Saddle Soars 1

SADDLE SOARS
Chapter 1
My Beginning


I can remember like it was yesterday. My wife, Karen, and I had gone to Dallas to visit some friends from school. We had a good visit on Saturday with a trip to an Antique Mall. Tim and Kathy had been good friends for a few years and we were glad to get a chance to see them again. Tim got me up early on Sunday to go to White Rock Lake and ride bikes. I had only a vague idea about what that meant but I agreed to go. We met up with the guy (don’t remember his name) at the north part of the lake. I remember he had funny clothes on, real funny.

White Rock Lake is really just an oversized pond with some nice landscaping nestled in a nice up-scale neighborhood. It also has a nice trail (paved) that goes around it and to my memory it is about ten miles around the lake. Tim’s bikes weren’t great bikes by today’s standards; they were just the best bike I had ever been on at that time. I don’t remember how long it took us to get around the lake; I just remember being invigorated after the ride. We went back to his apartment, cleaned ourselves and went on to church. During that service I felt more alive than I could remember. It was not the singing or the sermon, nor was it any of the other activities that make up a church service. The only thing that was different was the bike ride we had done just before going to church. I knew that day I wanted a bike. Not like the ones they sold in department stores. I wanted one that felt as good as Tim’s bike did.

It would be about a year before I would act on the desire to have a “nice” bike but I got one. At least I thought it was a good bike. Like many young men I failed to do the single most important thing when buying a bicycle. I did not seek out other cyclist for advice on what a good bike for me would be given the amount I was willing to spend. I couldn’t see spending more than two hundred dollars for any bike at the time because I just knew that all bikes from a bike shop were all the same with a different paint job. I went to a lawn mower/bicycle shop to pick one out, and what a beauty I got. And for under two hundred bucks to boot. I got a Panasonic Sport with the shifters on the stem and the extra brake levers that don’t really work at all. It was a twenty five inch frame (62cm) painted charcoal grey. The shop had another model called the Sport 500. It was blue and the shifters were down on the frame and had this new thing called “indexed” shifting with six gears in the back. I thought it was all a gimmick to get me to spend more money than was needed, so, I stuck with the grey one.

I brought my bike home to show Karen how clever I was and to impress her with my purchase. All guys do this, we try to convince “our women” how fortunate they are to have such a great guy for their own. Then I spoke the words that I would dine on many times in the years to come. “This is the LAST bike I’ll ever need to buy!” At the time I really thought I was telling the truth. But it wasn’t, it was a big old fashioned lie. Since the Panasonic I have had a Peugeot, three Treks, a Bridgestone, a Schwinn and a Carrera. That’s a lot of bikes in seventeen years. Especially since I had so boldly proclaimed that I would never need to buy another bike.


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There are plenty of moments when one makes statements based on a lack of knowledge. I remember telling someone that I would never need a bike computer. Man was that a lie! I’ve had more cycle computers than bikes. I was never going to wear “cycling shorts” or a helmet, and gloves with no fingers were would NEVER cover my hands. Yet all these things I have bought and will buy more. The plain truth is that most of us “know” very little about cycling or much anything else that we make great claims about. In fact when I hear someone say “I’ve always,,,” or “I’ll never,,,” I have found that I am about to be told a half truth at best. Such statements are a cheap way of convincing another person that we know something and it is pointless to question us. When you hear someone make the “I’ll never or I’ve always” proclamation that is the very time to question them.

The Panasonic really did feel better than the department store bikes but at the time I could not give an honest reason why. So I made a bunch of stuff up that I thought sounded good. It’s a good thing I did not ride with any other cyclist at the time as I don’t think my ego could have taken the realization that everybody saw through me and that I did not know what I was talking about. The Panasonic also had an unusual side effect. It got several comments, once in a while it got positive ones. But mostly what I got was “Hey, that thang git FM and AM?” People are so clever.

My first rides were from the apartment complex we lived in to the local mall, one mile away, a lap around the mall and all the way back to the apartment. Occasionally, in a fit of athletic adventure, I would take two laps around the mall bringing the trip to nearly three miles. I would also venture all the way over to the nice neighborhood about a half a mile away. Oh the winding roads, those only “nice” neighborhoods can offer. I would guess that some of those trips would make a good five mile workout. I road in cut-off blue jeans, a tee-shirt and “running” shoes. I carried no water or tools or even a spare tube. Since I was never more than a couple of miles away from home I did not think I needed such “extras”.

My first “long” ride came in the summer of ’87 when an elder at our church got wind that I was riding a bicycle. He was (and still is) a man that I had a tremendous respect for and enjoyed his company every chance I could. So when he told me that he rode bicycles and wanted to go riding with me I said “of course”. We made arrangements to ride from our homes to a “half-way point” between our homes. This “half-way point” was about five miles from my house so I assumed we would just turn around there and ride back to my place. We did not do that at all. Looking back I think he was under the impression that I was a real bicyclist, after all I had this great bike. We rode to one of his frequented destinations, a small town called Cashion Oklahoma. It was about twenty miles from my place so I had no idea it even existed until we got there. If one could find oneself living in a Norman Rockwell painting that would describe what it felt like to ride into Cashion that day. I did not see a kid running bare foot with a stick behind a “hoop” but it would not have surprised me if I had. We stopped at the only remaining store in town to get some snacks. The store was in a large tin building that doubled as a “feed” store. It was an arched structure and was not squeaky clean. The paint was peeling and the floor was dusty and it was an old man running the cash register that rang a bell. I got a candy bar

