Peelating Paris

Charlie Henderson '58 spent last summer pedaling upwards of 400 miles a week near his Colorado home in preparation for the world's oldest (started in 1891) and largest amateur bicycle race, the Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) road race. "I was in the best shape of my life," says Henderson, who completed the 780-mile PBP in 76 hours and 30 minutes last August, 12 hours faster than his 1995 time.

Fifteen years ago a knee injury convinced the lifelong distance runner to trade in his running shoes for a pair of wheels. "And I never looked back," Henderson says. He joined a local bicycling club and began entering races around the country. One coast-to-coast trip took him from tidewater Virginia to Washington state in less than 30 days. But his favorite trip remains the PBP, the predecessor of the Tour de France. "It's very, very special," he says. "The children cheer us through every town, and the French countryside is just beautiful."

United States of Alumni It's a green country out there, with the College's 58,931 undergradsand alumni making their mark in every one of the 50 statesand the District of Columbia. The greatest number of alums can be found in Massachusetts, the fewest in North Dakota. Source: Alumni Records

Henderson began training on the hills of Colorado in February for the August race in France.

The Upper Valley alumni club takes advantage of the locale by annually inviting what pres- ident Bob Haynes '73 calls "or- dinary" students to discuss their Dartmouth experiences. The '00s on this year's panel— Mike Roberts , Jaimie Paul, Carlos Escobar and Sarah Jones—were anything but or- dinary. They included a senior fellow, a Tucker Fellow, a for- mer Coed, Fraternity & Soror- ity Council president, a rugby player with a yen for teaching, a double major whose javelin throwing has received Ivy ac- colades and a musician writ- ing a rock opera.