Some eighteen months ago someone stole my road bike out of my garage. My older daughter came in late at night and failed to close our garage door, and the next morning my road bike and my wife’s sewing machine were gone. I suspect opportunistic thieves (like the lowlife “porch pirates” who steal Amazon packages from your front door) drove by my garage in the middle of the night, dashed in and grabbed what was at hand, and got out of there as quickly as possible.
It was a blow.
About once a week since then I reflect about the theft of my bike and I feel sad. I mourn the loss of my road bike. It hurt. It was a gut punch.
It wasn’t even a nice road bike. It was an old one a buddy gave me a decade ago – he never rode it. I upgraded the pedals. But it was the only road bike I had. And it was gone.
Over the past 18 months I would be in my car driving somewhere and I would see a serious road biker with good gear moving fast down the road, and I would feel emotional pain. These riders I encountered on the road looked to be in good shape and healthy. They probably had some money, as road bikes can be expensive. These bikers were probably doing relatively well in life compared to the couch-bound obese people staring at screens while NOT exercising and getting outdoors. Now I was one of the unhealthy types NOT on their road bike – or at least this is what I was telling myself. I was feeling sorry for myself. Someone stole my bike. I felt victimized.
Another part of myself just said, “Get over it already, Richard. It is just money! Buy another bike. It does not have to be that expensive. Just get back in the saddle again.” But I am very slow to spend serious money or make major purchases. So I waited. I was busy. I had a whole slew of other things to pay for. So nothing happened. I was a bit stuck.
But last week that changed.
I went in and bought a new road bike. I got a Trek “Émonda ALR 5.” The bike was on sale and I feel I got good value. The last bike I personally bought was back in 2007, and boy bike technology sure has improved enormously since then. What hurt me most in the purchase was the additional $120 in new water bottle cages, seat bag, bike pump, Co2 cartridges, etc. I had to pay for. Not only did I have to replace the stolen bike but also all the accouterments a road bike needs. This, in particular, irritated me. For some reason it hurt especially that I had to pay for all these extra items stolen along with my bike. I also needed to purchase spare tire innertubes and new pedals, as new road bikes don’t come with pedals. Grrr.
But I had no choice. I had to have them.
So I sucked it up and bought everything I needed. Finally. The purchases weren’t “nothing” but they also weren’t “big money.” It was kind of “medium money.” So I planned and paid for it. “It is for important things like this that you have a job and work hard,” I told myself.
And last week I was finally back on the road.
Why is this so important to me?
It is this simple: I felt the call to be back along the California coast next to the ocean on my bike. I had felt it often. This need was an itch I could not scratch. I wanted to be out in nature. Over time I suffered from the lack of it. I craved that extreme cardio workout which turns me inside and out. What does that mean? You can catch a glimpse of that visceral sentiment here. Or watch this video from today’s first ride on my new bike —
— do you understand?
Let me try to explain better. I have long experience with bike adventures where I cover 60 or 80 miles in one day. I sweat every drop of water out of my body and replace it with water and Gatorade; the salt from my sweat dries as I go downhill, and then I sweat again and it dries, and then by the end I have layers of dried salt covering my skin. When I finally shower all the salt stings my eyes. There is also an element of self-discovery earned through these sweat fests. For example, while biking through a whole redwood forest somewhere or climbing a mountain from bottom to top, I have psychedelic visions about myself and my life as my heart beats through my chest and my lungs struggle to get in more air. I groan and strain over the pedals. My thoughts turn inward and time seems to blur. There is no yesterday or tomorrow; there is only the eternal present, and I am totally in the moment. I sweat and groan over the pedals and perceive my senses through an altered consciousness, in a way which others take LSD or peyote to experience. It is an existential moment born from all-out exertion and near total exhaustion. It is hard to explain… but the experience is cleansing. It is clarifying. I see myself as I truly am. I strip away extraneous layers via pain and witness the essential which remains. Then after four or five hours of gut-wrenching exercise out in the gorgeous outdoors under the warm California sun, I sit down with a ravenous appetite to refuel. I feel wonderful. I am calm; my soul is at peace. I’ve earned that feeling.
I miss that. I miss it a lot.
