In 1996, I persuaded my friend, Barry Sullivan, to take up road cycling so that we could ride the Ottawa Bicycle Club's annual big Rideau Lakes Tour together. This is a 350 km weekend ride from Ottawa, Ontario to Kingston and back. We found a bargain Bianchi for him and after some moderate training Barry, who was doing a lot of running at the time, joined me on my 40th birthday for what turned into a long, wet but fun (in retrospect, anyway) ride to Kingston, on the shores of Lake Ontario.In the meantime we have been on several postings to various places and Barry has moved up in the cycling world. The Bianchi was replaced by a Giant and now an even better Giant. Barry has gone into training seriously and after moving from Hong Kong to Taiwan he has gotten into racing in a big way and he will be joining us in Alsace for several days of riding in June. And I was delighted when he sent me an unnecessarily modest account of his winning his age group at the North Coast race in Taiwan on March 25th. Having introduced him to cycling I will of course take full credit for this excellent win. Well done, and an encouragement for all of us who have never stood on the podium.
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