100k race in fact), but all air travel was shut down because of the terrorist attacks. It was the following weekend that Hincapie took the win at the first San Francisco Grand Prix, helped out, of course, by Ekimov. So I can say that I beat an Olympic gold medalist once, of course, he wasn't trying very hard, but hey, still beat him didn't I? Indeed. Just one of my many claims to fame. Another one is that one time, I spotted Stephen King when he was bench pressing at the Y in Bangor Maine. Yep, true story. I asked him if he thought that if I had dropped the bar on his forehead, would that make it into one of his books someday? He kind of nervously laughed, and told me that he had never thought of death by weight lifting equipment before. So bear in mind, if you're reading a King novel, and someone dies a horrible death by a barbell loaded with 225 pounds crushes someones head, that was my idea. If you see it, let me know so I can get some royalties for that one. I also met Cousin Balky (Bronson Pinchot) once from Perfect Strangers. Which was actually tied into Stephen King sort of. There was this woman named Amy Farris that lived across the hall from me in college, and she was interning at a local NBC affiliate in Bangor, and she got tickets to attend the world premiere of the Langoliers, and since she didn't have anyone to go with, she asked me. So I went. Cousin Balky was in the movie, and he was there, along with Stephen King again. Then again, actually seeing Stephen King in Bangor was in and of itself, not a big deal. We saw him all over the place in that town. At the grocery store, at the movies, at baseball games, at hockey games, at the symphony, and so on and so forth. That smelly pitted guy was all over the place. He definitely had his own stink, I don't think he believed in deordorant so much, but then again, he's rich, so he could pretty much do what he wanted to, and then again, in Bangor, nobody really cared much for the rich guys, we just let him do whatever it was he wanted to do. Nobody took really much notice of the man himself, which is something I think he enjoys.

Brushes with fame. Don't we all have them? Somewhere around the way, you always brush up against fame. I think that it's what you do with it when it does happen to you that defines you. And hopefully the regular obsession most people in the country have with the rich and famous doesn't infect you, and cause you to go momentarily crazy.