Friday Profiles

We at the FGBC media division are pleased to announce a new initiative--the Friday Profile. With the racing season having just begun, we shall introduce the select few who will proudly don the sweetest jersey in the world at the upcoming races. Consider it a virtual and serialized team launch. In addition to the opportunity to become more intimately familiar with Team FGBC, you can print out and collect all the trading cards. Laminate them and use them as spoke cards. Or mount them with a clothespin to simulate the ever-exciting sound of a motorcycle engine. Just like the good old days.

It is only appropriate that we begin this exercise at the very top of the FGBC organizational hierarchy, with our figurehead leader otherwise known as The President.



A man of many talents, really. He is in charge of communicating with our corporate partners, which involves such tasks as securing funding from sponsors, acquiring beverages for special events, and arranging for premium parking spots at the clubhouse. He is also the person to whom we turn for the final say on important yet controversial decisions, such as whether or not to move the spring ride location in order to accomodate potential racing opportunities--also known as last year's difficult "Ingolf or Morden?" discussion. And he does all of this on top of his day-to-day duties of saving lives.

But he is more than just an administrative genius and a medical marvel. He also has a remarkable ability to turn a ride into a lifelong memory. Let's just say that when the president is along for a ride interesting things are bound to happen. He has occasioned the opportunity for an ambulance to negotiate its way out to the trailhead at Ingolf. And his legendary balance issues have resulted in a long litany of encounters, some closer than others, with chain link fences, stationary poles, and other seemingly innocuous objects. He simply has an intuitive and uncanny knack for finding unorthodox ways of crashing. You can listen to one of them here. Ride down battery rock with the President and you will be treated to an ongoing narrative with twists and turns that would make an M. Night Shyamalan movie seem linear and predictable: too much front, too much rear, and all points in between. And if a bike is going to fall on someone's face at Icebike, you can bet that the face will belong to the President. He has had more dramatic and unusual things happen to him than seems worthy of a single life. But he has learned to embrace it as the gift that is his to share with the rest of us and our mundane and rather pathetic little lives. If nothing else, there will be no awkward pauses in the conversation at the clubhouse or around the campfire when the President is there.

He may not win all the races. But every race he shows up at will be more spectacular and memorable because he is there. Let's hope he makes it out to a bunch of them this season. We will all benefit from the simple fact of his presence. All hail the President!