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Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill

Down in the Dirt
by Timm Muth
A monthly article by the author of Mountain Biking in North Carolina. Rants, raves, reviews and chain grease.

Son of a Ridin' Fool
May 2003

This is a tale of one man's conversion to the Doctrine of Joyous Cycling. He found within it the power to heal old wounds, the key to a strength he'd never known, and a path that led to triumph and beyond.
My dad was far from your typical overweight, golf-cart riding, balding with a bad comb-over, retired fellow. He spent a lot of time outdoors, and sometimes took long walks when the weather permitted. But he was never much on organized exercise, and most of his leisure time was spent puttering around the basement. On top of that, a pack and a half of smokes a day for 45 years simply takes its toll. So eventually, he had to pay the price in pain and suffering: a heart attack, triple bypass surgery, and - as one of his veteran friends called it - a membership card to the ol' Zipper Club.

A month after his surgery, I found him still parked on the couch, channel surfing and calling for his lunch. He looked terrible - hardly better than when he first got out of the hospital. The doctor had told him that if he didn't start exercising, he wouldn't regain his strength. But Dad maintained that he hurt too badly to do much of anything - a poor argument at best, but Dad always was a hard-headed old fart. Well, my mom had to be supportive and understanding; I didn't. So I marched into the living room, turned off the tube, and called his bluff.
"Hey, Pop," I said. "It's nice outside. Why don't you put on some shoes and a jacket, and we'll go for a little walk."
"No, no. Can't do it," he answered - a little too quickly, I thought. "My chest hurts, you know. It's real bad today." He followed it up with a pretty convincing display of hacking and wheezing.
Nope, sorry; not nearly good enough. I knew from the grimace on his face that he was in a lot of pain. But I also knew that just sitting there wasn't going to bring him one step closer to recovery. As far as I was concerned, he was going for a walk if I had to drag him kicking and screaming the entire way.

"Pop," I continued, "I don't care if we make it out to the end of the sidewalk and back. The doc said you either do it, or you're gonna die. And that just doesn't sound like much of a choice to me, so let's go." I waited for his angry reply, determined to meet it head on; but Dad simply sat up without further comment, and started lacing on his sneakers. It'd taken me 32 years, but I'd finally won an argument. Dad and I rarely saw eye to eye on most subjects, and he seldom took any of my suggestions seriously. But once he had his shoes on, he just looked at me and quietly reached out for a hand up. I had a quick flash of memory then: of being eleven years old, and having Dad reach down with the same hand to lift me from the road after a monstrous skateboard crash. The vision faded from my mind, and I fought back a throat full of tears. Then I helped him up and into his coat, and soon we were out on the street.

We made it one block that day - only one. And he shuffled along through that one, like ... well, like some old man who'd had open-heart surgery. But still, we made it out there and back, and I didn't have to carry him. I considered it a triumph. The next day, we made it two blocks before we had to turn back. The day after that, almost four. I left at the end of the week, and told him it was up to him to do the work. By summer, Dad was walking 5 miles every day; he even joined the local Y, started swimming and doing Nautilus circuits.
After a few months, Dad startled me by asking questions about bikes and cycling. He'd never taken much notice of my biking before. Oh, he'd nod and make a few polite noises, as I recanted tales of my recent adventures and injuries. But, as with so many of my passions, the subject simply held no interest for him. Now, though, he started quizzing me about how far we rode, about where our bikes would take us, about maintenance, costs, and how often we broke down.

It must've been a good sell, because come Christmas, Dad asked Santa to bring him a new bike. I tried to make sure he got something decent, but I missed my advisory window of opportunity, and he ended up instead with a Montgomery Wards special, a 45 lb. hybrid monster of white plastic and no-name components. I shook my head in disgust the first time I saw it, but I went ahead and got the brakes and seat adjusted for him; I even managed to get the ugly beast shifting at somewhat regular intervals. I gave him a five-minute lecture on how everything worked, and took him out for a little spin around the neighborhood. Dad was breathing like a steam train when we got back, and I silently gave it a week before his two-wheeled Edsel was collecting dust in the back of the basement, along with the rowing machine and weight bench. For the second time, though, ol' Dad gave me pause to step back and reconsider. He started pedaling that behemoth around on a fairly regular basis, doing five mile loops out along the highway and back. A couple of months later, he even asked me about getting a better bike. I sent him to the local shop with a list in hand, and he came home with a fairly nice Diamondback hybrid, a set of skinny tires, and a whole bag full of goodies.
Three weeks after that, Dad called to tell me he'd been riding every day - 20 mile loops. From that point on, I knew he was hooked. By the following Spring, Dad was getting up and on his bike by 9 am, riding 20 miles to the YMCA, then doing a nautilus circuit and a half-mile in the pool. After the gym, Pop would pedal another 15 miles, stop for a milkshake (no fool when it came to power food, my dad), then turn around and make the return trip back in one run.

