Lost!

I've written in the past about my love of bicycling, and how my weight loss of recent years has brought a resurgence of my old cycling ways. Last year, I rode over 1400 miles, after riding over 1200 the previous year, and I'm on track to be around 1200 again this year, depending on the weather in November.

When I was fat and out-of-shape, but at least trying to get/stay somewhat in shape, I would ride with Molly from time to time. Which, in those out-of-shape days, could be pretty humbling. Back in my cycling heyday, Molly couldn’t remotely keep up with me, unless I was pulling the kids in a trailer, or something like that. But when I was at my fattest, I struggled to keep up with her. Which would be one thing, if she were an avid cyclist who was regularly out pounding the pedals, but she wasn’t; she’d ride with me, if it fit her schedule, but in terms of sheer miles, I was riding more than she was, and I still couldn’t really keep up with her.

But the good side of it was that, by that time, we were at a point where we really liked spending time together – all that Theology of the Body stuff, and all that. And so, we just enjoyed spending the time together, and didn’t worry about who was keeping up with whom.

Once I lost weight, and started getting back in shape, the riding situation pretty much reverted to what it had been in the beginning – if I was riding hard, she couldn’t stay with me. But we had come to enjoy riding together, and so we still looked for opportunities where it didn’t matter so much how much of a workout I got – during summer break, or over holidays, when I could get one good, hard workout ride, I’d take a second, lower-key ride with Molly, and maybe we’d stop for a picnic somewhere along the way. And whenever we ride together, usually once or twice, by mutual consent, I’ll ‘take a flyer’ - run on ahead for a few miles, and wait for her.

Last summer, we had one such ride – we didn’t have much planned, just 20 miles or so, to a neighboring town and back home. The little town we were riding to has a lovely little riverside park, but we didn’t even pack a picnic or anything – it was just a nice, low-key ride, for the two of us to spend some time together.

It started out very pleasantly. It was about 8-9 miles from our house to the town, and we were having a good time. Molly was feeling a little frisky, which made it fun for me, because she was riding a bit more aggressively than she usually does.

We got to the town, which is nestled on the banks of a small river, so there was a fairly steep descent down to the river as we entered the town, and a decent little climb away from the river, on the other side. I enjoy climbing aggressively, and so, as we came into town, I turned to Molly, said, “I’m gonna attack the hill; I’ll wait for you at the top,” and took off. There was a street corner at the top of the hill, and once I got there, I pulled my bike off the main roadway, took a drink from my water bottle, and waited for Molly to climb the hill.

A few minutes later, Molly still hadn’t arrived at the top of the hill, and it wasn’t such a big hill that she would have struggled that badly. I turned and looked back down the hill, but she was nowhere to be seen. I mean, she wasn’t on the road, anywhere. Which was really weird – where could she have gone? The little riverside park was at the bottom of the hill, and so I figured she must have stopped there; perhaps she was tired, and wanted to rest a bit before climbing the hill. So I rode back down the hill to look for her in the park. Not there. There was another park on the other side of the street, so I checked there. Not there, either.

By now, I was seriously scratching my head – where on earth could my wife have gotten to? This was a very small town – maybe five blocks from end to end. There simply weren’t that many places for her to hide. I checked the public restrooms at both parks, but no-one had seen her, and even her bike was nowhere to be seen. I rode back up the hill, noticing a mother on the sidewalk as I rode by, trying to calm her baby, who was crying very loudly. But still, Molly wasn’t at the top of the hill. There was one side street that angled off, halfway up the hill – perhaps she had taken that way, thinking to give herself a less-severe climb. But no sign of her there, either.

By this time, I was somewhere between panic (did something really bizarre happen to my wife?) and anger (did she just take off, without telling me?) and utter, stark confusion (what the heck could possibly have happened to her?). And I was wishing that she had her cell phone with her, so at least I could call her. But we’d decided that we didn’t both need our cell phones, so we’d only brought mine.

I was very reluctant to just throw my hands in the air, and ride on alone – if my wife was somewhere in that town, I sure didn’t want to just leave her there, if she was in some kind of trouble. But, after searching every corner of that town for nearly an hour, I satisfied myself that it was most unlikely that she was still there, and I took off on the road out of town.

