The End of An Era

Okay, this is one of the ones I was going to post before I went CRABBY. This is a happier story - maybe a bit bittersweet, but happy.

My daughter is the apple of my eye. I changed majors in college seven times. I didn't really know what I wanted to be for a long time - but I always knew I wanted to be a father.

And, having been 13 when my baby sis was born - and my Dad was 50 at the time - I was the one who taught her to ride a bike, took her all over town in the kiddie seat on the back of Mom's bike (bikes and daughters are key themes in this story), so I was like a surrogate father to her. And as much as my Dad and I butted heads when I was a teenager, I really always wanted a daughter.

On December 9, 1990, I got my wish. And with every passing year she's been more than I bargained for.

Now, I've long been into cycling (bicycles, that is). I was into it when it wasn't cool. I did the first Biking Across Kansas ride in 1975, when I was still in high school, and I raced back then, too - before Lance Armstrong, or even Greg Lemond. Heck, I'm one of the few guys who can tell you that the first American pro to race in Europe was Jock Boyer, and I know who Major Taylor was.

I kept riding from grad school until my daughter was born, then took a ten-year hiatus. At that point, I was serving on the Sports & Rec Committee at my church, and somebody had the idea to start a bike club. Knowing what an effort that can be, I suggested we start with an organized ride, like the MS150. That ride - and they have them all over the country - is a two-day, 150-mile ride to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

So I set up the team, but I didn't even have a bike at the time. At that point, I made my first e-Bay purchase - a very cool metallic orange Specialized Allez Pro. I bought it Fathers' Day weekend in 2001, and rode the MS150 the week after Labor Day. Day one was 100 miles; day two, 50. I finished, but I was beat.

I rode the same bike (with some upgrades) the next year, and finished feeling much better - the by-product of having more time in the saddle.

As I prepared to train the next Spring, my daughter - then 13 - started asking me questions, unprovoked, about the ride. I don't know, maybe she missed me; after all, the training did take considerable time. She asked how hard it was, etc., so I asked her if she wanted to get a bike and give it a try. She said she was afraid she might not be able to keep up, and being the over-protective Dad that I am, I too was concerned that we'd lose contact on the road, and knowing how bad the drivers can be on the route - and how squirrely most of the riders - I would have been worried.

So I asked a question that changed both our lives for the better: "Would you want to try it on a tandem with me?"

Her "yes" answer led me once again to e-Bay. By luck - or divine intervention - I found a brand-new, one-year-old Co-Motion Speedster listed by a bike shop in the Seattle area. Co-Motion is an Oregon company that specializes in tandems, and simply makes the best double-bikes for the buck out there. So I bought it without hesitation.

We started training for the 2003 MS150. It was awesome. She took to it right away. As her skills developed, there were times - frequent times - when I'd have to shift UP, not down, while climbing a steep hill when she kicked in the after-burners. Heck, to this day, not having ridden in nearly four years (more on that later), when we go to the gym, she can leg-press nearly 250 lbs. with ease.

But the most cool thing was the one-on-one time with my teenage daughter. If you've had a teenager, you're nodding knowingly. If not, let me prep you: they tend to spend all their time on the phone or the computer, or in their room with the door closed, reading or watching TV. Our training rides lasted anywhere from an hour to four or more, and it was pure Dad and Sydney time. And it was awesome.

If she'd recently seen a movie I hadn't seen, she'd recite me the script, almost line-for-line. Even if at home I couldn't get her to do more than answer yes or no questions, on the bike she just opened up, and couldn't stop talking. We'd hit a steep uphill, and I'd have to interrupt her: "Sydney, pedal!" And she'd power us up the hill, with me up-shifting all the way.

The bond we formed on that bike was worth every penny it cost. And, there was something just doggone cool about approaching our favorite local sharp, steep hill (from the top), shifting into the highest gear, cranking up the rpm's, tucking down into an aero position, then hitting the 13% grade and just hammering down it to see how high we could get the speedometer to go (54 mph was not uncommon).

It was also fun stopping for water re-fills. I'd have some Gatorade and maybe a granola bar, and she'd have ice cream. She'd pluck Gu packets out of my back jersey pockets on a ride. At one MS150 rest stop, they had suckers, and she sat on the back and enjoyed one like a little kid. We had our favorite spots - like Heart Attack Hill, or the BBQ joint we rode by on the return leg of many of our training rides, the aromas from which were nearly enough to do us in - and our little inside jokes. The last year we rode the MS150, we zip-tied a little dog squeaky bone under my saddle, and when we passed other riders (which happened a lot), she'd squeak it at them.

