‘It’s a piece of history about to happen.’ : Putting a Stamp on 100-Mile Bike Tour

It’s not the most efficient way to send a letter from Anaheim to Irvine: up to La Habra, over to Cypress, down to El Toro and then north again, over a circuitous route covering 100 miles.

All the way carried on a bicycle.

But several thousand envelopes are expected to make that trek Sunday. They will receive unique postmarks showing that each letter crossed the start and finish lines of the Orange County Centennial Bike Tour, which kicks off Orange County’s centennial celebration.

For philatelists--stamp collectors--these specially transported envelopes bearing two pictorial postage cancellations from the same day will be choice additions to their collections. For souvenir collectors, they will be inexpensive mementos of the bike tour and festival.

And for the 15 U.S. Postal Service employees who will carry the souvenirs-in-the-making on a daylong bike excursion through 19 of the county’s 27 cities, the ride will be their contribution to history.

Postal Clerk on Route

“I’ve been excited about this since I first heard about it a month ago,” said Joel Brown, a postal service clerk who will be carrying mail on the 100-mile route. “It’s a piece of history about to happen, and I’m glad I’m going to be part of it.”

Another member of the “bike mail” team on the 100-mile ride will be Roland Marchand, a bulk mail acceptance clerk and Vietnam War veteran who lost his right leg when he was hit by a mortar during the Tet offensive in 1968.

Marchand, 39, who has a special prosthesis for bicycle riding, began riding stationary exercise bikes a few years back to lose weight and get into shape. When a trainer at his gym offered to teach him to ride a real bicycle with his artificial leg, Marchand was skeptical. Then he became hooked.

Today he rides 200 to 300 miles a week. The most he has ridden in one day is 80 miles, but he anticipates no hitches on Sunday.

“This will be the first time I’ve done 100 miles in a day, but I’m not going to have any problem. It will be a challenge for me,” Marchand said. “I’m going to be concentrating more than anything on finishing. Knowing that I can do with one leg what others can do with two . . . that keeps me going.”

Special Tour Shirts

Marchand and other Postal Service team riders will wear specially designed bicycle shirts that say “Bike Mail.” In addition to the 15 mail-carrying riders on the 100-mile route, 10 more cyclists will wear the Postal Service name on their backs for the 25-mile ride.

At the end of the route, each of the special-delivery letters will bear cancellation marks showing a bicycle rider and the “OC 100” centennial logo. The cancellation at Anaheim Stadium will show a “start” flag next to the rider, and the cancellation at Irvine Spectrum will show a “finish” flag.

The historic offering is already a hit. Stamp collectors have been sending empty, self-addressed envelopes to the Anaheim postmaster to be carried in the bike tour, said Ruth Gooch, a sales promotion specialist for the Postal Service at the general mail station in Santa Ana. The envelopes must have a first-class stamp in the upper right-hand corner for the starting line cancellation, and a second stamp in the lower right-hand corner for the finish line cancellation. The envelopes will be mailed back to the senders after the bike tour.

While special pictorial cancellations for events are not uncommon, it is unusual for two cancellations for the same event to be offered on the same day, Gooch said. According to postal regulations, she said, different cancellations for the same event on the same day are not permitted unless the cancellations are done in different cities.

As of Thursday, several hundred envelopes had been received from stamp collectors throughout the country, according to post office officials, who added that a deluge was expected in the final days. The special cancellations were publicized in Linn’s Stamp News, a national publication for philatelists.

Envelopes for the 100-mile ride will also be collected before the bike tour Sunday morning at the Postal Service booth at the Anaheim Stadium starting line. The self-addressed envelopes must bear two stamps to be accepted.

Souvenir collectors who don’t want to send an envelope along the route can also get the cancellation at postal service booths at the starting line and finishing lines. The cancellation will be free and can be stamped on anything--a page of the program, for example, or the official bib to be worn by registered bike riders--as long as there is a postage stamp on it. The postal service is not allowed to put the cancellation on a blank sheet of paper, Gooch said.