This month hasn’t been much to talk about in terms of bike riding. I spent the first half of the month riding my recumbent and the second half riding my folding travel bike. My body is all kinds of confused. By messing around with the height of my handlebars on my Bike Friday, I screwed up my back. So I have been maxing out at 30 miles or so per day. When your back hurts riding is exhausting. I better up my game for Saturday’s Cider Ride. which is over 50 miles.

Total miles for the month: 835.

Longest ride: 43 miles.

Miles so far this year: 10,390

(This means I have now ridden over 10,000 miles outside after being a rehabbing cellar dweller for January and a weather weenie for parts of February and March.

My next goal is to reach 21,000 miles on Little Nellie. I’m fewer than 300 miles from that goal. Maybe I’ll do a hike to celebrate.

It was a raw early December morning five years ago. I was riding the inaugural Cider Ride here in DC. The course took us across the Anacostia River uphill into the near suburbs of Prince Georges County. We were riding to a couple of apple farms. The roads and drivers were not exactly pleasant. I was riding alone. At the rest stops I said hi to the few volunteers that I knew. I was looking forward to finishing and warming up at the after party.

Somewhere, somehow during the last ten miles I met Chris Maimone. He, like me, was enduring the cold. Chris asked if he could ride with me. And so we became a pair, chatting and keeping an eye out for each other as the cars squeezed by on the narrow roads. Approaching FedEx Field we came upon Katie Fiegenbaum, an undergraduate at American University who was was riding alone and starting to struggle. So we adopted her, adding her to our little pity party on wheels. The company made the last few miles of the ride so much more enjoyable. Afterward we shared pizza and laughs.

From time to time afterward, I’d run into Chris on bike commutes or at bike events in DC. Of course, as usual, I had a difficult time recognizing him but he never made me feel bad about it. A few years later I saw him at the start of the Seagull Century in Salisbury Maryland. He asked me to ride with him. Forgetting that he was more than 10 years younger, I said yes.

For the next 100 miles, I strained to keep up with him, doing my best to disguise the fact that I was in a world of hurt for most of the ride.

Sometime after that event he described me as the person who showed him how to do bike rides.

Seriously.

We all take the people around us for granted. I didn’t do Seagull this year but when I saw that Chris did I figured I’d see him at the next ride down the road.

That’s not going to happen.

Chris died Wednesday night.

He was a proud husband and father. A devoted Catholic. From his athletic events he raised thousands of dollars for Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis, more widely known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He did this in memory of his father who succumbed to ALS 20 years ago.

Like some many people I know in the BikeDC community I am in shock at hearing this news. We’ve lost a splendid human being.

Here is Chris’s obituary.

Tailwinds forever, Chris.

A day of rest and plenty of ibuprofen saw me through yesterday without too much discomfort. I wasn’t getting sharp pains like yesterday, just a general ache and stiffness. So I lounged about until noon. The weather here in DC was about as perfect as it can get. I decided to take a chance and go for a ride.

Before I left I lowered the handlebars back to where they were before my back went out. I gently rode down the street. No pain. And I rode some more. I did my best to avoid hills because they stress the lower back.

Trees were fighting the season, holding on to their greenery. I made my way to Fort Hunt Park. The maples there put on a great show during autumn. Not this year. Not yet anyway.

I left the park and continued on. No back pain. In fact, other than a lack of power to my legs, I felt surprisingly good.

I called it a day after 30 miles and rewarded myself with some cookies. (They are not as big as they appear in the photo. I had my camera set on “gluttony”.)

I should be fine by Saturday. I plan on doing over 60 miles on the Boundary Stone Ride. It goes around the perimeter of DC to visit all the cities boundary stones. Then there’s a party at a bar called Boundary Stone. I don’t think they serve cookies. Beer will have to suffice.

