Recycling America

"The wedding itself was short," Mount says. "Followed by a lot of barbecuing.

"And a lot of bike riding."

Two-Wheeled Millennium
After the 1976 Olympics, Mike Neel entered the world championship road race and placed 10th. In 1977, Jonathan Boyer of Carmel, Calif., turned professional to race for the French team LeJeune-BP. In 1979, Greg LeMond won the junior world road racing championships in Buenos Aires. In 1980, Boyer finished fifth in the world professional road championships. In 1981, LeMond signed a pro contract with the Gitane team of France, winning the world road championship the following year.

LeMond went on to win three Tours, two world championships, and dozens of top European races, becoming one of the greatest riders in the history of the sport.

In the 1984 Olympics, U.S. riders won the road race, the pursuit, and the match sprint: a virtual sweep.

In 1986, with Mike Neel as coach, a team sponsored by the convenience store chain 7-Eleven went to Europe, winning a stage of the Tour de France. In 1988, Neel coached 7-Eleven team leader Andy Hampsten to win the Giro d'Italia. In 1989, having just won his second Tour de France and his second world championship, Greg LeMond was invited to the White House for a visit with George Bush. In 1994, Marty Nothstein was the first American since Frank Kramer to become world sprint champion.

And in 1997, some 32,000 cyclists took out racing licenses. Organized century rides -- 100-mile pleasure jaunts where participants pay a fee to receive food and mechanical support along the way -- attracted hundreds of thousands of participants.

Thousands more amassed regularly at San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza and rode through the streets of the city to challenge automobiles' hegemony.

Americans were cycling again, into a new and prosperous century, an optimistic and unsullied and two-wheeled millennium.