The Root of a Nicky...
Okay, Sandy (not my mom) wants to know the origin of the name Turbo. Honestly, there's not that much to tell. For years, I've been leaving it at, "it's not about the bike", and letting people draw their own conclusions. This will pretty much kill any fabrications anyone might have had, and it's not that exciting a story (at all). Basically as soon as I went to college, this fellow Karim started calling me "Turbo", and it stuck. I hadn't ridden with him at all, so it wasn't cycling related, and I don't know that it makes a lot sense since I am pretty much mello. But it stuck hard. At first, it was intermixed with "Nitro", but that died off after a couple months.
Anyway, it got to the point where people didn't know my real name. One guy on our collegiate team who I rode with, or ate with, or at least saw everyday came up to me at the end of his first semester and told me he didn't know my real name 'til we started racing and he saw it in the results. This caught on with other schools and pretty much the whole Mid-Western conference knew me as "Turbo".
Then, I moved to California and the name almost died. Occassionally, I'd hear someone shout it at a race, but for all intents and purposes (not intensive purposes, J-RAD) it was dead in the water, and I gained some new nickies like "The Stork" and "Crazy Legs". The exception being when we travelled to the Mid-West and everyone would refer to me as Turbo again. In particular, I recall Phil "Bilco" Stephens announcing the Pro-Crit (haha) champs and yelling "Ryan Turbo Barrett putting in a huge acceleration" as I struggled to hold mid-pack positioning. It gave me a little motivation there, and a few of the teammies picked up on it, but it never really held again until I moved back to Utah.
As we prepared to move to Utah, I called up my man Super Marc-io Yap to inquire about a team. I knew Marc from our collegiate days, so he pretty much called (and still calls) me nothing but Turbo. At the time, I was on the fence about continuing on with my D-3 Dreamer career, quitting all together, and finding a regional team to roll with. That's a story for another day, but Marc hooked me up with the Healthy Choice lads and that was the best route I could've chosen. Now, since Marc was always calling me "Turbo", it pretty much grew with the rest of the team, and then onto the other Utah teams. Travelling around a bit, I think the nicky has actually taken more in CA now than it did when I lived there. So the moral of the story is that "Turbo" has nothing to do with my biking skillz... although I do have mad skillz all the same.
More on college and nicknames. Yeah, that's pretty much what we were about and there was no holding back or worrying about feelings, so I was pretty lucky to get stuck with "Turbo". Some of the other names from back in the day included:
"The Egyptian Magician" (self-explanatory)
"The AntEater" (he was uncircumsized)
"Quasimodo" (talk about dopplegangers)
"Krispy" (as in Kreme- he had a penchant for eating, and was also known as "Jiggles"- pretty much describing his hind parts on a rough road)
"Ballswax" (his name rhymed with this, sort of)
I could keep going, but they only get worse, and the thing to remember is that when you start getting nicknames or when people start making fun of you, that usually means that you are being accepted, and whatever you do, don't try to fight it. Nothing will make a nicky stick faster than your attempts to reject it.
Hope this solves the riddle once and for all.