Less than a mile out of town, my phone rang. It was Molly. “Can you pick me up?” she said. “I got a flat tire.”

“Where are you?” I asked her (probably more sharply than I should have, but I was still pretty upset by the whole experience).

“I don’t know,” she said, “just a minute.” I heard muffled voices as she asked somebody where she was. “I’m on Cottonwood Road,” she finally said. “Can you come and get me?”

“Um, sure, but it will take me a bit; I’m just leaving the town.”

“You’re not home?”

“No; I just spent an hour looking for you. Why did you leave without me?”

“I thought you left without me!”

“What?? I would never do that!”

“Well, my chain fell off on the downhill, so I just walked up the hill, and when I got to the top, you weren’t there, so I figured you just left without me. Where did you go?”

“I rode back down the hill looking for you! How on earth did I not see you?”

“I have no idea; I remember walking past a woman with a crying baby.”

“You were on the sidewalk?”

And suddenly the mystery stood revealed. Strange as it was, Molly had been walking up the hill, on the sidewalk, at the very time I was scanning the roadway for her, and then riding back down the hill looking for her. We both saw the same woman, struggling with the same crying baby, BUT COMPLETELY MISSED EACH OTHER!!

So Molly, thinking I had ridden on without her, put the chain back on her bike and headed off, thinking that she’d find me waiting for her at some corner on ahead, while I was frantically searching for her back in town. When she called me to pick her up, she assumed that I was already home, not miles behind her.

So I rode on to where she was, sitting by the side of the road with her flat-tired bicycle. It was still about six miles home from where she was, so I rode home alone, and came back for her with the car. And all was well that ended well.

In terms of a low-key ride together, there was precious little of it spent together, and there was WAY too much angst flying around (at least in my head; Molly has an amazing, Alfred-E-Neuman, ‘What-me-worry’ disposition) to be anything like low-key. But, when it was all said and done, it was a pretty amazing story of how we could pass within 15 feet of each other, and each think the other had somehow, inexplicably, disappeared. . .

*************************

While I'm on the topic of bike rides with family members, I can't help mentioning that the last two weekends, I've ridden with 4M. Star-athlete 4M. Four-year high-school varsity athlete 4M, who, even three scant months ago, was running on Large Urban Public High's track team, and winning the informal designation of 'The Fastest White Boy in OurTown'. . .

He has ridden with me occasionally in the past (maybe 2 or 3 times a summer), just to get some extra aerobic work in on the side. And of course, well-trained athlete that he was, and I being the 50-something weekend warrior that I was, he would mostly just kinda toy with me. Not to give a wrong impression - he got a good side workout by riding with me, but a 'side workout' is what it was for him, and even though I knew a lot more about cycling techniques and tactics than he did, his sheer athleticism just left me in the dust. Not that I ever had any illusions that it could be otherwise. . .

So, last weekend, I was preparing to go out on my regular weekly ride. My regular riding partner was otherwise occupied, so I was figuring on a solo ride, until 4M saw me getting ready, and asked if he could come with me. I told him that I had a pretty long ride planned - 45 miles - but I'd welcome the company, and also the small added challenge of having his athletic self along to push me a bit.

We started off on a fairly leisurely pace, not wanting to burn ourselves out in the first 10 miles. The route was one of my favorites, following some lightly-traveled back roads, with lots of trees and hills, and even a couple lakes. For much of the first half of the ride, 4M rode on ahead of me. At about the 30-mile mark, we stopped for a break at a party-store/bait-shop, and 4M was remarking how he hadn't really worked out much since track season ended, and how he was glad for the workout. And I, for my part, was feeling pretty good.

We got back on our bikes, to run the last third of our course on the way home. After a couple miles, we were approaching a moderate hill (actually one of the stiffer ones to be found in the neighborhood of OurTown, but honestly, our area is not very hilly), and 4M started acting frisky, and pulled ahead of me by a bit, making some suitably snotty comment directed to 'the Old Man'. Well, I wasn't about to let that pass unanswered, even as I had no illusions about his ability to respond. So I got out of the saddle and charged up the hill, letting him know as I passed him that the Old Man still had some gas left in the tank. And waiting for him to pass me back.

