There was a time in my early 30s that I bicycled almost every day over the course of four years even in rain, fog, high winds, and 100 plus degree days.

I was what you might call a dedicated roadie.

I rode nothing but racing bicycles and actually owned four at one time.

My losing 140 pounds several months before I turned 30 led to me straddling bicycles to the point that I racked up over 10,000 miles annually for three consecutive years.

What drove me was a desire to never see the weight return.

I was able to, depending on my schedule, at least one day a week to bicycle 20 miles round trip to work. I squeezed in Jazzercise classes on Saturdays that required 26-mile round trips.

Given I was working on an afternoon paper, I wrote stories in the morning, go for 1- to 2-hour rides in the afternoon and then return to work to cover council and planning commission meetings in three different cities or cover games when I was the sports editor.

It was about the time that Greg LeMond was on the rise.

LeMond was the first American to win the month-long grind that is the Tour de France.

I have never owned sports gear such as baseball caps and shirts with team logos or owned fan-style sports paraphernalia.

But I did bicycle wearing team cycling jersey such as Coors and the La Vie Claire team jersey LeMond once donned before he won his first Tour de France in 1986.

When I was sports editor at the Press-Tribune in Roseville, the San Francisco 49ers conducted their training camp in nearby Rocklin.

During the course of my work, I came across the likes of Joe Montana, Dwight Clark, and Roseville’s home-grown 49er Danny Bunz.

It was also when two other Roseville teens were on the rise — future Indy racer Scott Pruett and Olympic swimmer Summer Sanders.

There were other Roseville notables at the time such as Fred Besana who started as quarterback for the now defunct Oakland Invaders of the USFL as well as Robbie Bosco that quarterbacked the BYU Cougars to the national title.

During one trip the Press-Tribune sent me to Provo, Utah for a five-part series on Bosco and the Cougars, legendary BYU coach LaVell Edwards asked one Steve Young — who had dropped by months after signing a then outlandish $35 million contract to play for the USFL’s Los Angeles Express — to accompany Bosco and myself to the practice field.

Young caught for Bosco as I took pictures of him throwing a football with the Wasatch Range in the background.

It was also when Associated Press hired me as the “beat” stringer to cover a team that had just moved to Sacramento, the Kings.

That led to numerous occasions over the years to ask questions of the likes of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Bill Walton, Danny Ainge, Ralph Sampson and more.

Given all of that, I never was really “into” sports per se as a fan would be.

And the only pro athlete that I even had a desire to meet was Greg LeMond.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I returned from lunch on April 20, 1987 and The Press-Tribune’s receptionist informed me that newspapers from Paris, London, New York, and Brussels has been calling frantically trying to reach someone in the newsroom.

Three hours earlier at 10:30 a.m., a channel on the police scanner had a helicopter being dispatched to a shooting in the foothills to the northeast of Lincoln.

I was city editor at the time and asked our police reporter, Steve Seville, to see what it was about given we were two hours until deadline.

An hour later, Steve said he talked to the sheriff’s department but it wasn’t any crime per se, but rather a hunting accident and it didn’t involve a local resident so he’d wait until the next day for the report.

That non-local resident was LeMond who was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law on land his father co-owned while hunting for wild turkeys.

He took 60 buck shots and had lost nearly two thirds of his blood. His surgeon later would say he came within 20 minutes of dying.

The shooting came just days before he was to return to Europe to prepare to defend his title.

I was irked we missed being the first newspaper on the planet to report LeMond being shot because our reporter didn’t recognize the name or even make an effort to do the story on deadline.

But I was more disappointed to realize that I had, over the course of the prior month, indeed passed LeMond three times — and he waved each time — as he bicycled back to Lincoln and then Rancho Murietta where he lived as I headed toward Camp Far West Lake.

That was the worst part. Half of Lincoln at the time knew I was seriously hooked on bicycling.

One of my brother Ronnie’s friends, who went by the name Coyote, kept telling me to drop by his house as LeMond was stopping by for lunch to break up his training ride.

I thought he was yanking my chain.

The worst part, Coyote lived less than a block from my house.

That wasn’t the last time I missed an opportunity to spend time with LeMond who recovered from the shooting and went on to win the Tour de France in 1989 and 1990.

In October of 1990, a Lincoln dairy farmer by the name of Joaquin Farinha called up and asked if I wanted to go to a San Francisco 49er game in his RV with his wife and a couple of friends by the name of Greg and Kathy LeMond.

“Sure,” I said to myself, “sure.”

A bit of background first. Joaquin was a joker of the highest degree.

He was known for always pulling practical jokes on people.

Three months later when he heard I had accepted a job in Manteca, Joaquin called me up and said to make sure I dropped by his good friends when I moved here.

I asked who they were, and he said they were a dairy family and the last name was Machado.

When I asked the first name, he said there was only one Machado family in Manteca so they wouldn’t be hard to find.

It didn’t take me more than a week to realize there were multiple Machado dairies.

At any rate, Joaquin kept calling me about the chance to ride with LeMond to and from Candlestick Park. And I kept telling myself, I’m not going to fall for it.

A week after the game, Joaquin dropped by to show me photos of him with his arms around Greg and Kathy LeMond tailgating outside Candlestick Park.

It clearly wasn’t a case of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com