ANNAPOLIS, Md. (New York Times) — After cycling 3,000 miles through 12 states on just seven and a half hours of sleep spread out across eight days, with nary a shower, solid food or a real bed in between, Christoph Strasser glided past the Race Across America finish line here and was asked how he felt...
WITH only the tips of his elbows touching his bicycle’s upturned handlebars, Damian Lopez Alfonso pedaled along the Hudson River bike path on a cool March day. His balancing act elicited stares from disbelieving pedestrians and curious double-takes from fellow cyclists.
Because not only does Mr. Alfonso ride his bike without forearms, lost in a devastating childhood accident, but he also rides it very, very fast.
Tracy Lea first witnessed his unorthodox cycling method during a race outside Havana nearly eight years ago.
Ms. Lea, a former elite racer from Maryland, found herself in a ragtag pack of riders on a highway pocked with “car eating” potholes outside the Cuban capital. “I’m worried about these guys in tight, fast conditions,” she remembered thinking, “and all of a sudden, I’m racing next to a guy with no arms!”
She watched as he powered through the course, lifting his body to shift gears with the nubs of his elbows or press down on the brakes. “Then I realized he had more control than most of the people in the race,” she said.
Despite his disadvantages, Mr. Alfonso, 34, has won local competitions at home in Cuba and he races nearly every weekend against able-bodied cyclists in informal events. But the alterations to his bike that allow him to do so — turning the handlebars nearly 180 degrees upward, so the brakes and gear shifters face him — have also kept him out of officially sanctioned international competitions, which have strict equipment rules.
But not for much longer.
In July, Mr. Alfonso is scheduled to race in Canada, the first event on his road to qualifying for the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. If all goes well, it will be the culmination of a nearly decade-long journey for Mr. Alfonso, a story of sudden tragedy, grim determination and a little help from a lot of perfect strangers in a bicycling community thousands of miles away.
Since Ms. Lea and others began spreading word about the Cuban cyclist with no arms and disfiguring injuries to his face — also from the childhood accident — riders from as far away as California and Germany have sent money, and companies including Fuji, Shimano and a prosthetics maker, Hanger, have provided state-of-the-art products that will help him ride in the standard position so he can compete at an elite level.
But Mr. Alfonso’s strongest supporters are in and around New York, following his progress on Facebook or the widely read local racing blog NYVelocity, and donating their time, money and spare bedrooms to help him in the city, where he came for medical tests and has spent nearly four months undergoing a series of painful reconstructive operations and being fitted for prosthetic arms. The operations alone would normally have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but are being done free.
One rider provided the use of a car service to get Mr. Alfonso around town; another lent him an old iPhone; several have acted as translators on doctor visits; still others have made small cash donations totaling $8,000 to support him during his stay.
And a few have gone even further. Ace McDade, a former New York racer who lives in Ridgewood, N.J., opened his home after seeing a Facebook post early this year. First it was for just a few days in March, before the operations. Then there were 10 days between operations, and now Mr. Alfonso will probably stay with Mr. McDade, his wife and three daughters — ages 12, 9 and 7 — until he returns to Cuba late this month.
“It was an easy thing to offer; we have so much to give and he’s in such a tough spot,” Mr. McDade, 48, said. “He and my daughter Mei” — the 7-year-old — “have this wonderful relationship where he calls her crazy and she turns around says, ‘No, you’re crazy, Damian, Soy es loco.’ ”
Perhaps it is his surprising self-confidence that draws people in, leading them to help a stranger from Cuba who never asked for any help.
Whatever the reason, the cyclists who have rallied around Mr. Lopez took their common interest and used it to turn the big city into a small town, a place where bonds form by chance and compelling need is met with overwhelming generosity.
Mr. Alfonso, who had never visited New York before arriving in December for a series of medical tests, now calls it “the best city in the world.” And here, as in his native Havana, everyone simply calls him Damian.
But last month, between rounds of facial operations at NYU Langone Medical Center, Mr. Alfonso was depressed.
Slumped in a black leather chair in the bustling hospital lobby, a gleaming white bandage wrapped around the top of his head, he wondered whether all the surgery and the prosthetics had been a mistake. He missed riding, had gained weight and was not sleeping because of pain from the operations.
And for what? After 20 years, he had long since learned to cope with his altered appearance and learned to ride despite his disability.
“The bicycle’s on vacation,” he said in Spanish, eyes half closed, pushing whole sentences forth in frustrated bursts. “It’s going to be like that for a long time.”
