The Tour de France Challenge

Sometime in September, 2005

I am not an elite athlete. I’m not even a good athlete. I’m a 40 year-old guy with a bad haircut, mediocre knees, a mortgage and an employee number on his paycheck. I’m married to a great lady and we have four beautiful dog children between us.

I thought it would be fun to ride the entire Tour de France route one day ahead of the professionals as a fundraiser.

It’s a stupid idea. The Tour is the most grueling athletic event on earth. I can’t really train for the event. I can barely afford it. But you hit a point when you have to do something that means something.

I start to train when I can. I’ve been riding my bike to Boston from Hull, a small seaside town in Massachusetts for quite awhile now, but have to make some changes to accommodate the Tour. The commuter bike, which is heavy and slow, usually gets chained to a bike rack in the John Hancock parking garage won’t do the job.

But I won’t be riding the fat bike in the Tour, so I have to figure out how to ride the good bike to work. It can’t be left in the Hancock garage, as it will be assaulted and vandalized.

Seeking a break, I apply to our Office Manager for a dispensation that will allow me to bring my bike up into the freight elevator with me. Miraculously, my special permission is granted.

This is the stuff that Batman movies are made of. While all the rich guys and big wigs drive into the Hancock garage, I whiz into the freight area on the back of the Hancock tower. Victor the gatekeeper waves me in. His supervisor Bryan, who has the title of “dockmaster,” surely one of the greatest titles of all time, gives me a friendly wave in the morning.

Up a ramp I go, then down a freight elevator to the bottom of the building. There I transfer to another elevator, one that whisks me all the way up to the 39th floor. Along the way, you meet interesting people who keep the Hancock building running: the delivery people, the catering people, those who fix all of the many systems.

Then I wheel my bike down the hall and put it behind my desk. This is as good as it gets, having your trusty steed behind you. Morale at work soars. Whenever the requests become inane, I turn around to admire my bike. The only thing that would be better would be bringing my dog to work. Have to work on that one.

Well, we get the call that the client bought the storyboards and we’re going to go shoot them. The thing about the advertising business is you have to sell something every now and again or you get canned.

But when you do sell something, you have to go away. It takes a ridiculous amount of time to make a 30 second commercial. Probably around 3 weeks of around the clock work filled with discussions that you wouldn’t believe unless you were part of them.

So we’re sitting around a conference room table for like the 8 millionth time discussing the project when the client reaches out for the estimate, which is $2,999,990.40 and grabs the pen. He signs the estimate like it’s a check at Appleby’s for chicken fajitas and a couple of Coca-Cola’s. I almost pass out.

After the thrill of selling something passes, which is amazing, because when you work in advertising, 98% of your ideas are a complete waste, the realization hits, What Am I Going To Do About Training?

People at work are not all that surprised when I roll the giant plastic box into my office that contains the bike and plunk it down. Airlines despise bicycle boxes, so they do the best they can to destroy them on route.

TSA, the travel Safety Advisory, also takes the bike box apart just to make sure it isn’t filled with 50 pounds of plastic explosives.

But the bike gets to LA and I check into this swank hotel, the Casa Del Mar, that was once the most exclusive beach club on earth in 1926. After World War II, the club never regained its luster, and became a drug therapy clinic in 1959. Later in 1978, the Casa housed the Pritkin Longevity Center that was supposed to help people with life-threatening disease. Now it’s a stunning hotel. Ah, the fine line between luxury and mental disorder.

Getting to room 209 late at night, I plunk down the bike and crash. Next morning, I wake up starving, as the day before all I had to eat was a hockey puck ham sandwich courtesy of American Airlines ($5 please). The hotel restaurant isn’t open yet, so I have the breakfast of champions, a PowerBar. Not fancy, but it gives me something to put into the vast wasteland that is my stomach.

Like a kid at his fourth birthday party, I rip open the bike box and start putting it together. It’s not the best job to do in a five-star hotel. I get a little grease on the rug, and hope no one will notice.

Out into the darkness of Venice Beach I go. Three pedal strokes into the ride, which is about 20 feet, I realize that in my daze, I have rigged the chain wrong, and something sounds real crunchy. Not good. I pull over under a street lamp where a homeless guy is taking a nap and examine the problem.