I still remember vividly highlights of my biking past:
Using a beat up old beach cruiser bike with a broken seat to ride 60 miles from Newport Beach to UCLA in late 1987. I did not really even know where I was going: I just had a map and stopped every 90 minutes to plot my way north through LA County. It was quite the adventure. I could barely ride anymore when I finally arrived to my college apartment late at night. Why did I make this foolhardy/reckless bike trip? I was too embarrassed to ask for a car ride back to school from my parents. It was a Sunday night and I had class the next morning. So I just grabbed an old bike nobody was using out of the garage and rode it home. I barely made it. Exhaustion. I arrived to UCLA around one in the morning. I remember sitting in the bathtub afterwards and just spacing out. It was an adventure. It was awesome.
I was part of a team of four from my fraternity which rode a bike from the UCLA campus to the Arizona border 290 miles away for a charity fundraiser in March of 1989. Supposedly, our fraternity brothers from ASU would meet us at the border and travel to their campus from there. At 7:00 am when we left the Westwood campus with one road bike and a chase truck, everybody was ready and willing to get on the bike. But at 1:30 am in the dark as we approached the border in eastern California, I was the only one able to get on the bike. (My butt was so sore!) Our team arrived at the border after some 18 hours of riding, and we drove back to UCLA and I went to class the next morning. And I did this two days after having completed the LA Marathon. Wow!
The most memorable part of this charity bike adventure for my fraternity was riding from Palm Springs most of the way up the 10 highway grade on the side of the freeway. I thought I could get to the top of the hill and so I kept going hope against hope, but I finally got off and let someone else ride. I must have gone some 25 miles straight up as the freeway moved from the Coachella Valley to the high desert. As usual I was riding blind and had no idea of the topography ahead. I learned. Painfully. I rode entirely in the dark with the chase van behind me. If it was dark, it was also cold. It was probably around 11 at night. We had been going nonstop since 7 am. My ass hurt from sitting on the bike for so long. What an adventure!
Riding up from Saratoga to the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains to Stanford University and back in 1998. Man, was I tired after this ride. I got directions for the ride from a guy via a two sentence email, but he didn’t tell me there would be nine miles straight uphill. I found that out the hard way. The guy who recommended this ride to me claimed the Swedish national bike team trained in this area, and afterwards I understood why. World class hills and beautiful scenery. But I was so tired at the end of this ride I could barely see straight.
Riding from Bonny Dune to the top of Skyline through beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains surrounded by forest in 1999. I rode up the same mountain range as the year before, but this time on the other side from the ocean up. The switch back trail on Bonny Dune Rd. going up to Skyline Ave. are wild and beautiful redwood forest scenery. The trip downhill into Capitola was as fast and fun as the road up from Bonny Dune was slow and hard. A bike ride to remember!
Bike rides from Springfield, OR to McKenzie Bridge in the early 2000s. My dad used to own a house near MacKenzie Bridge, Oregon where he and I would summer. I spent many happy hours biking into Eugene, or all over the Willamette River Valley. Good times! I spent many summers in Oregon this way. I covered hundreds and hundreds of miles.
Ride from Carmel to Cambria 100 miles with my father in the chase car in 2004. It was quite dramatic and exciting to speed down Highway 1 on my bike at the speed of auto traffic down and up the cliffs around the California coast between Carmal and Big Sur in one stage, and then another down to Cambria where I stopped in another. These are some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. I will never forget that ride. There I was on Highway One going 40 miles per hour, and off to the right was a direct drop 300 feet to the rocks and Pacific Ocean.
From Laguna Beach 80 miles to downtown San Diego where I met my father in 2005. We dined at Seaside Village looking out at the aircraft carriers in dock at the San Diego Naval Station and then my father drove myself and my bike back to Orange County. By the time I got to Mission Bay everything had gotten blurry. I barely made it. So glad I made the Orange County to San Diego bike ride, at least once.
During the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 I rode thousands of miles on my bike. I remember when the roads were deserted and almost all stores were closed, I was on my bike constantly. If many Americans were endlessly doom-scrolling on their iPhones and “day-drinking” alcohol at home to help deal with pandemic uncertainty and stress, I was outdoors riding my bike all over the place: I rode several new bike tires down to the treads during that time. I would stop by those blinking warning traffic signs along the road, “Stay home! Stay safe!” and I would flip them the bird as I rode by. I am so glad I violated all those “stay at home” orders. The public health decrees to remain indoors until God knows when were a direct challenge to how I had chosen to live almost my entire adult life. I would not comply. “Fuck you, Gavin Newsom! And you too, Matt LaVere!” What a pathetic spectacle.
