Meet Joe Parkin at Bicycle Trip in Santa Cruz, CA

Santa Cruz Bike Shop Kicks Off Amgen Tour of California Buildup with Charity Event Featuring Local Author and Former Pro Cyclist Joe Parkin

The Amgen Tour of California is coming to Santa Cruz for the first time in 2009, and race sponsor Bicycle Trip is kicking off the buildup to the race. On Friday, December 12, cyclists and friends of the sport are invited to Bicycle Trip to meet local author and former pro cyclist, Joe Parkin. Parkin will autograph copies of his new book A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium.

10% of book sales from the event will benefit Project Bike Trip, a national nonprofit based in Santa Cruz that introduces the bicycle as a safe and healthy alternative method of transportation and offers technical bike maintenance training to youth and adults. This is a free event with refreshments provided.

AMGEN TOUR OF CALIFORNIA EVENT
Meet Joe Parkin, local author and former pro cyclist
Friday, December 12, 5-7 pm
Bicycle Trip
1127 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95062
5-6 pm social hour: mingle, munch, shop
6-7 pm author reading and book signing
Questions? Visit bicycletrip.com or call (831) 427-2580.

Parkin's new book is A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium. The book is a memoir of Parkin's experience as one of the first Americans to race bikes professionally in Europe. The book is available in bookstores, bike shops, and online. Parkin will autograph copies during the event.

In 1987, Joe Parkin was an amateur bike racer in California when he ran into Bob Roll, a pro on the powerhouse Team 7-Eleven. "Lobotomy Bob" told Parkin to go to Belgium to become a pro bike racer. Riding along a canal in Belgium years later, Roll encountered Parkin, who he describes in the book's foreword as "a wraith, an avenging angel of misery, a twelve-toothed assassin". Roll barely recognized him; Belgium had forged Parkin into a pro, and changed him forever.

A Dog in a Hat is Joe's remarkable story. In plainspoken, fast-paced prose, Parkin describes the true life of the professional bike racer, putting the reader into the whirlwind of this hardest of athletic educations. A Dog in a Hat begins with Parkin's terrifying first visit to his team doctor, where he is strapped to a table and monitored by humming electrodes as men in white lab coats coldly divine his future as a pro.

A Dog in a Hat celebrates the glory of bike racing, but Parkin tells the hard reality of the life-the drugs, the payoffs, the betrayals by teammates, the battles with team owners for contracts and pay, the endless promises that keep you going, and the sheer physical agony of racing day after day. Despite the pain, despite the suffering, A Dog in a Hat is a beautiful book. It is one American's story of his love affair with professional cycling, set in the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer. It is a story untold until now, and one that readers will never forget.

Joe Parkin represented the United States at the World Professional Cycling Championships and the World Cyclocross Championships. Following his road racing years in Belgium, he returned to the United States and began a successful second career as a pro mountain bike racer. Parkin lives in Santa Cruz.
For more information about this event, Bicycle Trip, and Project Bike Trip, please contact:
Julie Mitchell, Bicycle Trip, (415) 235-8377, julie@bicycletrip.com

To schedule author interviews or request media review copies, please contact:
Dave Trendler, Marketing and Publicity Manager, (303) 245-2138, dtrendler@competitorgroup.com