A Little Bit about Ed

The Crazy Bike Guy believes in extremes - about two years ago, he decided to really be a bike guy. Sure, he has a day job, but that should never keep anyone from doing things they love.


It all got serious when he and our daughter decided to ride a 50-mile race on a tandem in the Fireweed Bike Race in Alaska. Now, Ed had done the Fireweed a few times before - first a 50, then 100 miles, then he did 200 miles alone. That last one nearly did me in - he underestimated his nutrition and electrolytes by about 50% and wound up finishing but nearly passing out at the finish line in Valdez.

Let me just say it's very hard to keep yourself together when the man you love arrives at the end of a long day looking jaundiced. You never want them to see the panic-stricken facial expressions, but it's important to get them Gatorade and bananas ASAP.

So I shuffled him back to the hotel, drew him a hot bath, gave him two foot-long subs and made him go to sleep. The next day, his color returned and he insisted on driving us back to Anchorage.

The following year, he did the full 400 miler with our friend, Glenn Cravez. Glenn is the manager of our synagogue's softball team, the 10 Plagues. The team members took on one of each of the plagues. Ed chose Darkness and Glenn chose Blood so their team name for this race was - you guessed it - Blood and Darkness. I drove the support car with another guy from Ed's office, Steven.

Now, Steven was a really nice guy and interesting conversationalist, but he kept sneaking into the Blood and Darkness food stash. I could only see the yellow-pallored Ed the year before whenever Steven would pull out the pack of Fig Newtons or the Fluffer Nutter meant for Ed or Glenn. I was not interested in picking up two jaundiced guys after 400 miles, so I may have come off a little terse.

However, I think he got the message the second time I flung the food back to the stash area in the hatch and reminded Steven that he had his own peanut butter crackers and bottled water to rely on.

The following year, it was time for our daughter to ride. Ed borrowed a tandem bike and bought our kid a hot pick riding kit. Since she was too short to reach the pedals, he got plastic electrical cases from Home Depot and attached them with hot pink duct tape.

They finished the race and her comments made it into the post-race video. Lucky for me, she doesn't want to ride from Alaska to Denver with him. Date of departure is about September 13-ish.
And yes, he's decided to go all the way to Denver. Next blog will be about his nutrition plan that lost him about 40 lbs and got him leaner and meaner for those tough climbs. Plus, we'll talk gear - yay!