I was impressed; actually, astonished might have been closer to the truth. There was my Pop, consistently putting in 4 or 5 hours a day in the saddle, knocking back at least 200 miles a week. I certainly wasn't putting in 70 miles a day. Hell, 20 miles of singletrack was a big afternoon in my book, and I was lucky if I made that more that once a week.
The next thing I know, Dad tells me he's going to ride in the Cycle Across Maryland tour: 367 miles in 6 days. I hesitated to disbelieve him this time, and he didn't let me down. He stuck with the training schedule the CAM folks sent him, putting in 250-300 miles a week all through the Spring and early summer. And come July, damned if he didn't pull it off: 367 miles, by some old fella who couldn't mow his own backyard the year before. He even rode the longest day - a 70-miler - in a torrential downpour. Lots of folks piled on the sag wagon that day, I heard, but not my Pop. He said the rain just kept the mosquitoes at bay. Yeah, he did it clean, and even took third place in the Stupid Helmet Contest. I don't think that Dad had ever done anything in his life that made him feel so proud. I know I'd never been prouder either, and I bragged about him to every rider I knew.

My Pop hadn't been back from the CAM tour a week when he started saying how much he'd like for the two of us to cover a Century ride together. A Century! I'd never even ridden on the road before! Then again, Dad had never asked me for anything like this before either. In any case, I couldn't turn him down. I told him that I'd try to be ready for it by Spring, and that maybe he and I could even run a pace line together on the '95 CAM tour. Dad got pretty excited at the idea, and ran out to buy an honest-to-goodness touring bike. He even worked himself a discount on accessories by letting the local shop use one of his stuffed rattlesnakes in their window display. He started dragging a few of his younger friends out to the C&O Canal for some 70 and 80-mile day trips. And I started wondering how bad it was gonna feel to have my old graying Pop - who had a good 30 years or so on me - pedal me into the pavement during the next summer's tour.
My dad didn't manage to ride into the New Year, though. He started having back pain in October, bad enough to force him off the saddle. By December, they'd diagnosed it as bone cancer, but Dad just wasn't ready to turn it in yet. When he lost the use of his legs, he started talking to me about how much time he'd need to get in shape to run the CAM tour in a wheelchair. And when he realized that he probably wouldn't recover in time for the tour, he volunteered to hand out food and drink at the rest stops.
But I guess the '95 CAM tour just wasn't on Dad's card. He hung up his shoes on February 11th, 1995, and rode on out into the stars. Had a pace line of his own to set somewhere. Knowing my dad, he's probably collaring St. Peter right now, shaming him into a day-trip out to Alpha Centari and back.

We put his ashes in the ground on a cold day in February, and his Native American friends sang some songs to carry him on his way. But before I left my Mom's that day, I went to the basement to grab my Dad's road bike, and tossed it into the back of my truck.
The week I got home, I stuck my mountain bike pedals on the bike, set the seat, and took it out for 31 hilly miles that left me burning for air; hurtin' for certain, but hungering for more. I talked it over with my two riding buddies, and they said they'd be honored to join me on the CAM tour '95, as a tribute to my Pop. So we trained hard for a couple of months, and that August we rode from the western edge of Maryland, through the mountains, and on down into Baltimore. We even took the option that let us stretch the longest day of the ride out to 100 miles, just to nab that Century for ol' Dad. The three of us divided up the feathers that Dad had worn on his helmet, so we'd have a piece of him along for the ride. And throughout all the sweat and curses, the 95º days and 90% humidity, we could feel him drafting right with us, pulling us all along with his laughter and Snickers bars.

I miss my Dad a lot sometimes. His last two years were the closest we'd ever had together, and it was the biking that bonded our friendship. I miss him most when I think that we could have spent the next ten years or so riding together. But he had places to go, I expect; bigger wheels to turn. So in the meantime, I'll just keep on slappin' 'em down, and makin' the rounds. And every time my lungs are burning, every time my legs are screaming, every time some young hoodlum rips by me, just daring me to catch him, I'll think of my dad, throwing down 70 miles in the rain. And I'll grit my teeth, and hunker down, and see what I can do about blowing that smart-assed young hot-shot right off into the bushes.
Ride on Pop. I'll catch up. Just gotta few things to do first.



Old Dirt

 

 

 

"Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls."
- Bob Weir