Yesterday, When I was Young....

Some old photos from "back in the day"- circa 1980
The criterium is in downtown Indianapolis- I'm sitting in, in the red helmet.
The velodrome is the Major Taylor Velodrome in Indianapolis- the first event staged there- The State Championship Track races- The lines hadn't even been painted on the track
I'm on my silver Schwinn Paramount- I had trashed the deep drop steel track bars a few years before on a steel fence upright up at Northbrook. Wish I had that one back!

Yesterday When I was Young- Roy Clark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY4LxORCeo

ah yes 1980-

I was 26 and three years out of college- bike racing was my life-
I trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in the winter of 1980. I was screaming down the mountains there on that track bike above I used for winter training spinning out like crazy. I had little chance of making thr team, but the U.S pulled out of the '80 Olympics in moscow because the Russians had gone into Afghanistan
I left there and went to Athens GA, for the pilot of the Breaking away short lived televsion series- see photos.
I raced against the likes of Greg Lemond and Eric Heiden that summer
and by that fall I was working at Island Cycles bike shop in Long Beach CA-
I was living in a small dive motel room right on the PCH in Sunset Beach and cars would stop at the light under my window all night long with their radios blasting, so I often went over and ilegally slept on the beach. It got very cold.
It was no Xanadu.
I was living there when I was flipping the TV dial in December and heard Frank Gifford say on Monday Night Football that John Lennon had been gunned down- It was like a punch in the stomach.

and so that was '80

1. Barbara Barrie and Shaun Cassidy
2. Vincent Gardenia and some dude.
3. Shaun prepares to race mini-trail for admiring televison throngs
4. Tom Bray as "Cyril"
Scriptwriter Steve Tesich on the right background in glasses learned on this day that he was up for an Oscar for "Breaking Away"- He won it.