Written by alan pierpoint   

Getting Back on the Bike


The Honda service manager is really, really sorry, but due to lateness and the high volume of something or other, the courtesy van won’t be available to pick me up as planned. Do I have any other way of getting to the dealer to retrieve my car? Otherwise I could pick it up first thing Monday.
I’ll be there in half an hour, I reply. Then I unlock the storage closet by the water heater and roll out the Specialized Sequoia that I haven’t touched since December of ’07—five months before my wife Carolyn died of cancer. Nearly a year has passed since her death. I pump up the tires, tuck my right pant leg into my sock, don helmet and goggles, and push off down the driveway and into the street, checking the brakes and practicing a few shifts. My mind is elsewhere, but my hands and feet remember what they’re supposed to do.
Familiar sensations activate the memory. Scenes from twenty-nine years of biking with Carolyn parade across the projector screen of my mind.

The getting ready and the stretching, the route maps and water bottles and patch kits. Club rides and short vacations and packaged tours. Oregon Coast, Napa Valley, Grand Tetons. . . Scotland, Provence, Prince Edward Island and the San Juans . . . Is there a better way to see the world, and to share it?

Peddling slowly up Longden Ave., working the kinks out of my knees, I see a pod of cyclists in my bar mirror, gaining steadily. I pick up the pace. For some reason it’s important that they not catch me before the traffic light at Myrtle. Maybe because I’m still wearing pants and street shoes.

At the end of our first long group tour, we stopped near Deception Pass for pictures, and the women climbed up into a dead tree for a group shot. Seven smiling sweating women clung to the branches and to each other, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the background, a tableau etched forever in my mind . . .

I turn left on Myrtle and feel my legs warming up. I’m headed toward the foothills of Monrovia now, the scene of a hundred Sunday morning rides, and of our last ride together. I block out the thought. This is only a short errand, I tell myself, but the memories won’t be held back.

It’s the colors that bring cyclists and plein-air painters back to PEI every summer. The blues of sky and ocean, the greens of field and forest, the purples and pinks of the lupine. And most strikingly, the deep reds of the soil. We toured the maritime museum, walked hand-in-hand on Singing Sands Beach, ate lobster, climbed the steps of a lighthouse, rode forty miles through high winds and sipped wine while watching the lobster boats scudding back to port, and that was only one day in a week of dazzling color . . .

I see a woman about Carolyn’s size and shape pull out of a side street and for a second I think, how did she get ahead of me? But it isn’t Carolyn, it never is. Where can she be? Did I get too far out in front? If I stop and wait in the shade, will I see her coming around the bend, glad to see me, maybe a little miffed that I’d left her temporarily behind? The mind says no, but the mind is no match for the soul’s deepest wish.

We rolled into Arles on market day, ate a pizza lunch, ordered Pepsis from the McDonalds so Carolyn could use the restroom, and headed down the Rhone into the fetid swamp of the Camargue in an ill-advised search for bird life. The humidity was between sultry and sauna, and the roadside ditch was a chemical sump. The signs warned of wild bulls ahead. Down we rode toward the Mediterranean, hoping in vain for a patch of shade. We finally found a line of trees in front of a farmhouse and stopped to await our fate. Would it be wild bulls, death from thirst, or the sag wagon? An hour passed, the mosquitoes found us, and still no sag wagon. Another hour and we ran out of water; what was keeping them? As it happened, only one rider finished the route that day. Everyone else had to be shuttled from Arles back to the hotel. Eventually we were rescued , or I wouldn’t be writing this, but what wouldn’t I give to have those two miserable, precious hours back again . . .

As I slow for the traffic light at Duarte, the Shimano105 brake/shifter strips away speed and nails each gear like an opera singer hitting each note of her favorite aria squarely in the middle. This isn’t a top-of-the-line bike of the sort one sees reviewed in Road Bike, but it’s the best I’ve ever ridden, including the competent steeds that VBT used to equip us with, and I remember that I never really wanted it in the first place. But it’s mine, and I could learn to love it if I weren’t also afraid of it. A possession is something you have; of what use is a possession that reminds you of what you no longer have, and can never have again?
I’m not consistent, though. After a year, the house is still a museum to Carolyn’s memory. Her purse still resides in its place on the dresser, her bathrobe hangs on its hook by the shower, everything is just as it was. All of these objects sustain me, except for the bike. Why is this?