Many Americans saw their mental and physical health deteriorate during the pandemic. In contrast, I got into some of the best physical shape of my life. If the world semi-shut down in March of 2020 with the arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that meant I had unaccustomed time on my hands and I took full advantage: I was in the pool swimming laps, on the road riding my bike, and all over the tennis court serving and volleying. In retrospect, none of my mostly solitary exercising outdoors helped to spread disease. And no matter how much stress I might have in my life, I slept just fine at night after a 50-mile bike ride during the day. (How did YOU do during the pandemic, dear reader?)
Below is a photo of me on my bike from that time –
– and here is another from that time with my tennis buddy Julio at the club doubles tournament –
I was in tip-top shape when those photos were taken. I was solid in body and in mind. I did not arrive to such a place by accident. It was earned. I “put in the hard yards,” as Australian rugby explained the sacrifices required to perform well. Nobody ever drowned to death in their own sweat. Quite the opposite.
Yes, exercise, that beloved balm. In my best bike rides I was so tired by the end I had trouble riding in a straight line. I was exhibiting that suspicious snake-weave of the almost totally spent bicyclist. But that was the point: I loved pushing my body to the limit. Biking for almost 100 miles was exciting. The mere thought of the audacity of a biking adventure got my blood going. That was also why I ran marathons. As John Kennedy explained about the space race of the 1960s, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Anything worth doing, in my opinion, should be difficult. Easy and routine activities do not inspire. Only arduous and ambitious tasks stir the blood to action: this is the way I have seen it ever since I was a kid. No apologies.
True, at my age I cannot relive such past glories like biking up a mountain, and it might be foolish to try. I am 56-years old now. If I try to ride 100 miles through a national forest today, I very well might get injured (or worse). As I age I have learned to be wise and seek to exercise in an age-appropriate fashion. I have to be more careful. But I can still “push the envelope.” I can still undergo bold “bike adventures” in exotic locations. I need not settle for tame neighborhood bike rides only. The future is exciting! What adventures might I have? If you look at my past, you might glimpse my future.
It is true that biking does next to nothing for your upper body. It is also almost entirely an aerobic exercise, with few anaerobic or upper body strength components. But I do other exercises (martial arts, swimming, tennis) which make up for those deficits. And the aerobic and outdoor components of biking are almost beyond comparison.
I have missed them since my road bike was stolen.
But, as they say, “I’m back on the road again.”
Congratulate me, dear reader.
Until the sun starts setting too early to get solid rides in November, I will put in dozens of rides equalling several thousands miles of distance. I will also swim laps regularly in the pool in similarly gentle-on-the-joints exercise. All this should offset the trauma which sprinting on the tennis court brings to my body (ie. not so gentle-on-the-joints exercise). Tennis is way more fun and social than biking or swimming, and it is my primary sport. But biking and swimming are the yin to the yang of tennis in exercise, and together they balance everything out. “Richard, the key to not getting injured as you age is to cross-train,” my doctor told me almost a decade ago. That is so true! I have heeded my doctor’s advice.
I will tell you something else, esteemed reader.
As I get older, the only way I can feel my best in my body is to exercise for hours each day. Only in this way can I push the aches and pains of an aging body away, gain a solid appetite for my next meal, and earn a good night’s sleep – I have to workout, and workout hard. Hours per day. It is difficult to find the time. I have a full time job. I have two daughters. There are other things in my life besides exercise. But I will free up as much time as I can. There is always time. People make time for what is most important.
“Motion is lotion,” goes the saying. That means you have to keep your body mobile through movement as you get older. Sitting around too much can be deadly. It gets harder and harder to get up as you get older. “Use it or lose it,” they warn. I totally agree. Exercise might have been optional when I was younger. Now it is becoming mandatory. I feel uncomfortable in my body if I don’t do it. I feel bad. So get on the bike, Richard. Get moving. Work up a sweat. Go outdoors and get active. For God’s sake don’t sit around indoors and stare at pixels dancing on screens. That way lies ill health in body and mind.
So this is how I see the next couple of months of 2024 as spring turns into summer:
I will be along the beach between the City of Ventura up to Carpinteria and Santa Barbara and back. I will also be riding up to and around the Ojai area. All along bike trails mostly off the roads. It is some of the most gorgeous scenery around. A couple of years ago a buddy of mine from Atlanta, Georgia said the following to me as we biked along the beautiful beach in nearby Faria State Beach, “There’s no point in paying so much money to live in coastal California if you are not regularly enjoying nature like this.” I did not forget his comment. He was right.
So I’m back on my road bike along the beaches of central California and foothills of the Ojai Valley. It has been too long.
Today is a good day.
See you on the road!
“SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD”
by Walt Whitman
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
