Charlotte rider Paul Smith is heading to Paris this month for his second Paris Brest Paris. He successfully completed PBP in 1999; the picture shows him in the official jersey from that year.
I rode with Paul for the first time on a warm Lake Loop permanent last fall and discovered an amazing fact: he is one of four geography majors among the North Carolina randonneurs!
I asked Paul about that in an e-mail Q&A. His responses follow.
Is this your first PBP? No. I rode PBP in 1999. In 2003 I was set to go but had to cancel my trip two weeks before the event.
Why do you want to do it? I like the challenge and sense of accomplishment that an average cyclist like myself gets from completing long rides. Throw in a foreign country, nice scenery, good food and a few thousand other riders and its hard to resist.
A finish time in mind? In 1999 I had 16 minutes to spare. I'd like to have a little more cushion this time in case of a flat or some other problem in the last kilometers.
How long have you been randonneuring? My first brevet was in 1999. I've been doing long rides and an occasional self-contained tour since the early 1970's.
What got you interested in doing your very first brevet? I had been wanting to ride PBP for some time and knew you had to ride qualifiers first. My first was Richard Lawrence's Sauratown 200K. I was very fortunate to meet up with a group of 3 near the end of that ride, Woody Graham, Ann Mullins and Liz Crotty. They jokingly said that if I could finish this ride then PBP should be no problem and I believed them.
Most scenic brevet route you've ever ridden? I recently rode a 400K in Ohio through the Amish country that had wonderful scenes of American farm life. The most scenic, however, had to be a Boulder, CO ride that went from the plains up one canyon to the Peak-to-Peak highway then down another. I dnf'ed after surviving the most terrifying thunderstorm of my life.
How do you spend your 9-5 weekdays? I work at a Geographic Information Science research center at UNC Charlotte and teach in the geography department there.
Is there any good explanation as to why the N.C. randonneurs apparently have 4 GEOGRAPHY MAJORS? Maybe it’s all the time we spend working with maps and wondering what's where and why it’s there.
Does your professional life ever come in useful while you're on the bike? Eventually, every randonneur needs good map reading and wayfinding skills, so that background helps.
No comments:
Post a Comment