The chain is bent. The rear derailleur is bent. This is not good. Let’s see, what do I have for tools? None. Perfect. Grab the chain, take it off, step on it with my cycling shoe to bend it back. I give the rear derailleur a tug, put the whole thing back together, and it’s kind of working. Not really, just kind of.

There’s a clicking and clacking coming from out back that is not a good sign. But up the Pacific Coast Highway I head, making the best of my less than perfect machine.

Everywhere I look something is fixing to kill me. There is a giant mudslide to the east, an eroding coast to the west, insane drivers in-between. Just a few months ago, two cyclists were hit by a catering truck. The cyclists flew 150 feet in the air, their bicycles were broken into a million pieces, and they died.

The cops asked the catering truck driver why he didn’t brake. He said that his partner was in the back of the truck cooking and he didn’t want to burn him.

Let me get this straight. Your homey is in the back of the roach coach making breakfast for some bunch of sad sack advertising morons shooting a commercial about getting whites whiter, and you’d rather run me over than have your cook blister his index finger? Thanks a lot.

I survive the first ride, return home to mi Casa, go in the side door so I don’t scare the beautiful people with my stinky, sweat drenched person, and grease spewing bike, and return to my room.

After breakfast, we meet the Director, the King Lear of commercials, Joe Pytka.
The man has seen it all. He’s a huge man, 6’ 4” at least 280 pounds. In the past 35 years, he’s shot over 7,000 commercials, at least 40 of which have made their debut on the Super Bowl. He’s shot with Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and Madonna and Michael Jackson and every other celebrity on earth. Bo knows Joe. Everyone knows Joe.

Joe’s telling us a story. Dave, my partner, says, “Oh yeah, I know that…” Joe replies, “Will you shut the fuck up and let me tell my story?”

To be around Joe is to be a listening bird. But the man has the reel to back up the attitude. He loves Barry Bonds, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan. He hates Lance, and thinks he’s an arrogant prick. He thinks Boston is Podunk. There is no middle ground. His production company is his kingdom. There, you are greeted by Joe’s Bentley, Joe’s Ferrari (the new one), and Joe’s Ferrari Daytona (the old one he loves). He owns at least five houses he can remember.

After running red hot on what makes a good commercial and what doesn’t, we eat. Joe owns a restaurant, Bastide, so the food on his table is unbelievable. Take out from Chinois. The freshest shellfish. A few hours after lunch, he announces he needs a rest. The King of Commercials goes upstairs to take a nap.

When he stands up from the table, his considerable frame rises in stages. The knees, which have no ligaments left, just bone on bone from a lifetime of the hard work of being a cinematographer, barely function. He has a hitch in his hip. His fingers are gnarled, with one pinky taking a left turn away from the rest of his fingers.

He doesn’t suffer fools. He knows what he’s talking about, and if you’re wrong, he doesn’t hesitate to tell you that “YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT.”

When he speaks, he hammers the words. The only word that comes out of his mouth that sounds different from the rest is “commercial.” When he says, “I shot this commercial,” it sounds like a butterfly has left his mouth and floats around the room. He has turned the idea of a commercial into an art form. And that’s not just an opinion, that’s a documented fact. He has the Director Guild of America Director of the Year Award. He has the Cannes Liones, the Clios, the One Show Pencils, every prize you can think of. Hell, he even has the Pittsburgh Advertising Club Lifetime Achievement Award.

It takes him awhile to lambaste me. He likes the fact that I get up at 4:45 in the morning to ride up the Pacific Coast Highway until I have to turn around and return to work. He likes the fact that I can sail, and he bought a yacht, a Fife design, that races in the Med. He cannot steer, he cannot trim, he cannot call tactics, but he can do the most important thing there is in big boat racing, write the checks. For the record, the tender of his yacht is a Riva Aquarama powerboat that goes for about $250,000.

My second ride, I decide to take a trip up Solstice Canyon. There is no peace for the wicked there. I am in agony, thinking I am going to shoot my knee cap onto the pavement and puke my lungs out. The clicking and clacking coming from the back of the bike add to the misery.

What the hell am I thinking? I can barely climb a wee canyon in LA, how am I going to climb the Alps in France?