His aunt Edilia Tamargo, up from Tampa to help care for him, sat nearby and translated. He had been asking her to tell him stories about their family’s hard times in Cuba — his grandfather’s alcohol problems, a lack of money around the house, how as a girl she was forced to work in the house of a rich neighbor. “I like to hear that everyone has suffered,” Mr. Alfonso explained.
His curly hair usually bounds up confidently when not pressed down by a bicycle helmet, but the bandage pulled it low and tight over swollen skin that cut diagonally across the bridge between his closed eyes.
He sat forward and flicked back and forth two images on the donated iPhone with his right elbow: the first, a photo of him riding at a Pennsylvania track in March; the second, a black-and-white portrait of him as a fresh-faced blond boy in a Cuban school uniform.
Mr. Alfonso’s childhood was radically altered at 13, a time when he was less passionate about cycling than about homemade wood-and-paper kites. “I had the record for finding the most lost kites of all my friends,” he said in an interview in March.
So when he saw a particularly attractive one — large, and decorated with a hand-drawn picture of a skeleton — caught in the power lines above a neighbor’s building, he and a friend climbed to the roof to get it down.
He recalled his friend, Igor, who was slightly older, telling him: “Just leave it there. Don’t mess with that.”
Ignoring the boy’s advice, he reached for the kite with a metal rod.
“We heard an explosion,” his aunt, Ms. Tamargo, recalled. She lived with Mr. Alfonso’s family in a three-story green concrete home in the Casino neighborhood of Havana, where Mr. Alfonso still lives with his mother, a retired military typist.
“I look up,” Ms. Tamargo said, holding back tears, “and I see this blond hair hanging off the roof.” She paused for a long time. “Thirteen thousand volts,” she said finally. “They lost the fridge, the TV — the whole building.”
The metal rod had bounced off the power lines, delivering burns to Mr. Alfonso’s face as well as to his arms and torso. Infections cost him his forearms; he was horribly disfigured; but a team of doctors, including a prominent Argentine plastic surgeon, were able to save his life. He spent about a year hospitalized in Havana.
“When he first saw himself, I was walking him around the hospital in a wheelchair,” Ms. Tamargo said. “He saw in a crystal door and he screamed, ‘I’m a monster!’ But he didn’t cry. He just hollered. He never cried. Never. Never. He has never been ashamed of himself.”
Mr. Alfonso had raced only a few times before the accident, but afterward, he seized on the bicycle both as a mode of transportation and as a way of proving himself. “I wanted to beat a normal person,” he said. “Whenever there was a bike race, I competed.”
Over time, Mr. Alfonso became a fixture in Havana’s small cycling scene, taking part in pickup races most Saturdays at the “guyava,” a 12-mile loop of hills and fruit trees outside Havana.
Jesus Perara, a native of Havana and a bicycle racer now living in Hell’s Kitchen, remembered him from these races, which often ended up at a local cafeteria, where riders traded stories over glasses of garapa, a sugar cane drink. “Everybody knows Damian,” Mr. Perara said. “He rides the bike so fast, with no hands, it’s unbelievable.”
Indeed, nearly everyone who rides with Mr. Alfonso has been impressed by his endurance and bike handling. “If he had never had this problem, I don’t know if he would have excelled at this sport, whether he would have had that tenacity,” said Mr. Perara’s wife, Nanci Modica, who first met Mr. Alfonso in 2002 while racing in Havana and is among his biggest supporters in New York. “He’s got something special that he can just dig right through the pain.”
Ms. Lea, the Maryland rider who raced next to him in Cuba, saw him again during a later visit to Havana at the Reinaldo Paseiro Velodrome. “He came over and nudged me — because I don’t have any Spanish — and took my Allen key away from me and fixed my bike,” she said, adding that they grew closer during her trip. “That’s when I said, there’s got to be a way.”
Soon she was spearheading an effort to bring him to the United States for surgery.
Ms. Lea, 56, struggled to get him a visa and find a foundation willing to take on his case. Most were focused on children and did not want an adult from abroad.
Finally in 2008 she found the National Foundation for Facial Reconstruction, which finances the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery at NYU Langone. After seeing photographs of Mr. Alfonso, the foundation agreed to take on his case.
“He’s probably one of the most difficult reconstructions I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Oren Tepper, who is treating Mr. Alfonso with Dr. Joseph McCarthy, director of plastic surgery at NYU Langone and the lead surgeon on the case.
