Ask the Author: Bjarne Rostaing
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Bjarne Rostaing
I’m a great bunch of guys, Rooney. Back in the days of the draft I dodged it for a while but finally just gave in. (It was peacetime.) They sent me to the Army Intelligence Center, Fort Holabird, in Baltimore, where I was trained as an intelligence analyst. I met interesting people there, like Paul Rothchild, who produced Janice Joplin and The Doors and intelligence, became a kind of hobby. I was out of bike racing for years, until I came across the racing in Central Park. It was a fun scene – a bunch of aging turkeys like myself and a kid named Nelson Vails who was hanging at the boathouse waiting to be discovered.
Back into it, I ran a bike shop in Vermont and started writing for Velo-news. The sport was coming alive with California riders (George Mount in the winning ‘76 Olympic break, and Mike Neel turning pro, finishing 10th in the Worlds.) When Jock Boyer got a ride in the ’81 Tour I called Sports Illustrated, and they let me do the story. After that I spent my summers in Europe attached to US teams. We were on fire – Andy Hampsten won the Giro, and in ’86 LeMond won the Tour.
None of that qualified me to write Epstein’s Pancake, but then I met someone who’d been there and done that. Ed Murray was a very respected novelist, bored with journalism. He answered an ad in the Washington Post and ended up working as an independent contractor for the CIA, selecting what jobs he’d take, usually in media. Not boring. He lived for years in Ethiopia, wrote a book about it, played tennis with the exiled Shah of Iran, and set up a CIA newspaper (“which fooled no one, but had a great expense account.”) Ed’s gone but not forgotten. He had street smarts honed in Red Hook, Brooklyn and a gift for relating to people, and they’d send him to trouble spots. They sent him to Iran, and he was there when Khomeini blew up the Shah/CIA government – it’s in his novel The Peregrine Spy. He had deep experience and priceless stories, and pretty much taught me to write, which was how Epstein’s Pancake happened.
Back into it, I ran a bike shop in Vermont and started writing for Velo-news. The sport was coming alive with California riders (George Mount in the winning ‘76 Olympic break, and Mike Neel turning pro, finishing 10th in the Worlds.) When Jock Boyer got a ride in the ’81 Tour I called Sports Illustrated, and they let me do the story. After that I spent my summers in Europe attached to US teams. We were on fire – Andy Hampsten won the Giro, and in ’86 LeMond won the Tour.
None of that qualified me to write Epstein’s Pancake, but then I met someone who’d been there and done that. Ed Murray was a very respected novelist, bored with journalism. He answered an ad in the Washington Post and ended up working as an independent contractor for the CIA, selecting what jobs he’d take, usually in media. Not boring. He lived for years in Ethiopia, wrote a book about it, played tennis with the exiled Shah of Iran, and set up a CIA newspaper (“which fooled no one, but had a great expense account.”) Ed’s gone but not forgotten. He had street smarts honed in Red Hook, Brooklyn and a gift for relating to people, and they’d send him to trouble spots. They sent him to Iran, and he was there when Khomeini blew up the Shah/CIA government – it’s in his novel The Peregrine Spy. He had deep experience and priceless stories, and pretty much taught me to write, which was how Epstein’s Pancake happened.
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