Pete's Life Story: Why I Fell In Love With Two Wheels

My love of bike riding began as a child. Learning to ride extended the range of my world growing up in Lafayette, Indiana. Whether going to little league baseball practice, delivering newspapers, or riding to a friend's house, I felt freedom to roam. I rode from the familiar to the unknown. The bike took me places far beyond the range of my feet: all the way to Lafayette city limits and beyond where the houses ended and the cornfields began.

Bike riding as a boy was all about independence. Riding now is more about pre-ride preparation, habits, safety, fitness, and socializing. A bike like a car requires maintenance such as checking tire wear and pressure, tire spoke alignment, chain oiling, and tools to change a flat tire. Unless habits are formed, it’s easy to forget a water bottle, riding gloves or shoes, even a rearview mirror and more importantly be constantly aware of cars, road debris, and other bikers to avoid accidents. Training is required to condition legs and endurance, especially when riding hills.

Cycling is my favorite form of exercise. It’s my ride to a healthier lifestyle- aerobics for the heart, leg strength with little joint stress, weight loss, improved balance, posture, and coordination. And being outdoors makes me happier. Although your bicycling can be solitary if you want it to be, it is a great sport to do with others. Cyclists are generally a friendly group and for me, it has been an excellent way to make friends and establish a connection to a new community. And bike groups develop cohesion, a team not competition spirit, so they look out for each other like a warning of debris ahead on the road, cars or other bikers passing, and helping out whenever there is a mechanical or health issue.

The mental side of cycling is also important to me. When I first retired in Georgia in 2003, I was a social rider and learned about an extremely difficult and challenging ride in North Georgia called the Six Gaps- 100 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing in one day. The one person I knew who had done it said it was impossible unless I trained very hard for several months on comparable mountains and accepted that it would be very painful and completely exhausting to finish- what’s not to like about that! I trained, got myself mentally committed, and on the ride day sucked it up and completed the ride but not before a flat tire crash on a downhill and a redneck in a car hit my helmet with an object he threw at me. A ride like that takes all day. You end up exhausted but exhilarated, tired but knowing you did it, even getting to wear a smug, bragging rights ride-labeled t-shirt.

When I first came to California in 2013, a friend mentioned to me seeing bicycle riders at the Par 3 Golf Course parking lot in Arcadia so I dropped by one day. There was a group of 10 or so bikers there who had just finished a ride to Seal Beach and back. I walked up to the group, introduced myself, and said I was looking for a group to ride with. Immediately several of the group introduced themselves as members of the Arcadia Amblers Bicycle Group and were quick to engage in conversation about the group. One guy in particular named Wally told me he was 81, stayed around after all others left, and talked to me for another half hour. He explained the group had grown out of the Arcadia Presbyterian Church but that several riders were not members. I knew I had found my bike group. It was then and continues to this day to be a very open, accepting, friendly, and caring group of male and female riders. I still ride once a week with 4 or 5 of the Amblers (calling ourselves the Chain Gang) and we have become friends, sharing a beer after rides, along with our stories but most of all just caring about each other.

Bicycling is also about freedom. A car can get you where you want to go faster, but it can’t go farther than a bike. It’s possible to ride across a state — which I have done three times in Georgia, once in Oregon— or a nation which I have done in Taiwan. As I began to ride with the Amblers in 2013, I learned that a half dozen or so Amblers had recently finished a ride down the entire west coast of Oregon and before that Washington State. We began talking about riding from San Francisco to Malibu and ultimately did that ride in May 2015.

You can drive a car from San Francisco to Malibu 400 miles in about ten hours. There is something just right about the speed of a bike. It allows you to cover so much more ground than walking, but you can see so much more than from a car. What you miss in a car is the feel and sounds of towns like Monterey, Big Sur, Morro Bay, Cambria, Pismo Beach, and Santa Barbara, the way the wind blows off the ocean, the constant spectacular postcard feel and sound of slow motion vista after vista of waves washing against the beautiful coastline. On that ride, I also spotted so much wildlife- an owl, rabbits, deer, a coyote, many different birds, elephant seals, and a grass snake wriggling into a bush.

The distance between overnight towns varied from 50 to 80 miles. It may sound like punishment but for me, it was pure freedom: freedom from habit, routine, and boredom; freedom from television, computers, and the internet; freedom from obligations, responsibilities, duties, and chores. Our group of 10 riders covered 400 miles in 9 days. We bonded through our shared endurance, challenging distances, and camaraderie.

Long-distance cycling distills life to what is important at the moment: the next mile, the next town, and reaching the final destination. There is an acute awareness of which way the wind is blowing. You hear from parts of your body you did not know existed. When all you have to do that day is ride a bike, life can seem pretty simple. Because of my bike, I know the roadside version of Georgia, Oregon, Taiwan, and the California coast through the vistas of hills, fields, woods, farmhouses, small towns, and cities.

Throughout my life, I’ve ridden my bike thousands of miles. These days, as I advance in age, I get out a couple of times a week — never less than 20 miles and seldom more than 50.

But there’s one thing I’ve noticed: The older I get, the better, lighter, more expensive bike my body needs — it’s easier on the legs and needs less effort to go longer or faster. A few of my Ambler friends have even graduated to electric bikes.

Freedom, as they say, isn’t free.