The electrical burns had singed deep scars across his face, destroying large swaths of blood vessels, which are needed to connect new tissue to build facial features. The doctors, finding few options, relied on a method that involved creating a nose by pulling down the forehead skin, waiting for the blood vessels to connect, and snipping the “flap” back to create the new feature. They used a similar technique to create a lower eyelid using skin from the upper eyelid.
In two rounds of surgery in April and May, the doctors remade his nose, left eyelid, chin and cheeks, and worked to slim his neckline and to improve his mouth, which, because of the muscular complexity, proved most difficult. “He lost his whole mouth,” Dr. McCarthy said. “There’s no great way to reconstruct that.”
A separate team of specialists worked on the prosthetics that will allow Mr. Alfonso to ride with his handlebars in the normal position, which has proved to be challenging. Few if any cyclists have raced competitively without forearms, said John Rheinstein, a prosthetics designer at Hanger, so developing the right device has been a process of trial and error. Because the rules prohibit attaching prosthetics to the bike itself, the arms must fit tightly enough to give Mr. Alfonso control over the bike while allowing enough free movement for him to shift gears and to brake. “Nobody’s ever done this before,” said Mr. Rheinstein, who estimated the cost of the custom prosthetics, which are being donated, at $10,000.
On a crystalline June afternoon, Mr. Alfonso rode in Central Park for the first time with a prototype of the arm extensions — a plastic cup connected to metal tubing and a hard-rubber claw-like “hand.” Mr. Rheinstein and a Hanger team stood along the park drive north of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as Mr. Alfonso saddled up, clipped into his pedals and pushed off, gripping the handlebars with his new rubber claws.
He passed slowly around a bend, then stopped. Wrenching the arms off the handlebars, he clicked them together in disgust. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I’ve ridden my whole life the other way, and now I can’t brake. I don’t know why I need this. Why do they have this stupid rule?”
Riders and runners passed along the drive, arching their heads to stare at the scene of Mr. Alfonso, in a blue, gray and white Fuji racing uniform, discussing changes to the prosthetics with Mr. Rheinstein and his team. Mr. Alfonso and Mr. Rheinstein decided to change the arm to make it shorter and retest it later in the afternoon.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think the happy ending is going to come right away,” Mr. Rheinstein said.
Indeed, learning to ride with the new arms will take time and training, as Mr. Alfonso adapts his highly developed riding style and gear. Despite state-of-the-art electronic shifters from Shimano, which allow him to change gears by lightly tapping a switch, using the prosthetics “will be hard,” he said.
Mr. Alfonso knows he needs to adapt if he is going to win medals, and eventually his competitive drive will take over, he said. “Because winning means always going forward,” he said. “Going forward, leading, always.” At 34, he quite likely has two shots left at the Paralympics, in 2012 and 2016.
His facial reconstruction has not gone easily, either. His body rejected a chin implant, and doctors removed it on Thursday. Final, outpatient surgery for touchups to his rebuilt nose are to be done in a few days.
With so little time for Mr. Alfonso to adapt to the prosthetics and train before the July race in Canada, Ms. Lea petitioned last month for an exemption to the strict equipment rules; after a back and forth, the international body that oversees paracycling granted her request, though it remains unclear whether the exemption will extend beyond July.
In any case, the prosthetics will allow Mr. Alfonso to compete in official bike races, from London to Saturday mornings in Central Park, something he is keen to do. But on this afternoon in Central Park, as the Hanger team left to tweak his new arms, Mr. Alfonso returned to his old position and set off for a quick loop of the park drive. He rode slowly at first, blending with the other cyclists out for an afternoon ride in the spring sun and looking entirely at ease. After a while, his legs began pumping strongly. He gripped the sides of his upturned handlebars with his bare arms, rose from the saddle and powered up Cat’s Paw hill.
He was in total control of the bike, and he left every other rider behind.
I am not sure what is more disturbing.....the fact that these morons destroy a tree to steal a bike which they then abandon, or the fact that security cameras watch everything we do.
Concerning congressman Weiner
This blog is not supposed to be concerned with anything outside of messengers and bike related issues but we have been working through some issues surrounding New York congressman Anthony Weiner and we felt need to reach out with an urgent message:
Congressman Weiner…..Breakaway has a job for you.