Except he never did. I got to the top of the hill, and was still feeling pretty good, so I shifted into my highest gear, and just let the dogs run for as long as I could keep it going. A couple times, I saw in my rear-view mirror that 4M was increasing his pace, trying to close the gap between us, and I just increased the pressure, and pulled even farther ahead. And I stayed a couple hundred yards clear for about five miles, until we pulled into a small town (the same one in which Molly and I 'lost' each other, above), and I sat up and waited for him to pull alongside.

And my star-athlete son pulled alongside me, saying, "Dang, Dad - you just ran off, and I couldn't catch up; I was pedaling as hard as I could, but every time I tried to catch you, you went even faster. I just couldn't catch you." And I smiled.

Of course, he hasn't worked out in three months, and is probably in the worst physical condition he's been in since he was in middle school, whereas I'm probably in as good a condition as I've been since I was in my 20s; if he keeps riding with me, he'll get back in shape, and my 'Window of Ego Stroking' will close. But I guarantee you I'm not by any means too proud to remind the Fastest White Boy in OurTown that his Old Man can still dust his ass when the need arises. . .

Uh. . . Thanks

Way back when I still worked for my previous employer, an automotive supplier in OurTown, we moved to a new office building which included, for the first time in my own youthful existence, a ‘Fitness Center’. It was mostly just an open area, where folks could have aerobics classes, or other forms of strenuous (or not-so-strenuous) exercise, on the theory that fit employees will work harder and be happier, and cost less in health coverage. The center also contained a large multi-station weight machine, a couple racks of free weights, a few stationary bikes and a rowing machine.

For my purposes, the main feature of the fitness center was the showers. Those enabled me to ride my bike to work during the months when the roads weren’t snow-covered (it was about 5 miles from my house to the office, which I could cover in about 20 minutes), and to do short workout rides on my lunch hour a couple days a week (there was enough time for me to get in about 12 miles, shower and get back to my desk in a little over an hour).

Of course, when I was showering after my workout, lots of other guys were in the locker-room at the same time, having done their own lunch-hour workouts. One group of guys were into body-building – they’d lift weights with the specific goal of building large, well-defined muscles, and they’d spend a fair bit of time in front of the mirror, making sure that all their work was paying off in terms of how buff they looked.

Now, at this point, I should say that, all the cycling I was doing in those days (upwards of 3000 miles/year) was having its effect on my own physique, such as it was. Specifically, my legs got very strong, and chiseled-looking in their own right. Check out any avid cyclist’s legs, and they’re probably pretty tight and ripped-looking. But I didn’t have a ‘Body Beautiful’ by any stretch of the imagination – I didn’t do any lifting, or anything to build up my upper body, or shoulders, or anything like that, and I still had a round gut that was a couple sizes too big. I just liked to ride my bike, and I liked being in good aerobic shape. At least, good aerobic shape for a fat guy.

So one day, having completed my lunch-hour ride, I was drying off after my shower. One of the body-building guys was getting dressed at a nearby locker. As I got dressed to head back to my office, he nodded in my direction, and said, “You got really nice legs.”

Uh. . . excuse me?

“You got really nice legs,” he repeated. “How do you get those?”

Okay, now this was really, really weird. Looking back, even a couple hours later, I suppose I understood that he was just talking out of his body-building focus, expressing admiration for something he was trying to accomplish for himself. But right there, on the spur of the moment, it felt the least bit creepy. Suddenly, I had a deeper, existential understanding of what women talk about when they say they feel like pieces of meat when men check out their bodies. You know, I might even have been flattered if one of the women complimented my strong, manly legs as I sauntered through the gym after my ride. But another guy. . . in the locker-room. . . both of us half-dressed (or less). . . not so much.

I mumbled something about riding my bike a lot, and hurried to get dressed and get out of there, while my body-building co-worker pressed me – you don’t do any lifting, or leg-work? Only cycling?

Yup, just cycling. Well, gotta go. . . big project. . . see ya ‘round. . .

I felt bad leaving him standing there like that, but I’m pretty sure he just turned and started checking out his own legs in the mirror, wondering to himself, “Cycling, huh? . . .”

Cycling In the Moonlight

My recent cycling post reminded me of another story from the Jones Family Archives. . .

