It’s been nearly 14 years since Len Pettyjohn sat behind the wheel of a car loaded with bikes, orchestrating the strategy of a team of cyclists over a radio and, frankly, he hasn't really missed it all that much.

After a long break – and perhaps against his better judgment – Pettyjohn is poised to jump behind the wheel of a Toyota-United team car and spend about 40 percent of the coming year on the road again.

It’s certainly a role he’s filled before. A few months after the once-dominant Coors Light Pro Cycling team folded up shop at the end of the 1994 season, the team’s founder and director suddenly found himself with a whole lot of time on his hands.

“I was shocked at how nice it is in Colorado during the summer,” recalls Pettyjohn, “I had forgotten that, because I was never here. Suddenly I was riding my bike and the weather was beautiful and life was pretty good… a lot different than spending 180, 200 days on the road each year.”

It’s not that Pettyjohn simply spent his “retirement” cruising the neighborhood on his bike, or sunning himself by the pool. Within a few months he was laying plans for the mountain bike stage race that grew into the Mercury Tour and, in 1999, kicked off a three-year run of what had to be the toughest one-day event in the U.S., the Red Zinger Classic. The 138-mile road race, which later became the Saturn Classic, featured 14,000 feet of climbing on roads between Boulder and Breckenridge, Colorado.

“They were a lot of work,” Pettyjohn said, “but with the Mercury Tour in Steamboat and the Classic based out of Boulder, I spent most nights at home. I’ve gotten to like that.”

Indeed, the 66-year-old Pettyjohn said he had no intention of resuming the nomad’s life until a passing conversation with Toyota-United owner Sean Tucker at last year’s Tour of California.

“We had an interesting talk,” Pettyjohn said, “mostly about his hopes and expectations for the team. He’s relatively new to the ownership side – he was a very good junior back in the day. He was frustrated by the fact that a lot of people in cycling simply go by the rules of the sport, but don’t have a real perspective on how to get things done… done properly in a business environment.”

“He would ask questions and he seemed interested in some of my answers,” Pettyjohn said. “He finally approached me, saying that he was unsure I’d be interested in taking over the team. You know, I’d had lots of calls before, but I had consistently told people no, but this had a little different feel to it, so I listened.”

Pettyjohn said he took the job on the condition that he would have full management authority – able to hire and fire riders and staff without being second-guessed or over-ruled.

“When I was in the same position on my own teams, I was also the guy who had gone out and raised the money,” Pettyjohn said. “I had full authority and that’s really the only way a director can operate a team successfully. I told Sean I need that here as well.”

Tucker agreed and Pettyjohn officially took the job in October.

“The first thing I did was use the opportunity to lure Scott off the bike,” Pettyjohn said, referring to Scot Moninger, the 41-year-old captain of the BMC team. The two have a history that dates back to when Moninger was just 18 and Pettyjohn recruited the Kansas native to ride on his old Crest team. Moninger moved on to the Coors squad and then went on to amass a stellar record of 275 professional wins before announcing his retirement in September.

“He was always a guy I would suggest to other people as a potentially good team director,” Pettyjohn said. “Over the past five years or so – just assuming that Scott would race for maybe one more year – I would offer his name… but he just never quit racing. He’s a really smart guy. He’s learned a lot and he learned it all in a really good way. He’s always paid attention to what was going on… he understood that it wasn’t always the strongest guy who won races, it was usually the smartest.”

Pettyjohn offered to spend the coming season working with Moninger, sharing his background as a team director, with the goal of eventually handing the team off to the younger assistant director.

“He took a day to think about,” Pettyjohn said, “and decided that the situation at Toyota was ideal. The salary was there, the role was a good one and he had someone he trusted to ease that transition… so he wouldn’t have to go straight from the bike into the car.”

Though back behind the wheel and on the road again, Pettyjohn said he’s not looking for a long-term arrangement.

“My role for 2008 is to be the team director,” Pettyjohn said. “My goal, though, is to put Scott into as high a profile position as I possibly can. That’s going to be a function of how well the team does and how comfortable he is… but I see none of that as a problem. I want to see him do as much as he’s comfortable with. Absolutely, I see mine as gradually declining role on the team.”

Pettyjohn said one of the attractions of working on the team is that it already has a strong roster. Crediting former directors Frankie Andreu and Harm Jansen for “building up a solid team,” Pettyjohn said he looks forward to working from a solid foundation.

“The team has already had a fair amount of success,” he said. “Last year, they were devastated by injuries and the other problem they faced was trying to chase (National Racing Calendar) points. The combination was tough on morale. They had too many people hurt and they were chasing the NRC title, which stretched them too thin.”

In 2008, Pettyjohn noted, the goal will be to focus on winning important races, rather than on a season-long title that has little meaning outside “of the small world of die-hard cycling fans.”

“They really did miss out on important victories, just because they were chasing NRC points all the time,” he said. “If a sponsorship is about media and prestige, then it’s really more important to go out and win races. If you have the support of a sponsor like Toyota, you have to get the attention of more than just the cycling press. You need the main-stream media and that means focusing on winning big races… and let the points fall where they may.”

Pettyjohn said most riders on the squad will race a moderate schedule of about 45 days in which “we devote the full resources of the team – with full staff and equipment – and really concentrate on those races that are in important markets for Toyota.”

For the rest of the season, riders will be able to spend time at home, racing in local events to hone their skills and taking time to recover.

“The riders are receptive and I expect we’ll have a good season,” he said.

For Pettyjohn, he expects to be on the road anywhere from 130 to 150 days again this year, but he’s not looking for another 10-year stint behind the wheel. He’s signed a one-year contract and then he, Tucker and Moninger will reassess the deal at the end of the season.

Asked about the possibility of getting back into the promotion business, Pettyjohn is flush with ideas and has a good take on what it would take to get a big sponsor involved in bankrolling a major national tour. That said, he quickly added that he wouldn’t take on a project of that scale, “even if someone came to me with everything lined up.”

“I’m just not interested in working that hard again,” he said.

Famous last words.