In fact Breakaway has a spot for all disgraced public figures involved in sordid sex and/or financial scandals…as long as no laws were broken that is or if you are out on bail and allowed to work with a presumption of innocence. We feel the healing balm of hard manual labor and the coinciding health benefits are just what the doctor (or local DA) ordered.
But really…were any laws broken here? As icky as these tweets sent by this twit were, isn’t this something that should be between the Congressman and his wife? And should the opposing party really be making hay out of this? A party with a sitting Senator from the south who trumpets “family” values but who visited houses of ill reputed to be dressed in a diaper and spanked? A party with a senator from the mountains who was arrested in an airport restroom having ….a good time? Really?
So attention all disgraced politicians….attention fallen Wall St hedge-funders…if you have not broken the law, or have served your time and are in need of employment….and you have a bike, Breakaway can guarantee that you will make somewhere between the minimum wage and $20 per hour….and maybe for the first time in your life you can earn money through actual work.
3-Way Street from ronconcocacola on Vimeo.
As you watch this crazy video it is important to keep in mind that although the bikers they focus on may look like they are risking life and limb they are for the most part making defensive moves that flow with the natural movement of vehicles and peds and our in the everyones interest. Remember...cars and trucks kill people in New York City....not bikes! That U-turn by the semi-truck is completly stupid by the way.
We recently launched an online store for Breakaway Courier merchandise including racing gear and these great, heavy-duty messenger bags - perfect for pro-level messengers and for traveling.
Breakaway's tough, pro-level messenger bag traces its origins back to the original utility bag created in the 1950's by the legendary De Martini Globe Canvas Company. Sailmaker Frank De Martini ran his underground shop on Mott Street in New York's Little Italy with his two daughters, with bags handmade to order on the spot. Back in the 80's, Breakaway GM Andrew Young made a pilgrimage to the messenger mecca and had the honor of meeting the master himself. Today's Breakaway continues that tradition of simple, street-ready durability.
To celebrate the new bags we are having a special one day sale tomorrow! This Wednesday, June 7th we are offering these Breakaway Courier messenger bags for $75 - that's 40% off, so stock up while you can! The bags are available in an entirely black version and one with a purple exterior and yellow lining. Check out the other messenger merchandise we have available too at www.breakawaystore.com.
Hooray For Dad!
He played ball with you, took you to the movies, and had “that talk” with you at some point. He also grounded you and embarrassed you in front of your friends. So, for all that, it’s nice that Dad gets a day for himself. Help make it a nice one by getting him his gift on time, which you can do by calling Breakaway. Just don’t blame us if he embarrasses you in front of the messenger.
Crit Grit
The Breakaway Racing Team has been having really good results lately. Ariel Mendez-Penate took the Cat 3 race at Floyd Bennet Field on May 19th, while Sam Salisbury won the Cat 4 race. We’re in action again for the Harlem Criterium (crit for short), which usually happens in the middle of June. Results will be sure to follow in July’s newsletter.
Stuck? Use a Truck
So, you’ve got a lot of big stuff to move, and no way to move it. Well, Breakaway has you covered with our trucking department. From small box trucks to our large lift-gates, no job is too big. So, if you have large quantities of small stuff, or one humongous item, give us a call.
Save Our Show!
We’re often called to do insane jobs, and rush things from here to there as if it’s a matter of life and death. Now, it’s our turn to call you. If “Triple Rush,” the Travel Channel’s program featuring Breakaway, gets 100,000 likes on Facebook, the Travel Channel will put the show back on the air. Visit www.facebook.com/savetriplerush, and click like.
Pronouncements
It’s the little organic chemical that has turned the cycling world upside down. Still, we were wondering how on earth to pronounce, “erythropoietin.” Well, Merriam-Webster online has an audio link that can pronounce it for us. A computer voice able to pronounce a word better than we can? Well, we don’t orate, we just deliver packages. That’s what we do.
Department of Duh
The Times has recently published an article saying sedentary jobs are contributing to America’s obesity problem. Another article proves that the quacking sound is definitely associated with ducks, and airplanes with flying.
Stump the Band
Last month we wanted to know how the holiday of Easter got its name. Answer: Easter is named for the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eastre. Her personal symbols were the egg and the hare.
T-Shirt Question
A 2003 poll called it the one invention that modern Americans cannot live without. Despite a long history, they were not mass-produced until 1780, when the man responsible for doing so hit on the idea while in jail. What are we talking about? The first person to call Gil Ortiz with the correct answer will win a coveted Breakaway T-shirt.