Way back in 1984, when 1F was a two-year-old only-child, Molly and I took her on the PALM ride (Pedal Across Lower Michigan; ie, across the ‘palm of the mitten’, ‘cuz Michigan is shaped like a mitten, get it?), along with a few other couple-friends of ours. PALM is a six-day ride, crossing the Lower Peninsula from shore-to-shore, west to east. With the shorter distances involved, PALM bills itself as a more family-friendly version of more rigorous tours like DALMAC; many parents brought their small children along for the fun, and a few 8-10-year-olds even rode the tour themselves. So I put one of those plastic kid-seats on the back of my bike, and off we went.

And we really did have a good time. The three of us shared a week of life on a somewhat more ‘elemental’ level, with nothing but our own legs to propel us down the road, and sharing a tent together at the overnight campsites.

Of course, strapping a two-year-old into a plastic seat on the back of her dad’s bike for four hours or so, every day for a week, has its own set of challenges, in terms of her attention span, and her willingness to sit semi-still for such long intervals. We planned to take short breaks every hour or so, to let 1F run around a bit before getting back on the bike. And, with some regularity, there were interesting sights to be seen just in the course of rolling down the road. I recall stopping by a turkey farm once (the birds were so fat they could barely stand up), and getting passed by an Amish buggy at another point (note to my readers: many Amish really, really resent being taken for ‘curiosities’ by the ‘outside world’, and attempts to take their photograph can induce a pretty surly response, which may or may not include threatening to run your bicycle into the ditch with their horse).

Molly had recently taught 1F a cute little ‘waking-up-in-the-morning’ ditty, which became a daily staple of our first few miles on the road:

When cows get up in the mor-ning, they always say ‘Good Day’.
When cows get up in the mor-ning, they always say ‘Good Day’.
They say, “Moo, moo, moo, moo,” that is what they say.
They say, “Moo, moo, moo, moo,” that is what they say.

And so on, through a whole barnyard-full (or ark-full, as the case may be) of various animals, and how they all say ‘Good Day’ when they get up in the morning. By the end of the week, I’d heard about all I cared to about animals and the sounds they make in the morning. And I’m hopeful that most of my fellow-riders on that tour have either forgotten about it, or found it in their hearts to forgive us. . .

But, our best efforts aside, sometimes boredom set in for our beloved first-born. Seated as she was on a seat over my rear wheel, the things which were most immediately presented to her senses were things pertaining to my backside. Like my pockets, for one example (I was wearing ‘cycling gear’, where the shorts are those nifty black lycra things, and the pockets are in the back of my shirt). One time, Molly just happened to notice 1F pull my wallet out of my pocket, inspect its contents for a minute or two, and toss it in the roadside weeds, or I might have ended up washing dishes to pay for our lunch.

Another time, as I was pedaling along, 1F grabbed the waistband of my lycra shorts and pulled. Pants-ing me in the process. And putting my, uh, reciprocating moons on display for the benefit of all my fellow-riders in the immediate vicinity (it would be gratuitous, I’m sure, to describe said moons as ‘hairy’, so I won’t). Molly corrected her sternly for that, you can be sure. Altho, I gotta say, some of the effect of ‘stern’ is lost when you’re trying to stifle a belly laugh, and snot is blowing out your nose. . .

But, as I say, we had a great time. We finished the week, and marked it up as a really cool family vacation. And within a couple months, Molly was pregnant with 2F, and the family dynamic never really meshed with the idea of doing PALM again.

Which is probably just as well, for modesty’s sake, knowwhatImean?

On the Road Again

Labor Day weekend is pretty much the pinnacle of the bicycling season in Michigan. Every year, 1500 or so cyclists ride the DALMAC tour, 350+ miles from Lansing to Mackinaw City, over the course of 4 or 5 days.

I didn’t ride DALMAC this year; but, in honor of the Pinnacle of Michigan Bicycling, my riding buddy and I rode 77 miles on Saturday, the pinnacle of our own riding season. And this morning, 4M and I did another 35 miles, which put me over 1000 miles for the second year in a row. Woohoo!


To put that in context. . .

I bought my first touring bike after I got out of college, before Molly and I started dating. I started going for rides out on the country roads around OurTown, maybe 20 miles or so at a time. When Molly and I got married, I bought her a bike (a mixte frame, which she still has; it’s almost kind of a cool relic these days), and we would go on rides together.

