I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I have done more Tuesday night races at FBF than any other person on Earth. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Dan, I’m not sure that’s true and secondly, I’m sure that no one cares.”, but hear me out. I started doing Tuesday FBF races in 1995, shortly after I moved to the East Coast from the Midwest. I most certainly found out about FBF in the back pages of Velonews, as that was where everyone found out about races back then—it was that or a bike shop bulletin board or a guy in a wool jersey handing you a flyer in the parking lot of another race. I’m sure that I looked at the listing for a weekly training race, pulled out my trusty Hangstrom map and using my Midwestern interpretation of distance as a gauge thought, “Yeah, a drive from Danbury to Brooklyn on a Tuesday night seems doable.” I was also single at the time, so I had plenty of time to burn. On Tuesdays, I loaded up my Ford F-150 (older schmalz fans will recall my very grey and beat up pickup truck, that mention is for you, Mihael), said goodbye to my very understanding bosses at 4pm, and headed to Brooklyn for mid-week adventures.

In those days the race was run by Tony and Millie (they ran the race for many years before Charlie and then Tom took over), and in the earliest races they ran the race counter clockwise. They eventually switched directions (not sure why), and the finish was always on the straight that is now between turns three and four. Tony and Mille ran a fun, relaxed race, and they even eventually allowed a free lap for mechanicals, a circumstance which mostly consisted of racers rolling in with a flat and instead of swapping out a wheel (who in the right mind would ride to FBF with an extra wheel?) racers would try to borrow a wheel from one of the spectators, hoping to rely on the kindness of strangers (this was usually a 50/50 proposition on a good night, and if you were new, your chances dropped to almost zero). They also had double and triple points nights which, if I’m being honest, really annoyed the regular racers—unless they managed to score on double or triple points nights. Tony and Millie stopped promoting the race after many years and after a vague legal threat from some dip hole who thought that you could sue promoters if you crashed.

After a few years of Connecticut drives, I met my wife and we were living near Van Cortlandt park, so I started riding to FBF, even though I had a perfectly good beat up grey pickup just parked there on the street. I would ride the 30-ish miles to FBF (I rode out Flatbush Avenue and had many memorial battles with the dollar vans), raced for about 20-25 miles and rode home, where I immediately plopped myself into bed. I never had much success in the races I rode to, mostly because I was, um, riding 30 miles beforehand. Had there been such a thing as a Whoop back then, it would’ve pronounced me dead. I started driving to the race, and coincidentally started doing better at the races. We moved to Westchester and then to Jersey, but I never stopped racing at FBF. I never took a year off, I was never injured—I just kept showing up.

And that’s why I’m pretty sure no one else has done more Tuesday night FBF races than I. Wilson stopped racing FBF a while back. I met Horace on one of my marathon rides back from FBF, when I rode by and he asked about the races happening on the airfield, so I started earlier then he did. The only racer who might be close is James Joseph, but there were years that James missed or only raced partially (especially the year that I won the overall 3/4ths title at FBF, because there was no  way I would’ve won that series if James was there).

So I think that makes me the title holder, the iron man of Brooklyn, the king of FBF. Well, “king” is a bit too far really, I’m more of a bridge troll than a regent. I dutifully take my place under the bridge every Tuesday and wait to see what comes over my head, and I hope to see you out there tonight.