The Misery, Mystique and Mystery of the Bike.
by Philip Watson, President

Often, what comes to mind are those rich memories of things that happened in our cycling adventures.

The Misery
The ride was on a white hot day, the wind so strong the guy wires on utility poles wailed like a D string on Billy Gibbons' Les Paul. And it was dry. Wind and dirt lashed the pace line and a dozen GDBers, while trying to stay lower than the rider in front, grabbed water bottles, swashed their mouths, and spit out the grit.

Up ahead through wavy heat lines off the road a dilapidated grocery store came into view with a number of bikes leaning around. Our group pulled in. It was not a planned rest stop.

The store was a country mom and pop type. It sold Fig Newtons and Powerade and had some free shade, and, I think restrooms, but can't remember. The store's only customers were us cyclists, and mom and pop owner seemed more bothered than not.

The Mystic
We're standing around and a pickup pulled in with a country looking man and woman. In their 60s, I'd guess. A big mongrel cur guarded the truck bed. Locals, no doubt about it. On their way inside they gawked at us as if to say this is what happens when you breed a Yankee with a college professor.

"How far y'all ridin'?" the woman asked sounding a tad surly.

"Eighty miles." Suzanne Hoenig answered with a big grin.

"In this heat. What for?" The man scowled.

Fortunately Bobby Emmitt didn't answer "for the hell of it", but instead Mark Unterberger said, "So we can get a tee shirt."

We all laughed except the couple.

Then John Berry chimed in, "After we paid thirty bucks."

"You paid money to ride eighty miles in this heat?" The local guy cut his eyes to John, mopping his brow with a red bandana, frowning as if displeased.

"There ain't one thing," the local man pointed, "on that bye-sickel that looks comfortable."

The woman added, "That seat hurts my butt just to look at it."

"Hurts mine too," Warren Smith added. All the cyclists laughed. The man and woman shot Warren a stern look.

David Preston and Kathleen Jordon squirted water from their bottles to the dog standing in the pickup bed. The dog aimed his mouth into the streams and licked at the arching drops.

The man and woman watched their dog for a moment then came back with another question.

"Why in the world would they turn the handle bars down like that?" It was the man, again. "Don't make no sense."

"That's a pretty fancy lookin' thang," now the woman. "'Bout how much one like that costs?" She pointed to a carbon/ti model.

"Just over six thousand, a guy in a Northwest jersey said, smiling. "Here, feel how light it is." The cyclist lifted his Merlin and handed it to the local man who looked ready to wrench his back, but was surprised at how light it was. Lifting the bike up and down with ease, he raised his eyebrows, impressed.

Without saying anymore the man and woman, shaking their heads, ambled toward the grocery door.

"I don't think they're going to buy a bike anytime soon." Amy Johnson said.

The cyclists laughed.

"Probably not even a tandem," Jim Spann added.

We laughed some more.

"Where's a @*$#&!-ing sag when you need one," moaned David Rothgeb.

Some of us cracked up.

Ten minutes later, peddling hard, someone yelled. "Car back!" Another voice hollered. "Comin' around."
The pickup with the local man and woman passed nice and slow and gave us lots of room. The dog stood in the bed eyeing us, wagging his tail.

In the cab we saw the local couple with big, friendly smiles, and they continued to wave back at us for the next quarter mile. We waved back too, then ducked lower into the hot, dusty wind.

The Mystery
In the early nineteen hundreds, a Sherlock Holmes story was published about a crime associated with cycling. In The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, Holmes deducted that his client was a cyclist because of "her healthy glow and the pedal marks upon her shoes." Sherlock was right on! The young woman daily rode her bike to and from the local railway station and had lately been followed by another cyclist -- a mysterious man who was not a shy admirer.