Travel

RACING THROUGH BISBEE

The clock on the tower of the old Pythian Castle has Mickey Mouse splattered across its face, but Lisa Goldsmith isn't concerned with cartoon characters. She's thinking in terms of hours, and of minutes, and especially of seconds. She has come to Bisbee, along with 244 other male and female riders, for the 16th-annual La Vuelta de Bisbee, a step up the ladder for bicycle racers who dream of competing in things like the 1992 Olympic Games at Barcelona, Spain.

But then Lisa is 26. The copper-mining town of Bisbee, founded in 1877, has more than a century on its old bones. Naturally, the bike racers and Bisbee each have a different sense of time.

Bisbee hosted around 10,000 people at the turn of the century, all crammed into 660 acres of gulches in the Mule Mountains. When the mines closed in the 1970s, the town almost died before it found a new ticket to survival with retirees, artists, and other folks who wanted to throw their watches away. Now 6,000 to 8,000 people nestle between the hills and watch Mickey Mouse on the Pythian Castle (a leftover from the fraternal order) watch them.

For Lisa on this April day, Bisbee is exactly 2.91 miles long with 800 feet of gain that's the length of the course winding through murderous hills that she must now tackle. Last year she did it in 12 minutes and 57 seconds; this year she's hoping to break that.

She's been an athlete since childhood, first a soccer player, then a triathlete, now a bike racer. She's on a team out of Boulder, Colorado, has barely seen her small apartment since February, runs up a big telephone bill keeping in touch with her boyfriend, and now, as she awaits the start of the race, she's feeling very tense. She does nothing but train (300 miles a week) and race, all for a possible shot at the Olympic team. And the clock measures her success in the world. "I don't want to grow up," she confesses. "It's hard to quit."

"I know 250 people by their first names, and when you get into a jam you've got friends.' Bisbee itself has lives with a different sense of time. Bert Webster sits on the porch of the Copper Queen Hotel as Lisa speeds off up the hill. He's 39, pays the rent by working as a janitor at the post office, and right now he's strumming a guitar and singing Hogie Carmichael's "Stardust." Two huge songbooks sit on the table before him as he whips through old ballads from the 1920s through the '50s. Somewhere in his head, he's stored at least 500 songs. Once in a while, he plays for money, but mainly, like this day on the hotel's porch, he just plays for pleasure. He's got two kids to raise, and his days on the road in a band are over. He arrived in Bisbee in 1986, and it's not likely he's going to leave. "I know 250 people by their first names, and when you get in a jam you've got friends," he says.

Besides, he notes, the town is in a time warp because here everything and everyone slows down. It's hard to argue with him since, to the eye, Bisbee looks like a place where architecture and construction came to a halt around 1910.

And because Bisbee is so mellow, Bert allows, anyone can make something happen here, can create something here.

His friend Linda Eshner, an artist and writer, agrees with the part about time. She came here from San Francisco and figures she's been in Bisbee "about 130 years." Inertia, she explains, is what keeps her around. And, besides, "Bisbee is the biggest open-air asylum in the world."

Out in that open air, Lisa Goldsmith is disappointed. She's just finished her run at 13:04, 10th place, and slower than her effort last year.

Her smile is brave but strained, and her trainer talks softly to her. Lisa is a person for the long distances, the kind of athlete who wants to race 50 miles, 100 miles at a crack. Short sprints are not her strength. But all that matters is the clock, and the clock has come down hard on her. Her tension is like a spike in the puddle of cool air that huddles around Bisbee at 5,300 feet. Tomorrow is her big chance: the next race is 64 miles.

In Bisbee, in a lot of ways, some people make their chances by, well, not trying so hard.

Up on Brewery Gulch, "Easy Ed" Chamberlin hoists a beer in the old stock exchange, now a saloon with the ancient market board still hogging one wall, and explains how he got to Bisbee: "It's like I went up to a cabin in the mountains and just never came back down."

