by J Uhde
Rob, Buddy. Did we meet through that Jelly Belly team guy? I feel like you sent me a random email to my jmotox69@yahoo account and that’s how we met. Something like “Hey I heard you raced BMX from (Jelly Belly guy) and I wondered if you’d be willing to write something on it, nothing complicated, just a female perspective.”
I was in grad school and was poor. Racing too many bikes, and we all were poor cyclists back then in Fort Collins. You said so-many-cents a word and I did quick math and said I’d write it. I was no Annie Proulx, and you had to polish it to be digestible for the cycling masses; but it all worked out.
I likely dressed in big pants and tiny t-shirt when we first met in person at the Bannock Street criterium, as it was the nineties. “Janetta” you said all smiles like we’d known each other a thousand years. It’s weird to think how long ago that was, or that we actually once raced criteriums haha. But I remember immediately we were friends, and would be forever.
You used to talk on raves and parties and the scene in Colorado and San Francisco and being at The Tour or up in French mountains. All of it so exotic to me, this bigger than life presence straddling the globe on some adventure or another. Or an inky cat who slides in an out of parties and situations and everyone pets him and remembers him.
And to me you’ll always be Hunter S. Thompson and he you.
We discussed Kerouac in depth, that “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” Man, that was you. The biggest most amazing yellow roman candle exploding across the sky for eternity. God damn. RIP Robby.