Thirty-five years ago I went on a date with this cute hippie chick I met at school. It was (surprise!) a bicycle date. Within minutes, she had a flat tire. Of course, in those days, neither of us carried a tube or pump. So, in a remarkable act of youthful naiveté, we flagged down a Seattle city bus. Lucky for us, we looked sufficiently pitiful for the driver to allow us onboard.
That is what you call an inauspicious beginning.
I’m still riding with that same hippie chick, lo these many years. Only now, we both know a bit more about how to fix flats. (That’s a good thing, since we’ve had, by my rough estimate, about a thousand of them.) We rode away from our wedding on bicycles. We bought a custom tandem before we bought a car. In perhaps the ultimate expression of our insanity, our daughter logged over a thousand miles in the bicycle trailer before she was one year old (the whole thing was chronicled in an article in “Bicycling Magazine”). You know, the cycling lifestyle.
We’ve raced, done triathlons, commuted, and toured in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Italy, Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, Holland, and Switzerland (though I am probably missing a few). We still own that purple handbuilt tandem, and it’s carried us through two double centuries and innumerable breakfast rides. Nowadays, when people see the big bike, they say, “Nice vintage tandem!” I guess that means we’re vintage, too.
She also traveled the world with me in my job as a cycling journalist, and was by my side when Greg LeMond won a stunning world championship in the rain, in France, in 1989. (My daughter learned to walk on that trip!)
It’s been an amazing ride. For work and pleasure, we’ve traveled the world in pursuit of cycling. With apologies to SNL, the bicycle been berry berry good to me.
Of course, we’re a bit less proud of the damage done. I’ve broken at least a dozen bones. She’s broken about half that many, and cracked three helmets. (Thank God for helmets.) In the ultimate romantic expression, we’ve even crashed together. Several times. We’re not proud of this. It just is. Ask anyone who’s been riding that long. Sometimes you fall down. But you get up.
Undoubtedly, things are creakier now. It takes a bit longer to get going in the morning. When I suggest that maybe we should do another double century on the tandem—just to prove our youthfulness—she laughs. I’ve accepted that it’s not going to happen. And maybe it’s for the best. Rides these days are often punctuated with coffee, fatty foods, and a modicum of whining. You do what you have to do.
Despite these myriad obstacles, the whole process still strikes me as a small and certain miracle: You swing a leg over the top tube, push off, and pretty soon your feet are tracing tiny circles in the air. Yes!
In that moment, you’re riding. Come to think of it, we rode today. And you know what? It was as good as it’s ever been. And that’s pretty damn good.
