A Long Ride Coming

By Buzz Ponce

When the son was 18 years-old, his father was dying of cancer. “He has about a year left..,” said the doctor. Told to lie about his father’s terminal illness, the deception led to decades of lament and despair.

A Long Ride Coming is a deeply personal memoir filled with poignancy and tinged with wry humor. The book takes the reader on a 1,900 mile bicycle ride from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Mexican border and then from Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California. The journey meets steep, challenging terrain and memorable, once-in-a-lifetime characters.

Testing his stamina and age, the author’s bike ride ends where it began a year earlier—at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Much more than a bicycle trip, the story unveils a tribute to a father who died too young, leaving a son to struggle with nearly 50 years of regret.

Until finally, a long bicycle ride brings lasting homage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Buzz Ponce
• Release date: Apr 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524204440

Buzz Ponce

   After teaching high school journalism in San Diego County for eight years, Buzz Ponce left education and entered sales in Southern California for Jostens and later Herff Jones, specializing in school yearbooks. He holds a Bachelor and Master’s degree in journalism education from Northern Arizona University.      In 2013 Ponce wrote his first book, Finding Frank: Full Circle in a Life Cut Short, a chronicle on the impact the late Frank Buncom had on his life at an early age.      A contributing writer to Bleacher Report.com, A Long Ride Coming is Ponce’s second book. He resides in Fountain Hills, Arizona with his wife Susan and their two adopted dogs, Henry and Ivy.      The sometimes writer plans to continue to ride a bicycle, slow and steady. http://sometimesawriter.com/

Book preview

Also by Buzz Ponce

Finding Frank:

Full Circle in a Life Cut Short

http://sometimesawriter.com/

Cover Design  Julie Azhadi http://www.julieazhadi.com/category/musings/

Interior photography Charles N. Ponce, Jr., Dave Rickabaugh,

John Thornley, Buzz Ponce

Copyright © 2016 Buzz Ponce

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

ISBN-13:

C:\Users\Buzz\Desktop\bike 1962.jpg

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your

balance you must keep moving."

