Dobovedo’s Journal of Journeys

Dobovedo. Who or What is a Dobovedo? I’m guessing that the only people who read this Journal are people who already know me [which is their problem]. But I’ll explain in case you stumbled on to this website while looking for something better to read [which is your problem]. Dobovedo is a nickname, and like many nicknames the usage of it came into being through a series of events.

My name is Kevin Dobo-Hoffman. Dobo is my wife Cindy’s maiden name. And it is pronounced with long O’s. Doh as in ‘donut’ or ‘dough’, and boh as in ‘bow and arrow’. Doh-boh.

My last name is Hoffman. When we were married, my wife’s dream since childhood was to someday own a bakery and call it Dobo’s Delights. When we were married, to keep her name and the dream alive, we both hyphenated our names. Turns out that requires more frequent explanation and hassle than I would have ever imagined.

Dobo is Hungarian, but unlike a lot of Eastern European names, it isn’t ’short’ for anything. Just Dobo.

As fate would have it, Cindy’s dream actually became a reality, and we currently own a small bakery in Piqua, Ohio called Dobo’s Delights Bake Shoppe. When we first moved to town and bought the business, all the locals just assumed that my last name was Dobo. I didn’t correct them, because I figured it was more important to have the name ‘Dobo’ floating around town, to promote the business, than it was to tell them my last name is actually Hoffman. And since we both hyphenated our names At the local watering hole, I quickly became known as just ‘Dobo’, because people like saying it.

Here the story takes a turn. While out at said watering hole late one evening, a friend made a smart remark [as friends do] either about me, my wife, or something suitably offensive. And for that mark he received a dope slap¹, and a good one at that. Well, the others at the bar found this to be extremely amusing, and in the phrase evolved like this:

1. “You been dope slapped!”
2. “You been Dobo slapped!”
3. “You been Dobo’ed!”

At this point Dobo, in addition to being proper noun, became a verb.

Fast-forward a couple years. One sunny afternoon I was out on the local club ride and told someone this little story when they asked about the name. Quickly my Dobo nickname caught on out there, to the point where I most newer riders don’t even know my real name.

Additionally… out at the club ride, there was another Kevin. Although he had lived in New York for a while he pre-dated my existence within the group, when he moved back to the area, there were now two Kevin’s. So Dobo usage increased out of the need for what Wikipedia refers to as “disambiguation”.

So where does -vedo come from? Glad you asked.

I sometimes have the urge to go to the front of the paceline for the last climb of the day and pull until I absolutely crack and then go off the back, unable to finish the ride with the rest of the pack. I’m usually riding with cyclists who are of a much better caliber than I am, so doing this is fairly amusing to them. In cycling this is known as a lead-out, although coming from me it was usually a pretty slow one! Right about the time I first started doing this, Jose Azevedo² was earning a little recognition in Le Tour day France³ by “burying himself on the climbs in defense of team leader [Lance] Armstrong”. Displaying the same tendencies, albeit with much less skill, my Dobo nickname jokingly became Dobovedo. It also has a tendency to evlove into the likes of Dobokourov, Dobolini, etc.

Now you know and I bet you’re sorry you asked!

1. a light “whappp” to the back of the head, done with an open palm in an upward motion. The physical equivalent of the phrase, “Whatta you, a moron?!” [↩]
2. not the baseball player; that’s with a ‘c’ [↩]
3. as pronounced by Bob Roll [↩]