A Note From Bob Muzzy,, 1978
1979 Cat's Hill Winner
Hi and thanks for 30+ years of
a great race.
My recollections from '78 include having
my cluster fall apart too late in the race
for a wheel change. Also I watched Wayne
Stetina catch his tire in the expansion gap
between the cement road slabs on the block
before the hill. He turned the bars to get
out without lifting his front wheel, which
ripped his front tire completely off the
rim. It remained inflated albeit sticking
out to the side of his brakes in a horizontal
plane. To his credit he stayed up.
I won the race as a senior in 1979. Bill Watkins & I
got away around 1/2 way into the race. Bill
dropped his chain with maybe 15 laps to go
on the hill. Keep in mind that we didn't have
these new fangled Edward Shifter-Hands back
then. Friction shift levers on the downtube
were state of the art at the time. So the occasional
missed shift was excusable. Bill was a good
time trialist and I figured he would have caught
me had I continued on alone. I was afraid I'd
be worn out and decided we'd make better time
together. All that went through my head in
about 10 feet... I quickly decided to wait
for him, we stayed away, and my strategy worked.
I felt rested enough to have a good sprint
left.
Bill won the next year but I
like to think it was *only* because I crashed
and didn't finish the race. Spectators tried
to grab a stray dog on the downhill who jumped
away from them, directly into my path. I T-boned
the startled dog and flew over the bars. After
I licked my wounds, I felt sorry for the dog,
who couldn't have known what what happening
in his neighborhood that day.
I won the race again in 1989 as a master by
virtue of a better bike throw in the sprint.
As memorable to me as the win was seeing the
effect of the Loma Prieta earthquake on a surprising
number of the beautiful old bungalows in the
immediate area of the race course. Most were
largely intact except for having jumped off
a corner or two of their foundations. I rode
down from Berkeley to watch the race a couple
years ago and was glad to see that they'd all
jumped back on by then.
Bob Muzzy
"quite possibly the oldest living winner of
a senior Cat's Hill race"
May 2007