TREXLERTOWN

The Velowedge is to cycling what the hot dog is to baseball

Babbie Ann Mason

If you go along Route 222, west of Allentown, Pennsylvania, you’ll soon hit the Trexlertown mall. The marquee might say "Corvair Show" and “Cupcake Day.” The movies might be Spacehunter and Bronx Warriors. The Pied Piper Diner might feed you some stuffed flounder and chowchow and pepper slaw. Down the highway is the big Air Products plant, which has developed a gas that will keep a tennis ball from ever going flat, and nearby is the Eagle Hotel, where you can hear a sort of country-western band, with an accordion, and watch the local folks dance the polka in tap shoes.

But the biggest thing in Trexlertown, farther down 222, is the Lehigh County Velodrome, home of international bicycle racing, and I was in for a few surprises the first time I went.

For instance, track racing bikes don’t have more than one gear. They don’t even have brakes. Or regular tubes in the tires. Male bike racers shave their legs. A velodrome is a track that in places curves oddly at a steep angle. Bike racing looks like a good way to get a backache.

"I wasn’t expecting the thrilling whooshing sound the bicycles made... It was as peaceful as being at the ocean”

The best place to watch the races is not from the bleachers on the backstretch or the homestretch, in the expensive twoand three-dollar seats, but standing around the rim, looking down into the velodrome. The bikers come so close you can touch them, and if things get exciting you can drum your enthusiasm on the plywood rim where the sponsors advertise (Air Products, Bicycling magazine, Nautilus Fitness Center, 7-Eleven, Boise Cascade Envelopes, etc.).

I did pick up a few basic notions about the complex possibilities of bicycling very fast in a circle with a bunch of other people. For instance: in the Miss-and-Out (“Devil take the hindmost”), the last rider in each lap is pulled out of the race, so there’s a sprint at the end of each lap. (“Who’s out this time? Art the Dart! The devil got you! You’re out!” yelled the announcer.) In the Win-and-Out, the winner of each lap, for five laps, quits. Those left behind get more and more depressed.

At intermission, I ran into Syman Hirsch, behind the counter of the Handle Bar, “Home of the Velowedge.” He was selling natural stuff like watermelon, Nectar Pie, Haagen-Dazs, and Perrier. I asked him what a Velowedge was, and he said it was an all-natural sandwich with shredded vegetables and cheese in whole-wheat pita topped with alfalfa sprouts. He said, “This is the sandwich that has become to the sport of cycling what the hot dog is to baseball. It’s only available at the Velodrome at Lehigh County, Trexlertown!”

The final, most spectacular race was the sixty-lap Madison, in which partners of a dozen or so two-man teams took turns riding at top speed. One teammate rested close to the rim and then maneuvered back into the race to relieve his partner, who pulled him in with a sling of the hand. “Pick it up, pick it up!” the crowd cried. This was a long race, with a lot of furious riding, and in the middle of it Number Ten crashed and somersaulted off the concrete into the grass. Angrily, he stomped out his cramps and walked away, but a few minutes later I saw a skinned elbow racing by. Ten was back in the race.

No one had told me about the beauty of the changing formations, as the bicyclists clustered and then separated, according to changing strategies. The rainbow colors of the bikes and the bikers’ clothing made the shifting patterns as complex and amazing as something in a kaleidoscope. When the daylight faded and the arena lights came on, the bikes turned into silhouettes with thin shadows. As they paraded along single file, my companion said, “They look like a line of linked paper dolls cut from folded paper.”

And, best of all, I wasn’t expecting the thrilling whooshing sound the bicycles made—at the start of each race, for the first lap or so, before the crowd went wild. It was as peaceful as being at the ocean. When the darkness fell and the full orange moon came up behind the velodrome, I expected to see these lovely circular shapes go sailing off into the sky across the moon, Jike something I know I’ve seen before, probably in a movie.