Anonymous

For Charlie

and his lost but

not forgotten dreams

T A B L E  O F  C O N T E N T S

Author’s Notes  vii

Prologue  1

PART ONE

1    The Beginning of the End  7

2     Finding Tribute  13

3    An Unlikely Club  15

4    Running Away to a Natural State of Bliss  21

5    There’s Something About Mary  25

6    Awe and Surrealism at the Bridge and Beyond  29

7    Twists and Turns and Spirits  34

8    Fog, Wind, and Family Ties  40

9    Beautiful Scenery and Crotch Rockets  46

10   Ambrosia, Orson Welles, and Heaven  53

11   Disgusting Sounds and Amazing Swedes  57

12   Monks and Ball Busters  62

13   Finding Harmony in Old California  67

14   Sideways  73 

15   Underwear and Rogue Joggers  78   

16  Major Funk Debunked  87   

17  Ventura Highway in the Sunshine  90   

18  A Memorial, a Mime, and a Dust Up  96   

19  The Old Neighborhood  108   

20  Almost the Right Stuff  113   

21  An Orange Curtain Scorcher  118   

22  No Road is Long With Good Company  130 

23  Nostalgia, a Naked Beach, and the Border  134 

24  ‘I’m Glad I Did That’  144 

Photo Gallery  148   

PART TWO

25    For the Love of a Bike  159   

26    My Dinner With George  164   

27  A Full Circle Symbiosis  169     

28  On the Road Again  175 

29  Father Knows Best  185 

30  Busted With Sancho  188 

31  The Chuckanut Way  194

32   Fires, Drought, and Deception  197

33  Monsters, Bullies, and Living in the Now  203

34  Whacked and Hacked  211

35  Dreams, Drivers, and Lucky Dudes  216

36  Throttle Jockeys and Gravel Roads  223 

37  Tunnels, Bridges, and Storms  230

38  Epitaphs and Trust  239

39  A Miracle of Sorts  246

40  Gusty Winds of Change  251

41  Florence and the Bomb  255

42  The Seven Devils  263

43  Gold Coast Pie  268

44  Smack and Babe the Blue Ox  272

45  Creeped Out  277

46  A World of Giants  283

47  The Holy Grail  287

48  Full of Duck in Elk  294

49  A Salute and a Super Hero  300

50  Last of the Ball Busters  306

51  ‘You Did Good, But...’  310

52  The End of the Beginning  313

53   The Rearview Mirror  318

Acknowledgements  322

AUTHOR’S NOTES

When writing A Long Ride Coming, I called on many episodes in my life that were emotional and significant as well as despairing and regretful. There was one seminal moment though, which eventually became the starting point for the central theme in this book some 25 years later.

It was when I lost my father’s wedding ring.

The ring was given to me by my widowed mother prior to my second marriage. I treasured the ring as a tribute not just to my marriage but also to my father who had worn it for nearly three decades.

When I carelessly left the ring in a hotel room in 1991 while on a business trip, it was gone from my life, never to be seen again. I’ve bought and worn several different wedding bands in the ensuing years but all left a void; as an acknowledgment to my father, a tribute was lost forever.

Or so I thought.

A long bicycle ride corrected that sense of loss. Finally, 47 years after his death, I had a lasting tribute to my father, one I could never lose in a hotel room or anywhere else.

In preparation for this book, I relied on memory of some events that happened many years ago. Other, more recent events include people who were and are, essential both in my life and the bicycle ride. All names are real and all events are true; nothing was embellished.

The goal in this writing was authentic portrayal in connecting the passing of a parent at a young age and a long bicycle ride at an old age.

And to reclaim a lost tribute.

PROLOGUE

––––––––

W

ith precision, the surgeon’s words were cutting, abrupt, and abrasive: "He has about a year left..."

I was 18 years-old and had just been told my father had terminal cancer; he would die within 10 months. The news of his imminent death was unexpected and offensively sudden. When he was wheeled into surgery on that drizzly March morning in 1967 the anticipation was encouraging; the cancer would be expunged, allowing my father to return to an active, full life.

But the same doctor who gave the family hope with his optimistic tone prior to cutting my father open, soon dashed all trust. When he met us in the hospital waiting room some six hours after disappearing behind shuttered doors and entering surgery, the good doctor harrumphed, saying he was, Sorry. He went on to say the obligatory, We did everything we could.

And in the same breath he said the forever ringing, dreadful, He has about a year left.

The doctor then quickly turned and left the room, too busy to show any concern, too busy to share any understanding. Too busy to be bothered by the patient’s family.

He left the room and left my mother, my brother, and myself to fend for ourselves. Fend off such assaults as when just a few days later, the surgeon summoned us to his office. My father was still in the hospital, still reeling from his surgery, when the doctor in all of his professorial genius opined that we were not to tell my father of his terminal disease.

Keep it to yourselves, he said in whispered, conspiratorial, haunting tones. The patient shouldn’t know. If he did, his last few months would be even more uncomfortable.

So when my father returned home and for a brief time felt good and hopeful, even going back to work for several days, his wife and two sons had the insufferable burden of lying to him. I’m so damn glad the worst part is over, he’d say during his short reprieve. I told you I’m going to beat this thing...

But we were committed to obeying doctor’s orders, committed to the code of silence.

We were committed to lie to my father, committed to pretend he was going to beat this thing, committed to hide the horrible truth. My mother was stoic, putting on a false smile every day, somehow coping with the nightmare. My brother, six and a half years older and enlisted in the US Navy, was strong, staunch in his vow to stay on a course for our father that would never contradict the wise, prudent, doctor.

I was the odd one: not strong, not wanting to believe what was happening, not wanting to hide the truth. But also not willing or able to tell the truth. The result of such deception and quiet held a vice-like grip for decades. That my father’s life ended much too soon was one thing. That I was told to lie to him about his destiny was another.

