TALES FROM THE BARSTOOL
By: Clint Lien

My Week in Cabo with Lance Armstrong

I'm reading a book called "Racing the Sunset" written by superstar triathlete Scott Tinley. He writes about the difficulties many athletes have after their days of glory are gone and they have to step off the playing field. He's a good writer. I can't put the book down. In the book he relates a story of calling up Lance Armstrong and asking him if he would contact a young man struggling through a bone marrow transplant and give him a few words of encouragement. Ten minutes later Lance called the fellow. He called him from a pay phone booth in Belgium in between races. The guy was so drugged out he thought the poster of Lance he had on his hospital room wall was talking to him. Doing things like that makes a man a hero - at least to one person.

Living and working in Hollywood gave me the opportunity to meet many famous people. Some of them, like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg, greatly influenced my desire to make movies. I remember those meetings well. I was thrilled to meet them - to tell Quentin how I had watched "Reservoir Dogs" and made my decision to begin writing down the movies that played inside my own head. It was fun and I've enjoyed bragging about the encounter ever since.

As thrilling as it was to meet Oliver Stone and Val Kilmer I never saw them as heroes. They were just guys really good at something I wanted to be good at. I was not nervous about meeting them, and afterwards I remembered the meetings with clarity (except for the Tarantino meeting as there was alcohol involved.)

Three days ago I bumped into Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow in a bar in Cabo. My normally cool exterior abandoned me and I was left with weak knees, a churning stomach and the mind of a car crash victim.

Four of my friends and I were down in Cabo for a planned week of debauchery. We had two days left to go and our plan was falling into place perfectly. We'd been told that the Mi Casa restaurant was one of the finest in the city and was "value priced" as my friend JP, who works in marketing, would later say.

So we arrive at the restaurant only to find the entrance blocked by a group of people doing tequila shots. They were clearly having fun. They didn't notice we wanted to get in. Being Canadian we politely waited a few moments but they didn't step aside. Being a Green-carded American I decided enough was enough and stepped forward to push my way through. Suddenly I was staring into a face as familiar to me as my own. I was about to "pardon" my way past Lance Armstrong! I panicked - turned to someone in the group with me and whispered "It's Lance." I turned back and rudely jammed my hand out. "Can I shake your hand?" He shook it. After that I don't really remember what happened. We talked. I asked him if they were having a good time. Sheryl was with him and she laughed something like "He wouldn't remember." He smiled and said he was getting lots of training in. He had trained twice that day - surfing in the morning and tennis in the afternoon.

Now you have to understand that all five of us train and race. I own more than twenty bicycles. Two of the guys went to France last year and watched him win for the fifth time. Three of the guys have already booked flights to go next year and watch him go for his sixth. The other two are hoping to go. We are cycling fans - big fans - and standing before us was the greatest active cyclist in the world, and maybe of all time - achieving it all after beating cancer that would have killed most. Standing before us was a hero, our hero and all I could think to say was "Are you guys having fun?" What a putz. After we had the wherewithal to bid him farewell and leave him alone we walked in silence to our table. Still another moment of silence passed and then one of the guys said "We just met Lance Armstrong." It's all we would talk about or think about for the next several hours - days.

Everybody was thinking the same thing - there were things they wished they would have thought to say but, like the smart retort for the jackass in the bar, you don't think of the line until after he's long walked away. I wanted to tell him about the time I raced against him in 1989 (I think. It was a long time ago.) It was at the Vancouver International Triathlon. I was out of the water ahead of him and he passed me on the bike - quickly. I remember a guy riding beside me saying "There's that crazy kid from Texas."

I wanted to tell him about the time I stood in line for more than three hours in the L.A. sun to get his book autographed for my first triathlon coach who had recently come back into my life, after a less than amicable parting ten years earlier. He was now in Japan fighting his own cancer battle. He had given me Lance's book as a gift and I wanted to get it signed for him and send it back. I never made it to Lance's table. He had to go for a ride. I didn't mind. I understood. The best in the world doesn't get that way from sitting at a media event all day.

I wanted to tell him how I had to watch the 2003 Tour by myself every day because I was back in L.A. working and none of my friends there watched bike racing - then how much fun it was to discover that one friend, Tony Broccoli, son of the late Cubby Broccoli, producer of the James Bond series was, in fact, an avid Tour fan. Tony would get up at six each morning and catch the first airing on OLN. I needed my sleep and would watch the ten o'clock showing. We both couldn't wait to talk later and go over the day's events - and there were so many of them.

Of course, I never got to tell him those things. There wasn't time and I'm sure he hears those stories and similar ones daily - so it really doesn't matter. But what does interest me about the meeting is how damn nervous I was. I'm not kidding when I say I can hardly remember what was said. He was with Sheryl Crow and I'm a Sheryl Crow fan. I own three of her CDs, but if it was just her with some friends I would have walked by and thought "Hey, there's Sheryl Crow. She holds up pretty good under scrutiny." (very beautiful woman!) but I wouldn't have said anything to her in a lifetime. I know her music. A few of her songs are soundtracks to meaningful relationships I've had, but I don't know her. What right would I have to bother her? But I had to say something to Lance. I just had to. So I did - then all I could think about was if I'd just made a doofus of myself. I was pretty sure I had. After all, I didn't know Lance. I knew his talent and his courage but I didn't know him. What right had I to interrupt him and his friends?

Later in the evening I was standing in the john when one of the guys in Lance's party joined me for a little male bonding. He said it was really nice how we said hi to Lance and didn't hassle Sheryl. "You Canadians are always so polite." I felt better. Over the coming years my friends and I will tell the story often, I know. I'm sure that in time Lance will have joined us at the table and we'll have all done tequila shots until the polite maitre d' explained to us that he had to go home. We will have exchanged numbers and promised to stay in touch.

Mr. Tinley suggests that many professional athletes suffer greatly after they retire. It seems they miss being the hero - the applause and the fans. I hope Lance has an easier time of it when he hangs up his Trek. I don't know, but I do know that if I do happen to see him again, I'm going to leave him alone.

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