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writing for godot

Back on the Bike II

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Written by alan pierpoint   
Wednesday, 11 November 2015 17:01

Getting Back on the Bike II


First a word of gratitude to reader Kevin McCombs, who wrote this in response to my previous article about my wife Carolyn and the Specialized Sequoia that she had given me: “In every bird’s song you hear, in every flower you see along the road . . .
Carolyn will be there smiling there at you . . . look for her, Alan. She’s there.”

That’s a sweet thought, Kevin. Although I’m not religious, I’ve felt Carolyn’s presence often, and not just while riding.

Thoughts of my late wife still break powerfully into the calm of my day-to-day existence. Last summer, the morning after a day’s fishing with my dad up in Montana, we watched a bit of the Tour de France over breakfast. The familiar Versus theme music, the voice of Phil Liggett, the sight of the greatest riders in the world arrayed by team color and driving in unison toward the finish, all served to prime the pump of my memory. Carolyn was a huge Lance fan, but she had other favorites, too, a changeable hierarchy of fan loyalty to the likes of Denny, Thor, Bradley, Cadell, Levi, and Hincapie (never George), so that for every sprint or mountain stage, she always had someone to root for. But mainly it was Lance. When Team Astana won the TTT and put Armstrong in yellow, or so it seemed at the time, I sensed her excitement and felt it myself, just like in the old days. It was as though I were seeing the tour through her eyes.
Then Phil announced that Lance had missed by .220 seconds, and I heard my wife scream.
It was a loud scream, really real, really Carolyn. For a second, I had the sensation that she was inside me, seeing the Tour through my eyes. She was ALIVE THROUGH ME!! Then, slow fade to black.

It’s a mystery, this piece of Carolyn that drifts through my days and nights, here but not here. Does her soul, with all the memories of her natural life, still watch over me, waiting for me to join her? Or is it all illusion, phantom love, like phantom pain after an amputation? Or just a combination of chemistry and brain synapses firing off nervous echoes of a 29-year marriage, echoes that will grow fainter and finally die when I leave this world? I’m not a believer, but I’m not a disbeliever, either. I only know that I’ll never forget her, and that it’s up to me to keep her memory alive.
I’d build her another Taj Mahal if I could, but I can’t. I have only words.

* * * *

My next ride was another vehicle retrieval. I’d picked up my VFR Interceptor from Temple City Power Sports, whose wrench wizards had given it a valve job and a shot of vitamin B. Motorcycles are like small male children, or Labrador retrievers. “Take me up to the mountains, Daddy,” it begged. “Let’s carve up some canyons. Come on, Daddy. Let’s DO something. PLEASE!!!” It nagged me all the way home through the afternoon rush. I put it to bed in the garage with the promise of a trip up the Angeles Crest Highway at first opportunity. But my car was still five miles away in Temple City. So I hauled out the Sequoia, pointed it back down Las Tunas—and bonked before I’d gone five short blocks.
What the heck? Then I remembered I’d spent half an hour on “Alyx” the previous day after work. Alyx is a machine that takes out two pints of blood, spins them through a centrifuge, and returns the plasma minus the red blood cells, so that what goes back in is the color of pus, and noticeably cooler. Out, in, out, in, about five times and you’re off the table, a hero to the vampire angels down at the Red Cross. Essentially, I had reverse-doped my blood. I had a strong desire to go home and take a nap. My car was still 4 ½ miles away, though, so I took a deep breath of bus exhaust and pushed on.
That bus was my next problem. We started off together at Santa Anita and it did what buses do, belching out a cloud of diesel smoke on acceleration, and then wheezing to a stop in front of me. I went around it, but I was too slow to stay ahead of it. The cycle of belch wheeze pass pass belch wheeze pass pass continued as we played tag nearly to Rosemead. Gradually two thoughts worked their way simultaneously into my blood-and-oxygen-deprived brain: Get off Las Tunas, you jerk! and You shudda taken the bus, fool! It was too late for the latter, but I picked my way through back streets to my car, and at the end of the day all three vehicles plus their owner were safely home.

Still unanswered was the question of whether bicycling could ever be fun again. To answer it, I got up early the following Sunday and rode over to the Cal Tech tennis courts, where the Foothill Cycle Club meets for the easy weekend ride.
It’s really more of a movable feast, with two short rides sandwiched around brunch. In earlier days, before illness slowed her down, Carolyn would leave about forty minutes before departure time. I’d wait about ten minutes and follow, usually catching her a few blocks short of our destination, and we’d arrive together, invigorated by the brisk ride through the morning air and in time to chat for a few minutes with the group. As cancer took its toll, she pushed her start time back a few minutes each year, finally allowing a full hour for the seven mile ride.
We did this once or twice a month for nearly a decade, often enough to be considered regulars, so even after a two-year hiatus, I expected, as I pulled up to the curb and pedal-racked the Sequoia, a warm welcome back. All I got was a polite nod or two. I was just some guy in a helmet and goggles. I was missing the one thing they would know me by, the one thing that would guarantee me instant and sincere attention. That “thing,” of course, was Carolyn. I was left to reflect that my wife had been the glue that held all of our friendship groups together. Her social skills and upbeat attitude had provided me with a network of human contacts that I’ve never achieved on my own. Without her, I’m a guy standing on the curb, waiting for something to happen.
Things loosened up when we got rolling. The group is top heavy with Cal Tech—
JPL—college professor types, and I fell in with one of them as we cruised the leafy avenues back toward Arcadia. We talked politics as we rode, and by the time we reached the Green Onion in Monrovia, we’d solved the problems of the world and the nation, and were in a fair way to solving the knottiest problem of all (our state budget, for you non-Californios). Gradually a few others recognized me, and greeted me warmly. I peeled off and headed for home knowing that this congenial group would be there for me, if my new wife lets me get away early on a Sunday morning.

