Opening Volley - (614) Magazine Article

By Travis Hoewischer

I crashed my bike once. It was on a summer gym class trip to the lake, you know, one where the gym teachers are excited about kids getting fit, and the kids are excited about making out with other kids.

Despite the promise of bikinis and barbecues - for school! - I was still nervous as hell about the 30-mile bike ride to get there.

I was a farm kid, and my cycling experience was limited to tooling around my gravel driveway, ramping tiny pieces of concrete on a Huffy I had won in elementary school for hawking over-priced fund-raiser chocolates.

Sure enough, the hometown gravel wasn't enough to prepare me for the rural terrain en route to Lake St. Mary's, and halfway through the trip I dumped myself, my buddy Phil and half the skin on my leg into a debris-filled ditch.

For years, that's where my cycling experience stayed. Right there in that ditch. 

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