• It’s been nearly a month since I’ve ridden a bike more than 40 miles in a day. On tour, I aimed to ride 40 miles by lunch but now that I have the comfort of a bed and a car and unlimited snacks, 40 miles seems like a big deal.
• I recently switched to riding Little Nellie, my folding travel bike. It’s little wheels are hard on my back. Yesterday, for the first time in over a year, my lower back started aching. Before going on a 30-mile ride, I raised the handlebars about a half inch. The new position felt great while I was riding. I ended the ride, ironically, at the drug store. That’s where my back started to send shocks of pain into my hips. So today I am laying about the house feeling glum as I look outside and see the perfect blue sky. Ibuprofen goes great with corn flakes for breakfast.
• I’m back in the habit of lifting weights. After only five visits to the gym, my arms are no longer twigs. It feels strange to have meat on them after they withered away on my bike tour.
• After drinking beer three times in a week, my tummy is not happy. I think it may be time for a beercation soon.
• I am still waiting for documents for my Irish citizenship application. I need three more. Two of the three require a notarized affidavit which I did not provide with my applications so I know I will have to resubmit them. The third (a certified copy of my father’s birth certificate) requires a court order. I’ll blow that bridge up when I get the affidavits out of the way. The documents take 10 to 12 weeks to process.
• Yesterday I read the blog posts of Gretchen, a woman who is solo hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. She’s been hiking for over four months. Although she complains about being slow, she is covering up to 20 miles per day with a monster back pack on. Go girl!
• Another blog that I am really liking these days is by my former co-worker, Jessica. Jessica left DC to teach in the desert of northern Chile. Who’d have thought such a remote place would be so interesting?
• I have made no progress on plans for a bike tour next year. Reading Gretchen’s posts brought to mind how much I loved the solitude of my tour. Basically, I am contemplating a cross country ride that includes the Grand Canyon or a double cross (to the Pacific and back).
• This week autumn arrived. We skipped the first two weeks of gentle cool down and jumped right into the windy cold part. The trees didn’t get the memo. They are mostly still green. I broke out the holey sweater for an evening ride. Dang. I don’t mind though. The heat and humidity of DC summers really wear on you after a while.

One thing I have grown to appreciate as I age (and, boy, am I old) is a terrific conversation. A few over the last twenty years come back to my mind over and over again. Until this summer, the most recent one lasted four hours.  I downplayed it in my blog post the next day but I think about it all the time. The more we talked the more there was to talk about. We were each peeling the others’ onion.

The day after I dipped my wheel in the Pacific Ocean in July, I happened to find myself sitting next to Julie Counseller Crabtree at a pub in Astoria Oregon. We didn’t know each other, but a conversation broke out that lasted two hours. Onions were peeled. She told me about her jewelry making and painting, bragged rather subtly about her kids, described how she, a certified rolfer, would deal with the nerve issues in my legs, and told me about staying at an Air B&B on a goat farm. I told her about my bicycle touring adventures. I didn’t want the conversation to end. Since she lives in Juneau, Alaska, it’s unlikely we’ll cross path again, but Facebook keeps us in touch. Last night, she posted something on Facebook about her father.

On October 3, Julie’s father had a stroke. He has a long row to hoe to recovery. The rest of the Counceller family will be doing what they can, but clearly the stress on them will be difficult. One way to help would be to take some of the financial burden off their backs. If you can, please make a contribution on her Go Fund Me page.

Thanks.

You know you are old when you only see your friends at wakes and funerals. Somebody older than me said that once.

Today I went to a memorial ride in DC for Tom Hollowell. Tom was an avid, year-round bike commuter. About a week ago, not far from his work at the Smithsonian, he was run over by a driver of a car. He died. It was a hit and run. The driver has yet to be apprehended.

I didn’t know Tom. But as I looked around at the gathering, perhaps two or three hundred strong, I saw so many people I did know. Rachel M., Rachel C., Adam, Leslie, Lesly, Ted, Jean, Jeff, Joe, Peter, Jesse, Jeanne, and Rudi among them.

During the moment of silence, I spotted Laura and Cyrus. I met them a month ago at a similar event for Laura’s son and Cyrus’s brother Malik was run over and killed a few miles away while riding his bike.

I could see and hear people crying. I didn’t take pictures. I wanted to feel this. It felt dreadful.

Many, perhaps even most, of the people I know who ride bikes or walk around this city have been hit by the driver of a motor vehicle. Some more than once. It’s hard for me to say which is more miraculous: the fact that of all these victims only only one died or the fact that I was hit – while on the Mount Vernon Trail, no less – and walked away without a scratch.

Days like today remind me that I am living on borrowed time.

We all are.