Tom Pritchard, who trained or inspired the best chefs in Florida, died four years ago today. He was a legend, and the best storyteller I ever knew, outside of my own granny. tampabay.com/news/influenti… I've been sitting on one last story about Chef, and a special bicycle.
He told me once about a bike he bought when he was hanging around Denver, in the same era he launched Land & Sky Waterbed Co. He bought it because he was trying to get the attention of a girl who was a serious cyclist.
So he pops into the bike shop in Denver and explains his quest. He tells the shop owner that he needs a really good bike, something that says he's serious. This is in the mid 1970s. He plans to spend about $100. But the guy wheels out a special 10-speed.
The frame is custom, and it has Cinelli bars, all Campagnolo gear -- breaks, crank, shifters, etc. High-end racing wheels. An Avocet Touring I saddle. Tom is sold, but he's gotta pay like, $500. He's flush though, because he got the bank loan with the Hugh Heffner letter.
But ... it works! The girl is smitten by the bike. And she falls for Tom, too. And this is remarkable, because he's an ... interesting looking guy. 
And like all good things, their relationship eventually ends, and Tom has to change his name and flee to Mexico, then he falls in with the Medellin Cartel in Colombia, etc. etc.
But he keeps the bike. Never rides it again, but he knows it's special. Fast forward. He lies his way into the restaurant industry (and serves Sonny Liston six pounds of carp and talks Nixon into lifting the Mexican tequila embargo, etc.) and becomes a big deal in the food world.
The bike collects cobwebs in his attic in St. Pete, and Tom eventually leaves this world. At his wake -- the best party I've ever been to, at Salt Rock -- his partner tells me he's parking Tom's old CJ7 in front of the restaurant for good. I wonder about the bike.
I ask Tom's long-time friend about it and tell her I'd be honored to buy it if she's just gonna throw it away or put it in a garage sale. About six months later, she calls and asks me to come get it.
When I go to pick it up, it's a giant mess. Tires have rotted, grip tape is unspooled, chrome is rusting. Chain is rusted through and broken. Spokes are broken. Nine out of ten would've thrown it away.
I still don't know why it's special -- I'm not a bike guy -- so I take it to my friend Jordan who owns a local shop, @velochamp. He spends a few days trying to puzzle out the history of the frame. There are no serial numbers, no brand name. He posts pics to the web asking help.
@velochamp And I start sleuthing on my end. See, I profiled Tom for the @TB_Times back in 2008, and @johntedge was kind enough to include it in his CORNBREAD NATION anthology, and Chef got a huge kick out of that. So once in a while I'd get a piece of mail from him, always weird.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge And always like a little piece of a puzzle. He'd send a cancelled check from the Land & Sky Waterbed Co inside a crumbling envelope from a Colombian hotel, or an old newspaper clipping about his winning the Terlingua Championship Chili cookoff.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge Keep in mind, this was a guy who claimed to have beaten the 300-pound hard-boiled-egg eating champion of the world in a hard-boiled-egg eating contest by snorting Tabasco to create saliva and strip the lining of his throat. He once stole three taxi cabs in the same night.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge In his papers I kept, I found an old receipt from a bike shop in Clearwater. He had evidently taken his bike in to have it assessed. Whomever had written this receipt had offered Tom $2,000 for the bike, in like 1998.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge But there were no specs on the bike, no brand mentioned. I decided to call bike shops in Denver, because I'm an idiot and who knowS? Maybe somebody remembers SELLING A BIKE TO A RANDOM DUDE FORTY YEARS AGO IN THE MID '70S.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge Here's Chef Tom's Jeep, btw. He'd drive around St. Pete blasting organ music. He had a stone crab cracker mounted on the back bumper that he said came off @jimmybuffett's dock.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett Sidebar: Years ago, some writer friends came to town -- @tommytomlinson, @EnswellJones, @KenTremendous, @michaelkruse, who else? -- and Tom gave us the royal treatment at Salt Rock. He let Wright Thompson have a pour of his Screaming Eagle 2012. The man had an enormous heart.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse Anyhow, I think I googled "oldest bicycle shop in Denver." I landed at Turin Bicycles. I dialed the number and the gentleman who answered sounded like he had a few years on him. And so I started to tell him the story about Tom's bike on the faintest chance he'd be able to help.
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse I never mentioned the name Tom Pritchard, thinking it wasn't important. But I told him about the girl.
He cut me off.
"When was this?" he asked.
"Around '76," I said.
"You have an Albert Eisentraut Limited," he said. "And the guy who bought it was Tom Pritchard."
He cut me off.
"When was this?" he asked.
"Around '76," I said.
"You have an Albert Eisentraut Limited," he said. "And the guy who bought it was Tom Pritchard."
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse Albert Eisentraut is The Godfather of American frame building. He is an artist who happens to make bikes. His frames are exceedingly rare and valuable. I look at them when I need to feel better about the world. classicrendezvous.com/USA/Eisentraut…
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse Someone wrote about him: "His position is analogous to the lonely watch kept by the monks on the shores of western Ireland who protected the flickering flame of civilization through three centuries of what elsewhere was called the Dark Ages.'
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse The man on the phone at Turin Bicycles in Denver was Alan Fine. He told me he remembered selling the bike to Tom in 1975 or '76. I was baffled. He even told me the name of the girl Tom was trying to win!
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse "Want to know how I remember?" he asked.
"How?" I said, absolutely flummoxed.
"She was MY girlfriend," he said. "I sold him the bike and he stole MY girlfriend!"
"How?" I said, absolutely flummoxed.
"She was MY girlfriend," he said. "I sold him the bike and he stole MY girlfriend!"
@velochamp @TB_Times @johntedge @jimmybuffett @tommytomlinson @EnswellJones @KenTremendous @michaelkruse I didn't fix it up much because nice bikes disappear around here. And I'll never, ever sell it. I still ride Chef Tom's bicycle, and I think about him and about how, if we're lucky, our stories can outlive us.
