Photo by R.F. George

A brief autobiography by Jacquie Phelan aka Alice B. Toeclips

Jacquie's musings are now available in blog form!

And Jacquie has a theme song too!

I sure didn’t plan on becoming a mountain bike racer when I was a kid. I wanted my dad to be proud of me, and I was convinced I would be a doctor like him (“Honey, the kid’s a shrink!”). When I was eleven, our big family moved from Kansas to LaLaLand. I decided to be a country doctor, because I definitely didn’t want to live the rest of my life in cities like Topeka, or even tres chic Tarzana (a suburb embedded in the stretch marks of LA California). I discovered we had a flawed Mom. In the burbs,   “Mom” equals “chauffeur”.

My mother had learned to drive late in life and hated it. No way would she schlep me and my brothers and sister to school—our home was strategically situated within “walking distance” of our elementary, junior and high school. Admittedly, Taft High was “English Walking Distance”:  three miles.  American Walking Distance is from the disabled parking space to the front door.

Instead of a deluxe ride to school, or to the mall, I was given a ten-speed bike. I didn’t know it at the time, but the bike—a Peugeot UO-8—changed everything. Being French, it seduced me. Every ride was an adventure. The most predictable of routes— to school and back— had cool surprises, usually in the garden department. There were beautiful trees and flowers in the well-maintained neighborhood, and something was always coming into bloom. This was before I learned to get bent out of shape about our wasteful water habits and thirsty non-native landscaping.

I’d see friends go by in their carpool, and ride no-hands just to give them something to talk about.

In the early 1970s people on bikes were suspect. Nothing much has changed in the ensuing 1/3 century: our Marin County neighbors all drive their healthy teenagers the mile to school. Bikes are still ridden by weirdos, if you’re a teenager.

I studied hard, and went to college, but  after a couple of semesters, I realized that I was not cut out for medicine.  This was in the days when 3 out of every 2 entering freshmen planned to become doctors or lawyers.

Or was I just allergic to studying? Pre-med students have to be workaholics. I was more of a panic-and-hand-in-the-assignment-barely-in-time type of student.  Along the lines of a smart nematode, I  majored in Pain Avoidance.

My high school “health” teacher Mr. Vadetsky told our class we would all spend a huge chunk of our adult life earning money to pay for a car and its maintenance, fuel, and insurance. An equally impressive hunk of our time would be dedicated to buying a house. To illustrate his point, he drew a pie with most of it getting gobbled up by the car and the house. A pathetic sliver was left for personal free time, fun time. I vowed not to own a car or buy a house, and use my money differently. By the time I was done with my formal education, I was ready to try out my plan of action.

I would shoot my proverbial  arrow, then look for where it landed, and paint a nice target around it.  My motto: “Ready…Fire… Aim!” Make it look like I was an expert at….I didn’t quite know yet!

I aimed low, and have been “goal-digging” ever since. I moved from  my small Vermont college town back to my birthplace,  where I had never properly gotten to live (I was abducted by my biological parents to Rhode Island at the age of six months).

Took a job as a veterinary assistant. I could show up in running shorts, skanky with sweat, and slap on a lab coat. I saved money further by being an au pair girl. All I needed was movie and beer money. Travel was all by bike.

The term “slacker” hadn’t been born yet, but I fit the description.

Around that time,  a fellow named Darryl caught up to me at a stop light and asked if I had ever tried bike racing. “Hell, no” I said. A week later, after seeing Breaking Away, I found myself bragging at a party that I was a bicycle racer! Call it Premature Jock Elation. Luckily, shortly afterward Darryl escorted me to my very first road race (we pedaled, naturally), on New Year’s Day. I won it, too.

Well, I was 17th out of about 50 riders, but I was first fraulein. Darryl was very clever: this was a purely uphill, three-mile mass-start race, so he knew I wouldn’t have to endure a) getting dropped, b) a group crash, c)watching other categories take off before me, and get all intimidated. I was swept off my cleats into the bicycle cult, a fit, single woman of twenty five years.  “Miss  Instantly Popular” pulled out another arrow and aimed a little higher…