That summer Mike and I decided to take off from work long enough to ride bicycles across America, something our wives initially opposed. It meant leaving our wives to fend for themselves and our children, while we took off on our great adventure. But we soon realized that we weren’t in good enough shape to ride all day, and remember this was in the summertime. I generally rode behind Mike, and on the first day I soon exhausted myself and had to get off my bike. A mistake, maybe…and we never learned to work together, as bicyclist (never drafted each other or stopped when the other wanted), and as…well, we were friends but we didn’t know each other. Another mistake, perhaps; if I knew what I know now, maybe… Meanwhile, imagine two out of shape middle-age farts riding heavily loaded bicycles out of Phoenix in the summertime. But yet we were wise enough to begin before the sun came up and to head north to cool mountains…a couple of older guys who simply overestimated their endurance and underestimated their strength and found themselves stuck in the middle of the desert. Maybe we should’ve seen right then that we weren’t the supermen that we thought we were and should’ve called our wives to come pick us up. What (I ask myself now) if we had made the phone call, would Mike be here today? Neither one of us had a clue what we were in for.
A long hot afternoon. We walked most of way, pushing our heavily loaded bicycles, sweating and swearing at the mountain grade we most desperately needed to climb. When we could ride we used our largest sprockets as we climbed a long false flat, which was imperceptible at times, but still up. The previous day we only rode twenty-five or so miles before it got too hot to ride and spent the rest of the day in the shade under an underpass. That evening, in sober reflection on our first day in the saddle, we planned our next day, which we expected to be even harder than the first one. Bats flew around over our heads (prudently we covered our faces with spare T-shirts), and for a couple of discouraged guys the bats were a distraction. We tried to sleep but couldn’t and took off around midnight hoping that we wouldn’t get run over by a car or a truck, started that early because we didn’t want to get stuck in the desert again.
Before the trip, like I said, Mike and I really didn’t know each other in the way we would, despite being acquainted for several years, and with him seemingly having everything a man could want and with me a little envious of him. Before the trip we had our differences, of course; but we solved them as they came up. As for choosing a route, it was one of the first debates we had, and since we wanted to stay off major highways, our options were limited. So we climbed out of the desert and had our hardest day. We were, of course, tempted to hitch a ride with a tucker. But we didn’t, all right, just as we didn’t do a lot of things we should’ve. Should’ve, could’ve, yeah. Every project requires decisions, some of them easy, some of them hard, and as it turned out choosing a route was one of the easier ones. But let’s not jump ahead. The very nature of what happened, what I’ve always called mishaps caused me to keep many of the details to myself. And if I had recognized Mike’s problems sooner, had known what to do, and had made the right decisions, maybe…just maybe…maybe Mike would be alive today.
Sad, sad indeed, the bicycling trip now a sad memory.
I’ve gone over it in my mind over and over again. When and where did it begin? On the highway somewhere, in Show Low or Springerville, but surely not in the ditch where it came to a head, or even before we began the bicycling trip. I still don’t know, but I suspect the bicycling and me had nothing to do with Mike’s problems, though all of the exertion may have triggered something in his brain.
The color of his face was bright red, the highway was as steep as ever, and the summit wasn’t in sight. Off in his own world, Mike was (though by his own acknowledgment he was fine)… He was struggling like I was but otherwise he seemed fine; and when we spotted a campsite right on a curve, we decided to call it a day before the afternoon was half over.
It had been a hard day. Mike was outgoing and likeable, a good man who seemed to have everything going for him, a home, a wife, children, and a job. Although we had been friends for several years, we obviously didn’t know each other well. We had gone on a few short training rides before the trip and swapped a few horror stories about bicycling, so I had the impression that he was in better shape than he was. I don’t know which of us came up of the idea of touring across the country, but getting away from hectic jobs sounded appealing. Moreover, we both set personal goals for the trip: as much as I hated to admit that I was overweight and was asking for a heart attack. But whatever happened to the adventurous notion of accepting a challenge simply for the sake of the challenge and the enjoyment of it? Why did we have to set out with goals in mind?
Randy Ford