By around 1982 or so, a few other guys in our community took up cycling, and we started riding together. I rode my first DALMAC in 1983, and every year from ’84-’86, I rode over 3000 miles per year (in ’85, I maxed out at 3664 – one of my riding buddies and I thought it would be really cool to say that we averaged 10 miles per day for the entire year)

2F was a year old when I rode my last DALMAC, and Molly, uh, let me know that training for DALMAC was starting to interfere with the demands that two toddlers were placing on our lives. So, I stopped riding DALMAC, and cut my miles back. Still, from ’87-‘93, I averaged over 2300 miles per year. Changes in my job meant that I rode even less after that, but still, in ’95, I rode over 1200 miles. ’96 was the year I switched jobs and started with my long commute. I didn’t even track my miles that year, but Molly and I, in honor of turning 40, ‘bootlegged’ the last day of the DALMAC tour that year. We weren’t quite in ‘DALMAC shape’, but we had a good time.

After that, I basically stopped riding for several years. My long commute and growing family just pushed cycling to the bottom of the priority list.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I started getting back on the bike. My old community riding buddies invited me on a ride with them. I rode about 5 miles, and thought I was gonna die. I had to stop, and lie on the ground, and wait for my heart to stop pounding out of my chest. It was really pretty humiliating – I used to ride 35 miles just as a routine matter, and here, I could barely do five miles without dying.

But, I knew the only way for me to get in better shape was to keep riding. If five miles was all I could do, I was at least gonna do five miles. And then eight, and then ten, and then twelve. For the next several years, I went out as often as I could on the weekends, riding miles considerably reduced from what I’d once done. There was a 17-mile ride that I used to do as my first, shake-out-the-legs ride of the season. Now, it was my goal for the summer – if I worked hard, I could do a 17-miler by the end of the summer. Or maybe (*gasp*) a 20-miler. I didn’t track my miles for those years, but I vaguely recall that something around 200-300 was a typical season for me.

And Molly, solicitous as she has always been for my health and well-being, would ride with me, when she could. Which provided another marker for how far I’d fallen. ‘Back in the day’, I’d ride with Molly when I didn’t care how good a workout I got – if I rode hard, she couldn’t remotely keep up with me. But now, she was dusting me. It became one of my goals to get strong enough to where she didn’t have to wait for me.

In 2006, I started my weight-loss program, and, as part of the program, I took a more aggressive approach to riding. Instead of starting the season with 10-12 mile rides, I started with a 15-miler, and built up to 20 miles pretty quickly. My ‘pinnacle’ goal for that year was to do the 35-mile ride that I used to do ‘back in the day’. It was actually kind of an exciting year – I was rediscovering miles and miles of really nice rides that I hadn’t done in years. I think I finished ’06 with something on the order of 600 miles.

Last year, I was even more aggressive. We built up to 30-milers pretty early in the season, did a 50-miler over Labor Day, and ended up with over 1200 miles for the year. And this year, I’m on pace for 1300-1400, depending on how the weather falls in November. . .


This is all like the next chapter of The Great Weight Loss. It’s like a whole chunk of my life that had been lost has been restored to me. I had almost forgotten the joy I got from being out on my bike. And, when I was over 300 pounds, even though I was getting on the bike in whatever ‘reduced’ capacity I could manage, I was pretty sure those days were gone forever.

So, as I said, when I started being able to ride miles that I hadn’t been able to do in years, it was like being re-introduced to an old friend. Corners of the countryside around OurTown that I hadn’t seen in years, were becoming familiar to me once again. . .

There is this huge sense of having gotten a reprieve, a ‘do-over’ on a massive scale. I am so grateful to be able to ride again. At age 52, I’m in as good a physical shape as I’ve been in many years.

And, it’s a complete, gratuitous bonus to be able to ride with my sons. At various times, if my regular riding buddy has been unavailable, I’ve been able to ride with 4M or 5M; both of them are high-school athletes, and I’m sure, if they really put the hammer down, I couldn’t stay with them. But, I can make them work harder than they used to have to. . .

So, next year, I’m thinking of doing DALMAC again. 23 years after I did my last one, and 13 years after I even rode any part of the route.

And Molly and I are saving our pennies to buy a tandem. . .