Greg LeMond and Tom McCaslin

I have had a very interesting last couple weeks. My next blog post will be all about that, and that I am finally confident that I am indeed going to South Africa on Thursday. As of the weekend, it was still a bit up-in-the-air if I would have a ticket or not.

However, all this craziness has kept me from watching the Tour de France as much as I’d like. I do want, however, to write about the present pictured here. My son-in-law, Tom, gave me this framed print. He bought it because I’ve been a fan of Greg LeMond’s since the mid-80s when I first heard about him. I was still a runner at the time, but I was impressed with what I heard about and saw of Greg.

THEN, when I bought my first road bike, I got a LeMond with Campagnolo components. Second bike: LeMond. Third (and present, 13-year-old) bike: LeMond with Campagnolo components. Hence, my nickname, given me by Mike Busch and then Mark Skarpohli: Campychick (shortened to Campychk).

Anyway, LeMond is another of my heroes. How can he not be?? Tom McCaslin knows this, so to thank me for being with him in the effort to raise money for Aplastic Anemia research, he ordered this print. The story STARTS there. He mailed it to LeMond’s company headquarters in the Twin Cities, asking Greg to sign it. Four months later, Greg’s son finally got Greg to sign it and after they lost Tom’s address, it finally arrived in Greenville. Tom gave it to me at the Jackson County Brevet. Now it proudly hangs on my dining room wall. I love it. I tucked a signed (at the Brevet) “rider’s card” of George Hincapie into the corner. It’s sort of a monument to that amazing weekend.