Ed does some construction here and there and for the rest of the time enjoys life. He tells, by way of example, of a friend who works all day as a chef and then at night secretly explores the old mine tunnels that honeycomb a nearby mountain for no particular reason other than he likes walking old tunnels alone. Somehow in Bisbee, under the watchful eye of Mickey Mouse, it sounds perfectly reasonable.

A block or so from the Copper Queen Hotel, Walter Swann, 74, promotes a different notion of a useful life: the OneBook Bookstore, an idea he figures whose time has come.

Walter's literary career began back in the sixth grade when he discovered he was the dumbest kid in school.

One day he wrote a poem and received a failing grade, but, alas, there was no recovery for this smitten artist.

Of course, growing up, raising eight kids, and making a living delayed his first book. For 40 years, more or less, he scribbled down stories and then about a year and a half ago came the moment for publication.

He mailed out fliers to a bunch of people and asked 20 bucks apiece for a book By an author who flunked the eighth grade and then quit school. The checks flowed in.

The result was a strikingly original volume called me 'n Henry, and 10,000 copies later, Walter is in the tall clover. He sits by day in his one-room (rent a hundred a month), one-book bookstore.

Letters from admirers cover the walls, and a television set and a VCR are close by for anyone who wants to see the time he was on "Late Night with David Letterman" or "CBS Morning News." And he moves books without giving any tightfisted bookstore a 40-percent cut. His granddaughter sells Walter Swann dolls to the faithful.

An empire is being born as Walter rushes to publish his second effort. "People," he notes, beaming, "said Old Swann was a nutty old man."

Of course, Bisbee has the soil to nourish unusual talents like Walter Swann's. Where else does one find a local newsstand that sells tattoo journals next to the Vegetarian Times?

A few doors down from the newsstand, Molly Ramolla tends to her one-artist art gallery, a small space filled with her paintings and jewelry. Molly's been in Bisbee about six years. She's hardly unusual in a town with 300 professional artists, but there have been a few twists in her odyssey.

She fled the fog of the Bay Area because she was struck by Bisbee's old buildings, a quality that reminded her of Europe. She was born in Berlin during World War II and was there when "the wall" went up. The huge barrier struck deep into her peace of mind, so deep that one day she couldn't move her legs or get out of bed. So she came to America. Now she "walks fine," and all the colors in her d desert landscapes are bright.

She's thinking of going back to Germany for a visit. In the past, she remembers, the people in West Germany walked with their faces looking up; those in East Germany, with their eyes cast down on the ground. She wants to see if this has changed.

By the next morning, Lisa Goldsmith has renewed herself and is looking up again. She is facing a 64-mile grind over steep hills and windy desert, but she knows she must make up those missing seconds from the first race. She is ready, basically a 120pound projectile mounted on a bike.

Before the race, she cannot talk. There is no space in her mind for anything but the ticking of the clock. And after the race, she can barely unwind. She was with the pack until 500 yards from the top of the last hill when her legs "went dead." Still she finished fifth, a big bump up from tenth, but still 19 seconds off first place. Lisa goes off with her trainer for a massage to coax the knots from her muscles with a face that knows the difference 19 seconds can make.

Bisbee itself has very few knots in its muscles. Over the last decade, a lot of the old buildings have been gussied up as restored hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, art galleries, restaurants, bookstores, and other little businesses. An old jail has come back as accommodations for weekenders fleeing the madness of the cities.

Bit by bit, the town has filled its calendar with odd weekends: a bike race here, a renaissance fair there, plus Octoberfest, a wine festival, a Saint Patrick's Day fling, old Brewery Gulch Days, an art festival, and so forth.

And there is always music the bike racers are serenaded by Jimmy's Wazoo Peach Pitters and Igor's Jazz Cowboys.

But even with the bars, restaurants, hotels, historic buildings, tours of the old mine, Bisbee still is more a state of mind. Or, better yet, mindlessness. People sometimes say they want to get away from it all. No one in Bisbee will ever ask what is meant by that statement.