Near the end of his life, a couple of months before he died, my father of course figured it out; he was dying. But because his doctor—and family—never talked openly and honestly to him, he never talked openly or honestly. He never acknowledged he didn’t have long, never was given the chance to talk about his life, his joys, his regrets. Instead, like his two sons and wife, he was stifled, sorrowfully and regretfully resigned to ending his life in silence.

The afternoon of being told my father was terminal was the beginning of an unrest that would last decades. When I was 18 and my father was dying, my world collapsed. My world of growing up in a post-war middle class family in Southern California fell apart. At some depth, I knew: my safe, privileged world would never be the same.

Was my father’s disease—colon cancer—hereditary? Like the doctor’s pathetic and outrageous doctrine of lying to the patient, the thought of cancer being genetic seemed widely and falsely promoted in some circles half a century ago.  Selfishly I worried: does the same fate await me?

Before my father died and much before I was ready, I married my high school sweetheart. Making questionable decisions turned out to be one of the many effects of going through the hell of losing a parent at a young age. That my bride truly was a sweetheart and while we actually had a strong and convincing relationship in spite of our youth and my immaturity, the marriage foundered and we divorced. She went on to earn a PhD in clinical psychology. I went on to several career changes with the specter of telling an awful lie and losing a parent early, always haunting.

Fast forward to 2011 when I retired from a series of jobs—teaching, selling, sales management—after 39 years. By then I had long since remarried, had tried to be a decent, diligent stepfather, and was finding a semblance of calm with the idea of dying early; after all, at 62 I was hardly young anymore. I was thinking that maybe I had dodged a bullet somehow, that maybe the hereditary curse—if it ever existed—had skipped me. And I had a sort of gallows humor when remembering the old baseball slugger Mickey Mantle’s quote: If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.

But there was something else, too. Something else that helped bring closure in accepting the scars of losing a parent and telling an appalling lie while still a teenager. And it was so obvious, so translucent, so revealing, it was ludicrous it took so long to figure out. 

But I never did.

Until my wife Susan—by then my wife of nearly 30 years—told me the secret that unlocked decades of torment. She told me some of the decisions I made early on after my father’s diagnosis and death, some of the decisions I later forever regretted, were the result of being overwhelmed with endorsing the deception of my father’s illness. It’s nothing more complicated than that, said my wife.

With blistering klieg light focus, all was illuminated. The complexity of dealing with being told to lie to my father at his most vulnerable time was too much for this 18 year-old, too much to assimilate and too much to acknowledge. The weight of carrying that load derailed me for decades.

I still have dreams of my father, still have thoughts I betrayed him, and still am disturbed by my deceit. But now—because of my wife’s enlightenment—I’m at a relative peace with what happened in 1967 and the dishonesty the doctor insisted on. I’m finally in harmony with the reality that I lost a person who would have served me well had he lived a normal life span.

I’ve spent many years thinking how different my life would have been if I had not been coerced to lie, how different my life would have been if my father had lived another five, ten, or twenty years. In my younger years I would notice men my age still bonding with their fathers, still learning from them. How incredible, I would think, how fortunate for them.

I never had that and the decisions I made following his diagnosis are irrevocable; what would have been is a hallucination. 

In maudlin moments I’d reflect I’ve already lived many years longer than my father. What am I doing with this opportunity, this travel through gaps of time he never had? What would he have done had he lived into his late fifties, sixties, or into his seventies and beyond? What could I have learned from him?

I am not a Zen devotee and know little of its origin or mysticism. But from what I understand, Zen is a stage of collective thinking that incorporates total togetherness of mind and body. In other words, if the mind is willing, the body may respond.

If that’s the case, then Zen at its core works for me.

Because if anything I’ve ever been through had a need for mind and body to come together, it was a certain long bicycle ride I first undertook in September, 2014, at age 66.

