It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [104]
Once I finished the race, I milled around at the stands set up to cater to riders and spectators. Bike manufacturers had brought in their sponsored pros to man their displays. People could get autographs. But I didn’t know who the pros were.
Then a guy said to me, “Hey, dude?”
“Yeah?”
“Hey, you Duff?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, man, I’m Cully.”
I realized the posters behind him had his face on them. Cully turned out to be a former world champion named Dave Cullinan. He was drawing wide-eyed stares. I was new to the game and hence had no idea at first of the magnitude of his accomplishments. Of course, I did notice he was drawing a lot of attention, so I played it cool and sort of pretended like I knew the score.
Cully was a music fan. He had recognized me in the crowd. Sure, I had long hair and a few tattoos, but I am sure the dumb shorts and high-top Chucks must have made me stick out much more than the ink. None of which, of course, was my intent. In fact, I was so damned scared just to enter the race that sticking out was the last thing I wanted to do up there.
“I was in Japan earlier this year for a race,” Cully said, “and I bought a copy of your solo album.”
“Oh,” I said, “so you’re the one.”
He laughed.
We started chatting and hit it off right away. We exchanged phone numbers and he said he had some downtime and that maybe we could ride sometime.
Outside of the United States, bicycle champions are celebrities, almost as famous as our major-league heroes here. Cully was a huge star. He had won the 1992 downhill mountain-bike world championship and he earned big dough from both his winnings and his many sponsors. Not that any of this mattered to me. He was just a nice guy who welcomed me into this new world.
About three weeks later, Cully came up to my house and we went for a ride. We swam in my pool afterward and then went to get chicken burritos at Baja Fresh. A big day out for me. In fact, the biggest day of socializing of my sober life so far. Still, as the hours ticked away, I couldn’t help wondering why Cully was able to spend so much time with me—the mountain-bike racing season didn’t end until October.
Finally, I asked him.
“Why aren’t you racing right now?”
He told me. It turned out an aortic valve in Cully’s heart had burst as a result of a hard fall at the end of a recent race. Luckily for him, the race was in Phoenix and he had been rushed to a branch of the world-famous Mayo Clinic in nearby Scottsdale. The doctors there saved his life. But at the same time they told him that between the titanium replacement valve they had installed and the blood thinners he’d have to take, he would not be able to compete at a professional level anymore. Then, when Cully got back to his home in Colorado, his place was empty—his wife had left him once his career was in jeopardy. He moved to Los Angeles.
His life was in as much disarray as mine, and he, too, was struggling to put his back together. He and I started to ride together and hang out.
I could tell from riding with him that Cully was still faster and stronger than most of us on this planet, titanium heart valve notwithstanding. Here was a guy who had always been an athlete and who had reached the top of his sport. He had not planned for anything else in his life and never expected his career to be cut short. He remained undeterred by doctors who told him there was no alternative to the titanium valve—and that it meant no more racing. Cully refused to accept that as the last word.
“Shit,” he told me, “racing is what I do. I don’t want to go flip burgers.”
He’d set out to learn everything he could about the human heart and how it worked, and during the time we became friends he began to pin his hope on