I grew up on a bike. It was the only way to get around the neighborhood with friends, as if something was more than a couple hundred feet, you did it on bike. W

I grew up on a bike. It was the only way to get around the neighborhood with friends, as if something was more than a couple hundred feet, you did it on bike. We biked to the city nearby to see movies or hang out at the mall. We biked into the woods to get away from everyone. We biked across town because it was something to do. Bikes were freedom. My father was big into cycling. Diagnosed with diabetes as a juvenile, he believed if he stopped cycling he would die (unfortunately, the disease ultimately won, as it always does… but the last thing he was doing before going to the hospital for a 5 month ordeal after which he died was riding his bike). He participated in endurance races and tours, he rode his bike 20-30 miles each way to work and back almost every day of the week, the Tour de France was his Super Bowl and local or other international races were his college bowls. He spent a lot of time reading biographies of renowned cyclists. Some of my most cherished memories are our several TOSRV tours together on a heavy steel Japanese tandem, even the days of icy rain, baking sun, or when Dad had a reaction and I had to pedal us both… uphill with a headwind. My riding dropped almost completely off, with spikes of interest here and there. I rode my bike multiple times a week to visit him in the hospital before he died, a 40 mile round trip. Those moments alone (other than the terrible traffic) were moments of respite and quiet in my fear and anxiety over my dad’s descent, my recent and failing marriage, my trouble with alcohol, my trouble with my career. He died and left me his bike, a Masi Gran Criterium that he bought around the time I was born, rode every day, painstakingly overhauled and sunk ungodly amounts of time and money into over the years he had it. I rode it on and off. I’ve done a few smaller tours in the 2010s until I had a health concern. I rode it during the pandemic with my mom until I started getting bad saddle and wrist pains. I started becoming afraid something would happen to the Masi and I would lose a deep connection to my father. But I’ll be god damned if I don’t feel he’s right there beside me when I ride it, and all the world goes quiet except the soft clicking of the bike and the woosh of air blowing by. Yet, I keep making excuses for not riding. I’m gonna get that god damned bike off the wall and go for a ride.