Yes, wife. As I write these words, I’m about to get back on the marriage bike; when you read them, I’ll be securely and joyfully back in the saddle.
Carolyn always said that I needed to be married. She said it to her friends, and she said it to me, even going so far as to tell me which of her unmarried friends were responsible enough to help raise our daughter, and which of them weren’t. My response was always to deny that she would ever lose the battle to cancer, or that I would remarry if she did, but deep inside I knew she was right. When she lost it, nearly three years ago, I wandered in a daze of disorientation and grief for a year. Various people and events, plus the passage of time, helped me out of it. One such event was writing the first “Back on the Bike” article and seeing it published, and knowing that Carolyn’s memory would live for a time in the minds of kindred souls. Another was meeting Mia.
Mia doesn’t replace Carolyn—that would be impossible. One of the reasons I love Mia is that she understands that fact, and its implications: A man who could neglect to honor the memory of his soul-mate of 29 years would not in the long run be good husband material. We’re compatible in the things that count, and I foresee a bright future ahead of us.
She’s not a biker, though. Her father was killed in a bicycle accident in San Jose about 20 years ago, a catastrophe that soured her forever on bicycles. To compound the tragedy, her mother, riding behind one of her graduate students in China, was killed in a motorcycle accident. So that’s two hobbies we don’t share.
Mia’s favorite recreational pastime is ballroom dancing. It’s as important to her as bicycling was to Carolyn, and it could have been a deal breaker for us. To say that ballroom dancing feels like torture to me understates the case. Note to the neo-cons: If you ever regain power and decide to call me in for “enhanced interrogation” regarding my public support for a certain fake American socialist Muslim extremist one-worlder (ie, President Obama), you can skip the waterboarding. Just dress me in a tuxedo and make me dance the rumba, and I’ll tell you everything I know. (And then explain to you why I think Obama is a better American than you are.)
My commitment to our impending marriage is such that I’ve been practicing the foxtrot with the shades pulled down. Mia and I are going to do this to the Andy Williams version of “The Hawaiian Wedding Song,” all two minutes and twenty-eight seconds of it, in front of seventy of our closest friends, and I’m going to smile through it all. Who knows, I may even get to like it. But there will be times when I need to clear my head in privacy. In anticipation of that need, and to see how much I might have left in the tank, I decided to take a run at Chantry Flats.

The road to the Chantry Flats trailhead is a 9-mile continuous climb from my house in south Arcadia. When I pushed off at 8:15 one hot August morning, I was pretty confident I could make it. The grades aren’t too radical. The steepest hills are right in that borderline area between upshift and stand, and sit back and stroke. I used to welcome a good climb if it wasn’t too long. It’s a chance to get upright and take the pressure off the saddle area. Carolyn would have to get off and walk if things got steep, though. She used to hate that.
Our stimulus dollars were at work on First Avenue, forcing a detour. When I got to Santa Anita, I noticed they’d put in a new bike lane, from Foothill all the way up to the National Forest boundary. Cool! I upshifted twice, stood up, leaned forward, and reached back for that extra umph that used to be there when I needed it.
It was gone. After less than half an hour of climbing, my quads were jelly.
I sat back down and sought out my granniest gear. It was no good. I couldn’t suck enough air to maintain even that slow pace. I got a temporary adrenaline boost when a pretty girl crossed in front of me at the end of Santa Anita, but it only lasted until I was out of sight around the next bend. I had to get off and walk.
A young couple, smiles on their faces, descended past me.

Somewhere, Carolyn was laughing.

I got back on when my pulse settled down, but gave it up before the half-way point. I was whipped. In retrospect, I should have expected it. I had bonked at the 25-minute mark, which is the length of my twice-a-week stint on the stationary bike at my health club. At age 61, that’s all that’s left.
Ah, well. I coasted home, took a shower, rested, ate lunch, and rested again. Then I went to see Ron.

Ron McKiernan is the manager at Temple City Bike Shop. He sold me the Sequoia and also Carolyn’s purple Dolce, years ago. I had legitimate business there. It had taken me about 600 short huffs on my Blackburn AirStik to inflate my tires that morning. I wanted him to look at the cord on my upright pump, which had rotted away from its connection.
Ron put the pump on his workbench, cut away an inch of the cord, and joined it to the pump while talking to me, answering the phone, and generally running the shop. He explained, without my asking, why he’d recently shaved his hair. It was in solidarity with a friend, whose 20-year-old daughter was in the City of Hope with bone cancer. She’d lost her hair from the post-operative chemo. The conversation turned to Carolyn, who’d braved the chemo-hair loss cycle more times than I can count, and I recalled Ron’s humane concern when Carolyn suffered through her down phases, and how supportive he was of me when she passed.

Any bike shop will sell you a bike and fix it when it goes wrong. Lots of shops are staffed by riders who are there for their love of the sport, people that think and speak and live bicycle. The best ones, the indispensable ones, are run by guys like Ron.

* * * *

Looking ahead, I don’t know what role bicycling will have for me, but as long as I’m still here, you won’t see this particular Sequoia on Craig’s List. Biking is still the best way to see the world, and I aim to see more of it before I’m done.
And I will honor Carolyn to my dying day. That will come soon enough. When it does, I hope and pray that she’ll be waiting for me in some heaven beyond the reach of human jealousy, where the breeze is fresh and the road is smooth, and lovers are reunited in eternal peace.
It’s a nice thought, anyway.



Alan Pierpoint
August, 2010

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