Two years ago for my birthday, Carolyn announced that she was buying me a new bike. My old clunker with the fat tires and squared-off bearings was an embarrassment, and in her view I deserved a new ride worthy of the purple Dolce I’d bought for her the year before. I resisted, arguing that the old clunker gave me a better workout, and we could save the eight hundred bucks for that Holland bike-and-barge trip we’d been fantasizing about. Besides, we always rode together and I was the stronger rider, so why spend money on something that would give me a further advantage? But she was seeing further into the future than I dared to look . . .

Mindful of time, I upshift two gears and stand up out of the saddle. The Sequoia practically propels itself up the gentle slope of Myrtle Ave. I pass under the freeway and glance up the one-way street to my right toward the row of car dealers. One more block and then over. I’m less than five minutes away, and I feel a tinge of regret. I’m finding my rhythm now, and I like the feeling.

Carolyn wanted one more vacation but she didn’t have the strength for a tour, so we booked a B&B on Whidbey Island and rented comfort bikes for half a day. After exploring the southern part of the island, we turned in the bikes, drove up to Deception Pass and walked across the bridge toward the spot where our first tour had ended all those years ago. I looked around for the woman tree, but it was somewhere around the bend. After re-crossing the bridge we hiked the trails for a peaceful hour. We spent ten restful days on Whidbey and the Olympic Peninsula, biking a bit, hiking a bit, seeing the sights. We even discussed retiring there, someday. When we returned home we booked our bike-and-barge for the following summer. But when we told our plans to Carolyn’s oncologist, he shook his head . . .

After paying my bill, I remove the front wheel and gently load the Sequoia into the middle seat of the Accord. I wonder if I’ll ever ride it again. I can’t deny that it feels good, physically, to get back on the bike. But I’m fighting back tears, and I have to get control of myself before starting the car and driving home.

As the end drew near, Carolyn asked for one last foray into the outside world. I gathered her in my arms, lifted her out of the hospital bed and into her wheelchair, lowered her down the brick steps of the front porch, and eased her into the passenger seat of the Accord. We drove up Myrtle Avenue into the foothills, stopping at our old turnaround point at the end of a cul-de-sac. This would be our last ride.
I rolled down the windows, letting in the mountain air and the smell of grass and sage. After a long silence, my wife spoke a single word.
“Bears,” she said.
This was strange. Black bears often come down from the mountains when the summer heats up to forage around the foothills, knock over a few trashcans and sometimes take swims in backyard pools. But we’d never seen bears on our weekend rides. We did occasionally see deer, though. I took her hand. Her grip was gone, her voice barely audible.
“Deer,” I said.
“Deer,” she agreed, and forced a smile.
Two days later she was gone.

Home again, I reassemble the Sequoia and reach my hand under the top tube, finding the balance point and hefting it easily with two fingers. It’s blue and silver grey, and beautiful, and it wants to be ridden. I could ride it to Pasadena tomorrow morning and meet our Foothill Cycle Club friends, whom I haven’t seen in a year and a half, and I know they’d be glad to see me. They’d express heart-felt sympathy for Carolyn, maybe have a moment of silence in her memory. Why am I afraid of this?

I gave away the old clunker last summer and sold the Dolce on Craig’s List to a guy who wanted it for his fiancée. I watched him load it onto a new bike rack, a smile on his face. A young guy, younger than my daughter, just starting out. Ride well, my friend.

I will ride the Sequoia again someday. I might even do the century I often talked about, but never did. Carolyn would want me to, that much I know. It’s a beautiful bike, a gift from the woman who loved me faithfully for twenty-nine years, wanted the best for me, and knew that someday I would have to leave her behind.


[Rights Reserved: Road Bike Action and Alan Pierpoint]