In the Mail

My medal for finishing the 2003 Paris-Brest-Paris randonee.
My medal for finishing the 2003 Paris-Brest-Paris randonee.
So, just about eight months to the day after I finished PBP, look what came in the mail. In reading the lore of the ride over the years, I’d seen reports of the medal, complete with your own individual
time on it. For some reason, I thought it might show up by the end of  last year. But it never came, and lots of other stuff came up, and I never really thought too much about it. I just figured that maybe I was the one rider who didn’t get one; or that my ride had been declared invalid for some unworthiness that the organizers had detected in me; or that I had managed to ride the one year when no medals were awarded. Just my luck.

Then I started to see accounts on some cycling email lists a month or so ago that none of the American riders had gotten their medals yet. But they were coming. By sea mail, maybe.

Yesterday, a big brown envelope with my self-addressed sticker was in the mailbox. Heavy. The medal was inside, along with my brevet card, with the stamps from all the controls along the way, and the English-language program for the event, with the finish times for all the participants, including No. 4417, Dan Brekke: 85H51.