This adventure began at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and led to the Mexican border. One year later I rode from the Canadian border to the Golden Gate Bridge. In total the backwards, circuitous route down the entire coastline of the western continental Unites States covered 35 bicycle riding days and 1,900 miles.

The overall journey was arduous, soothing, intimidating, and often exhilarating. In the beginning, it was never meant to be anything more than a bike ride that tested my age and stamina. The quest evolved into something much more:  homage to my father and an experience I wanted to share and remember. 

I wanted to remember the ache and strain of peddling steep hills, the solitude, the people I met, and the overall beauty. I wanted to remember the imposing Golden Gate Bridge, the rocky Oregon coast, the stately giant redwoods of California, the miles of sand and sea along Santa Barbara, the narrow wooded roads of Washington, the bounty of the Willamette Valley, the dusty Mexican border along the Tijuana Slough, the wrinkled cliffs and grandeur of Big Sur, the display of thousands of flags in Malibu.

But mostly, I wanted to remember how a bicycle ride melded a mind and body, healed the still lingering ache of a father’s illness when a son was just 18 years-old, and led to a convincing closure.

It was a long ride coming.

PART  ONE

Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, Holy shit, what a ride!"

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

ONE

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Through the many years since my childhood and the many years since my father’s death, some images and memories of the man have dimmed. Most moments are now visages that have grown vague and shadowy. The decades have photoshopped memories making them unrecognizable, pixilated, and distorted.

But there are some moments of my life with my father that remain as lucid and beautiful as when they occurred all of those many years ago. And then, there are those that are scratched with angst and pain.

One memory, in particular, is etched.

It was my father’s last day in our family home, the house he built in Escondido, California 18 years before on nearly two acres of avocado trees he planted and carefully, tenderly nourished. He was hunched in pain taking small excruciating steps, slowly, one at a time. He had an arm around my brother, another around me and was being carefully led by my mother to the family car, idling in the driveway. We were taking him to the hospital where he would die three days later, never returning to his home.

Our dog was outside waiting, lying by the car, knowing something was terribly wrong. Years before, when I was six or seven, my Dad brought the puppy home, having found him wandering the streets; my brother Nick and I named him Duke. But he was really my father’s dog, always with him, always at his side, always intensely steadfast. Duke, now old, now hobbled with arthritis as my father shuffled to the car, rose on all fours and looked with a sagacious stare. My Dad achingly reached out to love on his dog one last time. Duke sat on his haunches, my father scratched his head and the two said goodbye.

I’m still held hostage by the memory. It was a moment that has imprisoned the pain of losing him.

As I stood at the Canadian border in August, 2015, just before climbing on a bicycle to continue an adventure begun one year earlier, the moment when my father reached out and loved his dog for the last time struck me again. Knowing this bicycle ride was for him, an enriching calm enveloped and I thought back to the genesis of this journey and how it grew into reality.

It was Thanksgiving, 2013 and the second empty plate of turkey, mashed potatoes, and marshallowed yams were pushed to the edge of the table. But I kept gnawing on yet another warm sesame roll pasted with rich butter. And still, I reached for a large piece of pumpkin pie smothered under a mound of whipped cream.

I was much too full of all the trimmings. My unease was bending, however; I was listening, absorbed on another matter.

Our family was gathered at my stepson’s home and with his large dog grabbing gobs of morsels off the food-laden table and his two young children hanging on every word, we all sat raptly, transfixed to Josh and his tale of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa just two weeks before.

Josh’s list of accomplishments is impressive. At 38, he and wife Lisa were authors of The Social Capitalist and had created a business alliance that is widely viewed as a model of notable success. He’s a world-class martial arts athlete and a black belt more than several times over. Trekking Kilimanjaro was not a big deal to him; he was already looking forward to his next climb, his next encounter with the edge of physicality and entrepreneurship.

In contrast, I’m a Medicare card-carrying, certifiable senior citizen. Being retired for more than several years, I was much too old for any such extreme nonsense as climbing one of the largest peaks in the world. But as Josh weaved his tale of stupefying heights and of pushing his body to the limit, my mind—against all common sense—began to float and wander.