My wife took this shot on the Tourmlet in July 2004
I cannot help but put my two cents about the slow moving implosion that is destroying the credibility of Lance Armstrong, since this blog is concerned with all things bike related and not just the world of the courier. I am a long time follower of road racing and in fact have just returned from seeing a stage of the Giro d’Italia. I also spent two weeks driving around France in 2004 positioning myself on various Pyrenean and Alpine slopes to watch Armstrong roll by, a trip I consider one of the highlights of my life. So I feel I have earned my opinion but it is complicated since I am of two minds and I hold two contrarian statements in my head.
1) Armstrong is lying and is guilty of doping.
2) He is the victim of a witch-hunt.
Concerning statement 1:
I was never under any illusion concerning doping in the world of professional cycling or professional sports in general. I wish this was not the case but anyone with open eyes over the last 20 years has seen the performance enhancement in the pro peloton, on the baseball diamond, on the track, or, most obviously, in the grotesque combat that is professional football. Cycling is no more or less corrupt then these other sports. Did everyone stop watching or attending baseball or football games? Did I still put a lot of time and effort into going to France to see it live regardless?….I did. I told myself that since the entire peloton was doped Armstrong was winning on a level playing field so it did not detract from his achievement or the beauty of the competition. I admired him anyway.
The big lie
Sometimes a lie grows so big that to admit that it is a lie would seemingly destroy the universe. As Armstrong’s legend and winnings grew the consequences of his being found out grew exponentially. He became the face of cycling, and the brand name of a large philanthropic effort that helped and continues to help thousands of people. And because of the more individualistic nature of the sport compared to the large team organization of baseball, football, and soccer….cycling has smaller team organizations that are more tied to sponsors than other sports….the displacement of this legend could be seen as a fatal blow to the sport. As the pressure builds the need to maintain the lie becomes the paramount concern and anyone who challenges the official version needs to be discredited at all cost.
This is the moment where Armstrong lost my support. As the small, clubby, easy to control world of cycling morphed into the worldwide celebrity of one man the people who helped him reach those lofty heights have become expendable. The list of key domestiques who helped Armstrong win the Tour de France 7 times and who later ran afoul of drug testers is telling: Roberto Heras, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis. The last two names have implicated Armstrong to a grand jury under threat of perjury along with another teammate George Hincapie who has never tested positive for banned substances. These cyclists knew and obviously accepted the risk associated with the choices they made to reach the highest level of the sport. I like to think I would not have made their choice but I cannot know how I would react under that pressure. Once confessed, I cannot judge them too harshly for playing by the rules as they saw them.
Who I will judge harshly is a person who would put the entire power of his name and fortune towards undermining and destroying his former friends who helped him acquire his position in the world. The only excuse for this would be if all these people are lying and Lance Armstrong never doped. This is a very unlikely possibility.
Concerning statement 2:
Jeff Novitzky is conducting a witch hunt against Lance Armstrong and it is unlikely that Armstrong will spend any time in jail or be convicted of a crime despite the serious nature of the allegations. The most serious possible charges (conspiracy to defraud the government) hinge on proving that Armstrong knowingly lied to the government as represented by the USPS in order to secure sponsorship. This will be a very hard case to make and I feel it is a separate issue from other serious allegations that Landis and Hamilton are making concerning the complicity of the UCI in squashing possible positive drug test of Armstrong’s. These should be pursued all the way to the top.
The question now becomes “why is Novitzky pursuing this hard to make case with such intensity?” His conduct in the BALCO case that resulted in a jail sentence for Marian Jones might be instructive. It is not to the point of this post to examine the Inspector Javert like perseverance of Novitzky in that case but I imply the allusion to ask the simple question, “what is justice?” Was justice done when Marian Jones, a person at the long end of a chain of events and people all of whom deserved much more censure than her, was humiliated and made to serve 6 months of hard time? In the broadest sense, yes, but that justice was morally unjustified.
Lance Armstrong will most likely end up humiliated and proved a liar but in a world where wars can be waged for fictitious reasons and Wall Street bankers who came close to bringing down the worlds economy not only walk free but are bailed out for their losses, their criminality caused by the government, makes the millions of dollars and thousands of hours the Justice Department is spending on this case morally unjustified.
Hamadi Martin
hmartin@breakawaycourier.com
Phone: 212-812-8035
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