Our computer id's even reflected our riding roles: she was "superstoker," and I was "captaindad."

We rode three MS150s and the Gorilla Century, a 100-mile ride in and around the town of my alma mater, Pittsburg, Kansas - where she will attend college in the Fall. She's ridden 100 miles in a day three times, and 75 or more at least five times. We also rode a local 75-mile club ride called the Summer Breeze, which was anything but. It was 108 degrees that day, and when we finished we both had salt stains on our riding shorts, and I almost suffered heat stroke. When I got home and told my wife, instead of feeling sorry for me, she chewed me out - rightfully so - for not quitting, noting that if I'd crashed from exhaustion, our daughter could have been hurt, and likely wouldn't have know what to do. But "quit" isn't in my nature, and I think she knew that, too.

After our last MS150, in 2005, a bulging disk in my upper back began putting pressure on a nerve, causing extreme back, neck, shoulder and arm pain. It was exacerbated by the fact that I spend my working days behind a computer screen, with lousy posture, and some of my leisure time either on the bike or playing guitar, the positioning of which exacerbate the problem. And, with a tandem, you use much more upper body than with a single bike - especially when your stoker is precious cargo and you are trying to avoid ever crashing, at all costs. (I don't really care if I crash my single bike - it can be exhilarating in fact. I remember coming home one night after doing an endo on my mountain bike and landing flat on my back with the bike on top of me. I didn't have a helmet on. I was covered in mud, and laughing my head off as I walked in the door. My wife was on the phone with her mother, and took one look at me then said, "I've gotta go, Mom - I think Brian has a head injury."

We did a couple of training rides in 2006, but I just couldn't handle the pain. Plus, as a high school student, her schedule was much more demanding, allowing little time to train. Even in the summers, she'd be incredibly busy. Between two vacations, and her church youth orchestra tour, which lasted ten days, there was little time to train. And now, with her working and having a boyfriend and preparing for college, it's even harder.

Quick aside: as Jude Law said in the film "The Holiday," I'm a weeper. And no more so than when it comes to my daughter.

I recently took some time off to go through all of our pictures to put together our daughter's graduation slide show. I'd spend about a half-hour going through pics, then take a five-minute cry break. Ever since she was a toddler, just thinking about her growing up, going to college and getting married made me cry on the spot. When she does get married, I'll probably have to be sedated - heck, when my baby sis got married, I was an usher, and I cried like a baby through that wedding.

So, after three years of watching this really nice tandem (I had also added a fair amount of upgrades, as any bikey would expect) sit in the garage, tires flat, collecting dust - and with my daughter's schedule increasingly busy, and college looming, I put the bike on e-Bay.

It fetched considerable value - reflective of its quality. I could have shipped it, but the cost would have been quite high, so the winning bidder wanted to come pick it up.

Early Saturday morning, the phone rang. I thought it was my daughter; she was at work, and she often calls us when she gets there to let us know she made it okay. Instead, it was the very nice young man who'd bought our tandem, letting me know he was ahead of schedule, and was fifteen minutes away (he'd driven all night from Virginia - 15 hours - to pick up the bike).

I helped him load it into his car before he made the return trip to Virginia. When he was handling the bike, he was giggling like a kid in a candy store, as it was about 15 lbs. lighter than his current tandem, and he could imagine how much faster he'd be zipping up and down the mountains of the Shenandoah on this bike. He has a seven-year-old daughter who also rides a tandem with him, and thinking about his little girl growing up into our tandem, riding with her Daddy, made me smile.

After he drove off, it hit me. I went upstairs. My daughter's room was empty; she was at work - a grown-up responsibility. I thought about sitting down at my computer, and looking through digital pictures of her and me on the bike, but I knew I didn't dare.

Instead, I went into the bedroom, where my wife still lay in bed, and talked to her about the nice young man who bought our bike, and his family, and his joy at the quality and lightness of the bike, and his excitement about the thought of sharing those experiences with his wife and daughter ...

And about how I felt when I saw him driving off with our tandem in his car ...

And I cried anyway.