I was asking: why not me?

Why not set a physical goal that’s unique and an ultimate test for one in my generation? Why not thrust myself to a certain point, look back, and simply say, I’m glad I did that...

So there I sat, brooding. I unbuckled my belt a bit in an errant attempt to let the digested turkey and mashed potatoes get more comfortable and mulled additional self-questions. At this stage in my life, at this age, was there any more fuel left in the tank? Was there any more oomph, any more want? Are there any more challenges?  Or is this it? The proverbial downslide, the inevitable beginning of the end?

The seed had been planted. Roots were already spreading and by the time my wife and I left Josh and Lisa’s home that afternoon, it was a done deal: I was going to set a physical goal, set a challenge, and start mapping a plan.

When early spring 2014 came around I was well on my way to charting a course of activity. Fact is, I had been somewhat of an avid bicycle rider for a couple of years. Since moving to Arizona in 2011, I’d bought a Schwinn at the local Target store and quickly wore it out; the $275 price tag being good only for letting me know that yes, I still enjoyed riding a bicycle but would need a major upgrade if I were to get serious about the activity.

My second version, a mid-level Cannondale mountain bike came with not just a heftier price but with better overall design and performance. By this time I was savvy enough to bypass the likes of a discount store and to search out a legitimate bicycle shop. That’s when I stumbled upon Fountain Hills Bikes and met owner Doug Carlson.

Doug is a genuine bicycle expert and to his vast credit, there were no snickers or rolled eyeballs when I schlepped into his shop on my Target Schwinn wearing a ragged t-shirt and baggy cargo shorts. He was holding court with a group of four cyclists decked out in standard flashy bicycle gear—gaudy tight shirts with screaming red, blue, yellow and white images and logos, tight spandex-type shorts, very lithe torsos, and shaved legs. These were true cyclists who took their sport very seriously.

And there’s certainly nothing wrong with gaudy bicycle gear, lithe torsos and shaved legs, but that’s just not me. I was an oddball in this setting, a white-haired boomer clearly out of his Barcalounge, six-pack comfort zone.

Even before my stepson’s captivating tale of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro kicked me into gear, I had toyed with the idea of a long-winded bicycle ride for quite awhile. I’d been going out daily for five to ten mile cruises on my trusty Schwinn for a year before it finally broke down and I was forced to make a decision: stop peddling or pony up some serious bucks for a decent bike.

That’s when in May of 2012 I sashayed into Doug’s bike shop and began to get a little more serious about riding a bike. That’s when I knew I could be in for something special. With my new Cannondale mountain bike I was soon able to increase daily mileage and before too long notice a difference in endurance and strength.

The town I live in—Fountain Hills, Arizona, just east of Scottsdale—is aptly named. Its centerpiece is a small man-made lake showcasing an hourly plume of water that at one time was hailed as the world’s largest fountain.  That moniker is long retired but the town remains surrounded by hilly terrain marked by prominent peaks and valleys.

By any measure, Fountain Hills is a prototypical Arizona retiree community with thousands of  snow birds flocking to its surroundings in late fall, escaping the ice and cold from northern climes, then retreating back to their green space by mid spring.

The town boasts sweeping desert vistas  and was a good choice for Susan and I to retire and relocate in 2011 from Henderson, Nevada where we had lived for 10 years.  Its townspeople are friendly and outgoing, usually even to those who may espouse differing values and opinions than its mainstream WASPish perspective.

The geography, coupled with 100-plus degree temps from May to October, can make for tough, albeit rewarding, bike rides. While the natural features and weather extremes can be daunting, if one can endure the at-times difficult environmental conditions in Fountain Hills, one can endure a ride almost anywhere.

At least, that was my strategy.

After a couple of months of peddling the local hills, the tactic appeared to be actually working. I was increasing daily distances to 15-20 mile rides and thought I was getting into fairly decent physical shape. Soon, the idea of a long-distance ride began to nascent and began to sound more and more reasonable.

