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Wednesdays with Maynard*

By Brendan Leonard

*My friend Maynard is not dying of ALS or anything else, and I am no Mitch Albom. Maynard is, however, a guy who’s been doing exactly what he wants for almost as long as I’ve been alive. And when we get together for coffee, it’s usually on Wednesdays.

I wrote this piece about him—then, breaking a cardinal rule of traditional journalism, e-mailed him the draft so he could edit it. His comments appear in [bold] text.

I was talking with my friend Nick the other day about how I had to lend a friend my air mattress. I’m almost 30, I said. I have a couple of college degrees, and I don’t have a guest bedroom in my home. I like that; makes me feel like I’m not materialistic. I’d rather spend my money on climbing gear than on a fancy apartment. Got an air mattress, though, for guests. A $20 Coleman air mattress.

Who was borrowing the air mattress? My friend Maynard. Famous cycling writer Maynard Hershon. Maynard’s 65, been a cycling (and motorcycling) writer for years and years, and he doesn’t have a guest bedroom. Published two books and hundreds of articles? Yep. Knows Lance Armstrong? Yep. Air mattress? Nope. Buying an air mattress? Nope. Borrowing mine. I’m getting two free cups of coffee out of the deal, though. And half of his chocolate chip cookie. [I wouldn’t count on that half cookie, Brendan...]

Maynard was 41 years old and working at Sunshine Bikes in Fairfax, California in 1983, when the editor of California Bicyclist called and said he needed someone to write about racing for his magazine. Maynard was a 41-year old junior, working toward a degree in English Writing from Dominican College in nearby San Rafael. He had sold a couple of articles, no big deal, and a friend had recommended him to California Bicyclist.

[Remarkably, the above detail is the only inaccuracy in this piece. The California Bicyclist editor called Sunshine Bikes because he knew the store dealt in high-end, racing-style road bikes. He got me. Cal Bicyclist and I were not a marriage made in heaven but luckily....

My friend Owen Mulholland recommended me to the two guys in Pennsylvania who’d just started a terrific, groundbreaking magazine called Winning (Bicycle Racing Illustrated). They called me. I sent them a trial article; they said they wanted something somewhat different.

I sent them a second article and presto: I was the only guy writing in an English-language cycling magazine who had a monthly page that he could fill however he saw fit. I was no longer just a local bike rider. I was the guy in the back of Winning.]

After reading car, bicycle and motorcycle magazines his whole life, jealous of the editorial staffs, dreaming about being a writer, the call from California Bicyclist was the opportunity of a lifetime. What did he do? He slept on it. For three weeks.

“We’re all so busy being preoccupied, being bored, being unsatisfied. When the knock comes at the door, on the other side might be somebody who wants to say, ‘You know, I’m gonna change your life forever and make it really nice,’” Maynard says. “We haven’t got time to go to the door and recognize our benefactor. We’ve got so much noise in our heads we don’t recognize something good’s going to happen.

“All I ever wanted to be in this life was an enthusiast journalist,” he says. “That guy called me up and said, ‘Hey, we need somebody to write about bicycle racing,’ and I didn’t call him back.”

For three weeks, Maynard?

“Ohh, yeah. What a dumb sh*t.”

But then, things took off. Soon, he had a monthly column on the last text page in Winning magazine, for what would end up being an 11-year stint with the publication. After the 11 years, Boulder-based VeloNews offered him enough money to lure him away from Winning—to do the same sort of column for them.

He published articles in California Bicyclist, Bicycle Paper, the Rivendell Reader, Motorcycle Sport and Leisure, CityBike, and wrote for various cycling catalogs including Fuji, Serotta, LeMond, Reynolds, Pedro’s and Bike Friday. He published two books (of collected stories), Half-Wheel Hell and Tales from the Bike Shop.

He worked at big-name bike races, driving support motorcycles and collecting ideas for columns. He met his heroes: Valentino Campagnolo, Rebecca Twigg, Felice Gimondi, Lance Armstrong, Gino Bartali, Eddy Merckx, Beryl Burton and a host of others.

“You know that song where he says ‘I’ve been to Maine, I’ve been to Spain and to Cali-for-ni-o’?” Maynard asks. “Well, I’ve been to Trek, to Bianchi and several other factories in Italy. I’ve been to a couple in England. I’ve visited American builders. I’ve been to the holy places. I’ve been to the Madonna del Ghissalo in Italy, the cyclists’ shrine.”

“I don’t want to say, ‘Been there, done that,’ but the fact is, I went for it,” Maynard says. “After a period of kind of fear, I did what I wanted to do all my life and tried to become an enthusiast journalist. And it changed my life almost from the beginning.”

Or, as he once wrote: “You’d like to travel the world, hang out with your heroes and tell hotties in cafés you’re a writer. I do it. You can do it. It’s easy.” [Tamar is the only hottie I talk with in cafés these days.]

[It IS easy but it ISN’T lucrative. If you have financial needs - a big school loan or a mate who’d like to have nice things in the house or in the garage... If you yearn for a middle-class lifestyle, it isn’t just difficult, it’s probably nearly impossible. ]

Maynard and his girlfriend Tamar live 12 blocks from my wife and me, in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Maynard and I both use bikes to get around. The way I see it, pretty much everything I need is within a 2.5-mile radius of my apartment (most of it is within a 1.2-mile radius), and getting anywhere within that distance in the city is either:

a) A long walk;

b) A short, frustrating drive; or

c) A nice bike ride.

Read the second half of Brendan Leonard’s interview with Maynard Hershon in next month’s Bicycle Paper.