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Guests: Steven Frothingham; Charles Pelkey & Patrick “Mad Dog” O’Grady
HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you had a great holiday – not too much carousing and all!
With SO much anticipation for a better year, I’m hopeful that will be the case.
Today, I thought we’d begin with a wrap-up of the 2020 bicycling season with Steve Frothingham, the editor in chief of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News,.
To say it’s been a stressful year would be a gross understatement and I knew Steve would be able to put a lot of it in perspective.
I’m not sure what your experience was with bike shops or bike related products in 2020, but it was uber-challenging to say the least.
Once we figured out that bicycle retailers were “essential workers” and that going outside was a safe and in fact very important piece of the pandemic puzzle, the bicycle was suddenly on center stage under huge spotlights.
What happened next and as a result of some unanticipated twists of fate if you will, left the industry overwhelmed with demand, absent of adequate product, and scrambling to figure out how to solve what are still difficult and exasperating problems.
Steven and I talk about the winners, the losers, and what we might expect in 2021.
After our break, we loop in Charles Pelkey and Patrick O’Grady – AKA the Live Update Guys.
Even though they no longer do their wildly popular LUG gig, Charles called me last week to talk about the loss of one of their “regular” posters to the daily commentary that followed along with the major races each year.
Monsignor Richard Soseman – known as just Mons when he chimed in to the sessions, was originally at 
St. Peter’s in Rome and recently had transferred back to the U.S.
On December 6th at the age of 57, he died from COVID and Charles wanted to offer up a fond tribute as well as his heartfelt homage to a sweet and special man. It’s a lovely story.
Along with Live Update Guy Patrick “Mad Dog” O’Grady, here is my conversation with Charles about the Monsignor.
Click the link to read the Monsignor’s “essay” from stage 8 of the 2014 Giro
Thanks for the shout out to “Mons”. LUG ( Charles Pellet) and POG (Patrick O’Grady) did a great service for bike race fans with their Live Update Guy grand tour race coverage. Mons was a regular with his essays. Most of us just threw in a comment or so every couple of days but Mons worked hard on those essays almost daily. He was a religious man in all ways but such a down to earth fellow. Though LUG and POG don’t do the Live Update thing anymore, many of the LUGNUTS still get together online. Mons even wrote a few essays in 2020. Like Charles, I never met him and don’t really follow a religious path but I will miss Mons greatly.