Within a year and a half I registered over 5,000 miles on my upgrade from the Schwinn and started to visualize a ride from Scottsdale to San Diego. But after driving that distance dozens of times, the route seemed boring—too much desert, too barren, too much flat landscape, not enough scenery. I considered a ride from my home to the Grand Canyon, a one-way roll of about 275 miles. It was a good idea, but something was missing. For whatever reason the Grand Canyon and its magnificence just didn’t fit my plan.

But then, another thought took hold.

A few months after my bout of gluttony on Thanksgiving, 2013, two words struck my memory bank when going through a box of old pictures and 35 mm slides taken decades ago: Big Sur. 

The idea seemed real, dramatic, and do-able.

Highway 1 in California weaves itself through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. The nearly 100 miles of road that stretches through the rugged Big Sur coast south of Monterey is widely recognized as one of the most picturesque that can be found anywhere.

So just like that, it was a thought stamped in certainty; I would go on a bike ride through the central coast of California.

I was at Fountain Hills Bikes in April 2014 and was letting Doug know my plans for a ride through parts of California. He looked at me with a jaundiced, suspicious eye. "You’re going on a major ride on that bike?" he asked, pointing toward the still respectable, though worn around the edges, two-wheeler he sold me just a year earlier.

Well, yeah, I said. What’s wrong with that?

C’mon, let’s be real. You’ve done a good job of getting yourself into bike-shape but if you want to join the big leagues for a mega ride, you’ve got to have better wheels. Let me see what I can put you on...

Doug was recommending not just a mountain bike this time, but something he was calling a touring bike. Before then, I might have thought a touring bicycle was reserved for wine drinking European aristocrats rolling through their estates in the south of France with a satisfying Pouilly-Fouisse in hand. But if that’s what Doug was recommending, then that’s where I was headed.

My bike guy came through and by July I was peddling the valleys and peaks of Fountain Hills on my new Specialized AWOL touring bike, equipped with Avid disc brakes, 42mm tires, and a 27-speed Shimano drivetrain.

The pieces for the big ride were beginning to unscramble. By this time, early-summer, I was specifying and finalizing my California route and setting dates.

TWO

FINDING TRIBUTE

Several years before I retired from my job as a sales manager for a school yearbook printing company in 2011, I came across an article on the awkwardly named website The Art of Manliness. The piece, written by Brian Burnam, was titled Losing Dad: How a Man Responds to the Death of His Father. 

Essentially, Burnam was asking a simple yet complex question that had plagued me for decades: how did my father’s death affect my life?

The article spurred me to try to find answers that might still help fill a void. And in a straightforward manner, Burnam’s words led to a newfound understanding; I was hardly alone with the grief of losing a parent. The sense of tremendous loss when a parent dies can be overwhelming, no matter what age—a child, a teenager, a young adult, middle aged, or a senior citizen. The enigma is how one responds to such an occurrence. How many years does it take to solve the riddle of losing a father?

In part, the article read:

It’s a classic American image, the son playing sports and the father coaching and cheering him on. This dynamic between father and son isn’t limited to sports but extends to many areas of a son’s life. As son will often go out of his way to please his father, and he is one of the few people that it is acceptable to truly brag to. We can proudly bring home our trophies and A+ papers to show dad, and this dynamic extends well in to adulthood as men share their accomplishments in college, their career, and family.

When the father is gone it feels, not like the audience is missing a member, but the whole audience is gone.

Many sons miss dad...when they need their old coach in any area of life that’s giving them trouble. For a man whose father was distant or absent, this loss of audience was felt long before his father’s death as he struggled in vain to earn his father’s approval.

Now at his death the loss is doubled as the son realizes he can never gain the approval he craved when his father was alive.

As I was acutely aware, I envied those sons—and daughters—whose father’s were an essential part of their lives into young adulthood and in many cases, well beyond. I envied the knowledge they must have learned from an older father and the memorable times they must have shared. 