RACING THROUGH BISBEE

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When you tell your age, it's bad luck, and I plan to be 130.' Rena Santa Cruz dropped into town in '82 and got a job painting murals in the local post office by making them an offer they could not refuse: her bid was the same as the cost of simply painting the walls. Since then, her work has blossomed in the market, and she's just scored big in New York with a new concept of the Wild West: a huge canvas of 18-wheelers. "Somebody told me," she explains, "to paint cowboys and Indians, and I figured truck drivers were the closest thing around."

Lynn Anderson happened by Bisbee in much the same way as Rena. A retired man of indeterminate age ("When you tell your age, it's bad luck, and I plan to live to be 130"), Anderson had a long career in network radio before he rode his Harley into town in 1979 on his honeymoon trip to Central America. Well, he's still here. He built a radio station, and then, just for something to do, he built the town's official weather station. Lynn's the kind of guy who likes to tinker.

At the moment, he's restoring an 18thcentury sextant for a friend. He's also a gunsmith, clockmaker, local columnist, and a Harley Davidson maniac. Oh, yes, and a pianist. That's how he was able to remain in Bisbee. His first night, he took over the piano in the Copper Queen, and all of a sudden 150 people crowded round. It was hard to give up such an audience. Of course, he's still on his motorcycle, having logged "about 2,200,000 miles."

The next morning, Bisbee heads toward its version of a climax. For Lisa, there is one more time trial, and this time she must conquer the clock.

For a bunch of other folks like Ruly and Paula Amado of Benson, there is a chili cook-off. The contestants set up fierce little stands: Daf's Pussy Cat Chili, or Rancid, Gut Wrenching Chili of Death!

To quench the fire, one can try a glass of a local beer (10,000 gallons a year) made by a resident electrician. Up the (BELOW, LEFT) Lynn Anderson arrived in Bisbee on a Harley.

(BOTTOM) "Chili queens," from left, Kim March-Force, Charla Henny, and Connie Cole are from nearby Sierra Vista.

(RIGHT) Bisbee's steep bills add to the rigors of the race.

In canyon, another group of savage competitors, Suds of the Pioneers, the local brewing club, is having what may best be called a drink-off. And that is Bisbee.

Lisa, well, she holds her position, wars with the clock, and pulls off a truce, finishing fifth overall. For her the next week means more training and then a race in Cleveland, followed by Toronto, then two days later comes New Jersey, then California . . . .

For Bisbee residents, there is not much of an appetite for schedules or a real keen interest in time. Ambition here has found a different kind of playing field. As one resident, clutching a glass of local brew, puts it, "I'd like to keep it small. Small is beautiful, you know."

It certainly looks fine here in the Mules.

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For other folks in Bisbee there is the chili cook-off.

RACING THROUGH BISBEE WHEN YOU GO

Getting there: Bisbee is on U.S. Route 80, 94 miles southeast of Tucson. Bus service is available from major cities and towns. Since the town is about a mile high, it is cool in the summer and sunny in the winter.

Accommodations: Bisbee has nine bed-and-breakfasts, two hotels, several motels and RV parks, and a passel of fine restaurants.

What to see and do: History buffs can take in daily Queen Mine underground tours or visit the Mining Museum. Agatha Christie buffs might try the Murder Mystery Weekends at the Bisbee Grand Hotel.

The town's architecture deserves more than casual attention. Interesting structures you won't want to miss include the Victorian-style Copper Queen Hotel; the Covenant Presbyterian Church, built in 1903 to resemble an ancient church in Europe; and numerous turn-of-the-century houses.

And there's Brewery Gulch, where dozens of saloons and gambling houses once tempted miners. Today it hosts numerous shops and restaurants.

The chamber of commerce sells walking-tour guidebooks to the various sections of the town. The streets are old and narrow, a good place for walkers; but be sure to wear comfortable shoes.

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