Friday, February 25, 2011

You Know You're Big Time When You're In Wikipedia

The Transylvania Epic folks recently posted in Facebook that Jacquie Phelan is coming to the TSE and is looking for a team. WHAT!??? Legendary Jacquie Phelan? Holy shit. She's a phenom -- an icon in women's mountain biking history - and she's coming to Central PA? I'm not sure how many icons I can take. Rebecca Rusch. Sue Haywood. Selene Yeager. And now Jacquie Phelan. When I started mountain biking in 2000, my first "jersey" was a light blue cotton t-shirt. What did I know. I just wanted to ride my brand spanking new kale colored Cannondale and I didn't even know there were special clothes to wear on it. I bought the bike in the fall, and over the winter I started perusing bike catalogs and websites and realized, gee, I should be wearing that fancy special fabric all those biker-types wear. And one of the very first jerseys I bought was from this cool website called WOMBATS which stood for Women's Mountain Bike and Tea Society which was started by, you guessed it, Jacquie Phelan. At the time, reading a little more about her, I realized she was a co-founder of NORBA in 1983 and a legend in her own right. She raced and won races and was GOOD! Time got away from me and I sort of forgot about Jacquie until now. Today, she's even got an entry in Wikipedia! She's right up there with Lance. I'm humbled.

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