When I finished reading Brian Burnam’s words, I printed the article and filed it away, mostly forgetting about it but remembering the message: When the father is gone it feels, not like the audience is missing a member, but the whole audience is gone.

And I would think of my father and try to come up with some sort of lasting, quiet honor, something that, if it were possible, he’d say, I’m proud of that. When I lost his wedding ring years ago—the ring given to me by my mother before my second marriage—I was upset. I wore the ring with pride and as a display of love for both my father and my wife. With the ring gone, so was my tribute to my father.

I went 25 years thinking and rethinking ideas for a suitable replacement for the lost ring. I eschewed flashy possibilities, wanting only something that mirrored what I remembered him to be—quiet, unassuming, dignified. 

Unbeknownst to me when planning and mapping a bicycle ride down the coast of California, my father would become the major motivation for the journey. It wasn’t until well after the preparation phase of the trip, well after all dots were connected on the itinerary, and not until I actually backed a car out of my driveway in Arizona on my way to San Francisco, that the thought of honoring my father by riding a bicycle blossomed.

But I knew: finally, I had homage. Finally, I had a tribute that could never be lost and in which my father would be proud.

THREE

AN UNLIKELY CLUB

When I first began strategizing what I sometimes sanctimoniously called a spectacular bike ride, there were several possibilities:

Start in Carmel and peddle through the heart of Big Sur, finishing in San Simeon; a ride of about 100 miles

Peddle from San Francisco to Big Sur and end in San Simeon; 220 miles

Ride from Carmel through Big Sur and finish in Los Angeles; about 370 miles

Bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles; 480 miles

But soon I hatched a bigger and better idea. Why not go Full Monty, show what I really have—or don’t have? Why not attempt to ride a bike from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Mexican border?

In doing so, I believed I would be one in a very small group that had the cojones to take a stab at a 700 mile bicycle trip. Especially, I figured, when you mixed in my age. I mean, come on; how many people 65 years plus, ride a bike 700 miles in one fell swoop?

Not many. Or so I thought.

Sure, there are those super freaks we read and marvel about—people in their 70s and 80s who run ultra marathons, wrestle alligators, and jump from airplanes at 30,000 feet. But those are freaks.

Me? I just wanted to ride my bike a long way.

I started the process of prepping the day-to-day itinerary of a bike ride in late spring, 2014. Soon, I took the leap and expanded the trip to include not just Big Sur, but more. For a few days in a fit of make believe, I toyed with the idea of riding across the USA—starting in San Diego and ending up someplace on the east coast. I did a little research on such a journey and soon figured the idea—no matter how spectacular it may sound—needed to be reserved for heartier souls than mine. Such an attempt is a major commitment not just in the number of miles but in time, expense, and guts. Just how much did I want to fully invest in riding a bicycle? The idea of peddling a bike over 3,000 miles is enormous on several levels.

Don Petterson—a former US Ambassador with the Foreign Service in Africa—documented his cross country trip in his book Old Man on a Bicycle. Petterson was 72 years-old when he rode from New Hampshire to San Francisco in 2002 and relates in detail all of the excruciating parts of the ride, as well as all of the beauty and all of the adventure. Subtitled A Ride Across America and How to Realize a More Enjoyable Old Age, Petterson explains the allure of riding a bike long distances and uses his viewpoint to put a unique spin on aging, as when he quotes the philanthropist Bernard Baruch: To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

The fact Petterson wrote his bicycle book 12 years after the experience—at age 84—is a testimony that seniors well beyond Medicare age can do extraordinary things and that life is not over at retirement. As he chronicles so well, getting old does not necessarily bode ill for all and old age need not be an obstacle for living an affable, significant life.

My deep admiration and respect goes out to anyone who accomplishes a coast-to-coast bicycle ride—or even just gives it a try. And when someone the age of Don Petterson does it, the achievement is monumental.

By comparison, a measly 700 miles versus a cross-country jaunt is just that—measly. But it seemed achievable and was