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CH 22: A Tale of Two Generations, Part III (The Tour de State)
 By Jim Caple |
Previously at 24 College Avenue: A riot sparked by a controversial referee call in a State College football loss to the San Marco Brawlin’ Italians led to a fire in Josh Williams’ bedroom. . . . Former housemate Katie Maynard was seriously wounded during an insurgent attack in the war. . . .
Performance enhancers have been part of cycling almost from the sport’s first race, with early Tour de France riders rubbing cocaine on their eyelids. In the years since, they’ve experimented with everything from strychnine (yes, strychnine) to amphetamines to steroids to blood-doping to human growth hormone and that most controversial tactic for improving times – embarrassingly tight biker shorts.
With 28 agonizing miles left to the Tour de State. Josh would happily have taken them all. But what he really craved was a Twinkie.
Intramural athletics are huge at State College, with one-third of the student body participating in sports ranging from softball and soccer to hockey and crew. Participation and competition are appealing enough but what really draws the students to the program is the desire to win an intramural champion t-shirt. Despite their hideous amber color that reminded most of a urine specimen -- the intramural director got a good deal on several thousand shirts five years earlier and still had another couple years before extinguishing his supply – these t-shirts were absolutely coveted. Students not only fought their entire careers to win a t-shirt, many forged State College IDs or signed on for post-graduate studies to keep their dream alive. There is an entire softball team of professors – those without tenure sit on the bench -- who have been trying to win t-shirts since they were freshmen.
All championship t-shirts are respected regardless of sport (well, not sp much the one for ultimate Frisbee) but the t-shirt that is most desired, the one that stands head and shoulder above the rest (sometimes literally so after going enough years of sweat and soiling), is the shirt given to the winning team of the annual bike race, the Tour de State.
The Tour de State is a 100-mile race through, around and along the surrounding roads of State College. French exchange students began the race in 1915 when the real Tour de France was cancelled due to World War I, doing so as a show of solidarity for their brethren dying in the trenches and for a good excuse to hold one hell of a party. The race grew steadily over the years until it inspired an Academy Award-winning movie and Tour Weekend became THE biggest party event of the school year, State College’s own Mardi Gras.
All State College students and staff are eligible to ride in the Tour, though only a dozen or so elite teams have a chance at winning. These teams train year-round, riding up to 10,000 miles a year and enjoying corporate sponsorships worth up to $100,000. Some fraternities even offer full-ride scholarships to promising riders.
Josh did not ride for one these elite teams. He did, however, ride his bike a lot and thought it would be fun to compete in the State College tradition. With so little training and no team to ride in support, he held out no false hope he could come anywhere close to winning but he thought he was good enough to finish with a decent time. Indeed, for the first 60 miles he was in good shape, riding among the top half of the competitors and feeling very good about taking part in a State College tradition.
And then he bonked at mile 72.
Josh regretted passing up the bagels and power bars at the Mile 68 aid station. He was so weakened from carb depletion that he could barely force himself up Cardiopulmonary Peak, a gain of 750 feet in in less than a mile.
He also was out of water.
And the wind was now blowing in his face at a steady 15 miles.
And he had just pedaled into a swarm of gnats, swallowing and inhaling several dozen of the insects with every desperate breath he took.
And he was being passed by so many riders that even the ones wearing costumes were leaving him far behind –Winnie the Pooh was disappearing into the distance.
Josh knew an enormous party waited back at the house after the race. He had hooked up again with that girl he had taken up to his room way back at the start of the school year, the one who was about to provide him with a great deal of pleasure when the tear gas canister from the riot police broke through his window. They had lunch earlier in the week and she promised she would come to the party, making it very clear they could catch up where they had left off.
Unfortunately, Josh now seriously doubted he would be able to reach the finish line. He also was in absolute agony he wondered whether he could even climb the stairs to his room. He was pedaling so slow he could barely keep the bike upright. He could not imagine any worse pain.
And then the guy in the SUV tossed a strawberry milkshake at him. As the cup smacked Josh with a direct hit in the face and covered him with the milkshake, the SUV’s driver honked his horn angrily, stuck his hand out the window and gave him the finger.
“Get the #&$@ off the road, Lance!!!’’ he yelled as Josh careened onto the shoulder.
Josh’s body skidded across the asphalt, scraping flesh from his thigh to his shoulder. He heard something pop in his elbow and howled in agony. He threw his helmet in disgust and looked back his bike. The rear derailleur had snapped off.
“Why me?’’ he asked. “Why me?’’
He still was repeating the question when Eeyore and Spiderman rode up and offered him a hand.
# # #
Doctors repeatedly told Katie it was a miracle she was alive but she didn’t feel that way. Much of the time, in fact, she wished she was dead.
She tried not to go there, though. The therapists reminded Katie that her best hope for recovery depended on a positive attitude and a fighting spirit. She also recalled her mother’s frequent comment that God does not give us more than we can bear. Praying helped pass the time and ease her pain but she also occasionally wondered that if God truly did not give us more than we could handle, then how to explain the deaths of Sergeant Kent Woodway, Specialist Elliott Bay, Corporal Madison Hill and Private Jackson Park, her fellow soldiers who had been killed in the attack? Didn’t God give them far more than they could bear? Or was Bay somehow supposed to be able to bear having his head literally chopped off when the insurgents’ bullets ripped into his neck?
Such thoughts were sacrilegious, Katie knew, but try as she might, she could not keep them from creeping into her mind. Why had her friends been killed – half her company softball team wiped out in less than five minutes? Why was she still alive? Why was she even over here? Why were any of them?
Katie couldn’t make sense of it. Hell, she could barely keep a thought straight in her head through the fog of the painkillers they pumped into her body (and they still weren’t nearly enough to kill the pain).
She didn’t even remember the insurgents’ attack. Not really. She vaguely recalled the bridge blowing up in front of her and then Bay getting hit. But she had no memory of the grenade exploding next to her in the alleyway. One minute she was kneeling over Woodway and desperately trying to stop his bleeding. And the next she was here in a hospital bed.
Truth be told, Katie wasn’t sure where “here’’ was exactly. According to the doctors, she had been in a coma when the Army evacuated her to its intensive care hospital in Germany. She remained in the coma two weeks before awakening.
That was five days ago. Or was it three? It was so difficult to keep track of anything with the pain and the drugs and the doctors constantly sticking her with another needle. Not that she wanted to. Katie didn’t want to think about the passing days or the doctors or anything. All she wanted to do was sleep. Because if she slept, she might be able to return to that one dream she had, the one where she was playing softball back for the ROTC intramural team at State College. The one where she hit a towering fly ball over the left fielder and raced around the bases for a home run. They one where they won the championship and she pulled that wonderful t-shirt over her head and everything was so vivid she could even smell the grass of the field.
The one where she still had both her arms and legs.
Next: Security Level Red
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