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and a cola, which was a bad combination for some one with twenty miles to go and no water on the bike to drink. We finished our snacks and got back on the bikes for the return trip. It took much longer to get home than to get to Cashion but I did get home. I went farther than I needed to go considering my strength as a cyclist at the time. Twenty five miles would have been amazing for me and I would have felt better afterwards. Something about bicycling got ‘hold of me that day and has had me ever since. I couldn’t tell you any one element that hooked me. It was kind of a package deal, the sights, the distance, the friendship and the town. It all added up to an amazing experience. I could drive to that town on the same roads with the same friends and stop at the same store and never really see or know any of it. When I talk about riding to some place that is more than a few blocks away, most of the people I know look at me as if I were crazy and say “I wouldn’t drive that far”. They just don’t get it. It is not about the town or the road or even the company I keep. It is the way that riding a bike brings all those things together. You are not just on the road, you feel it. You feel the changes in the texture of the road, the inclines and the descents. It is the same with the weather and the smells, both good and not so good. It is not just something you force your way thru like in a car. It is working with the world around you. Kind of “meta-physical” for me too, but that is the best way I can describe it.

You would think that I became a high mileage cyclist after the Cashion trip but I did not. What I did do was con a friend, Dale, from work into buying a bicycle instead of doing cosmetic work to his truck. He agreed and ended up getting the next step up model bike from mine and he got one of those new “bike computers” put on it. I snubbed my nose at it saying “I’ll NEVER get one of those”, yet every time we went riding I would ask him “how fast,,” or “how far,,”. I wanted one so bad I could taste it. We started out riding in neighborhoods, going a little farther every time. We were riding four or five days per week after work and on Saturdays. After a while we ventured over to Lake Hefner on the North West side of Oklahoma City. During this time I put a water bottle cage on my bike and a bike computer just like the one Dale had. It was right at fifteen miles from my place to the lake, all the way around and back. We would joke around, look at the scenery and stop at the golf shop to refill our bottles (un-filtered lake water, yuk!). After a couple of weeks we tried tacking a few extra miles on by doubling back around the lake. This gave us about 20 miles of pure peddling heaven. In those days I hated hills of any kind so a flat ride around lake Hefner the perfect route.

My older brother heard about how much fun I was having so he got a bike and started riding with Dale and myself. He discovered a weekly ride put on by the local bicycle club known as the “Doughnut” ride and told me about it. My brother and I started attending that ride which was on Saturday mornings at about 9 am. I lived about 7 miles from the park where the ride started from so I got extra miles by riding to it and home afterwards. The ride itself was (and still is) a short route to a bakery in down town Oklahoma City just 6 miles from the park. It is a very leisurely paced ride primarily on back streets. It is geared around the beginner cyclists’ needs and for social interaction between cyclists in a non competitive environment. The ride leader was older than dirt with a delightfully dry wit. He went out of his way to insure that all the new participants had a good time and

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arrived at the bakery safe and sound. His name is Fred Kamp and will be remembered by all who have the good pleasure of riding with him as one of the reasons we love this sport. The time I spent riding the Doughnut ride I found that cycling and cyclists had much to teach me. I used to complain when riding. I would complain about the wind. No matter what direction it came from, it was the wrong direction as I would have to fight it sooner or later. And the hills, how I hated the hills. “Everything is training,” Fred would say “everybody likes ‘with’ the wind training but ‘against’ the wind training makes you strong.” He would do that with everything I complained about, wind, hills and bumpy roads, “everything is training,,,”.

“We should ride to work.” Dale announced one day. I thought this to be insanity and I told him so in no uncertain terms. “It’s too far!” I protested. I just knew it would take us hours to get there and then we would be completely exhausted upon arrival. So he suggested we try it one day after work instead of our lake tour. I agreed as I knew it was too far and this was my big chance to prove how wrong he was. We took all back roads and still made it in 45 minutes. I was wrong, Dale was right, we could do it. We came up with a plan so that we would get to work 30+ minutes early so we could change and have a bite to eat before the work day began. Since we were able to take main roads all the way in it took about 25 minutes to get to work. We left my house around 5:15 in the morning, Dale had a head light so he was always in front. We were in no hurry, we were just having fun and going to work at the same time. When we got to work we both felt invigorated. More alert than usual and happier. Going to work was becoming something I looked forward to as it was a chance to ride my bike and spend time with my friend, Dale. We rode to work three or four days a week and also rode around the lake after we got home.
Sometimes hand-me-downs are a good thing. Mostly, one puts up with HMD’s as a necessary evil while growing up. Anyone with a big brother or sister knows what it is like to get used shirts, pants and shoes. You don’t like it but you go on with the brief humiliation of everyone knowing that you are wearing your brother’s clothes and they never fit quite right either. “You’ll grow into them” mom would console, but they never did. You always looked as if you just fell off the back of a train. Yes most of the time HMD’s are the evil by-product of “save a buck” survival tactics that parents occasionally implement due to hard times. But sometimes HMD’s are a good thing. My older brother had a Peugeot. A nice bike with very pleasant road manners. It was much lighter than my bike and had that new indexed shifting. Then he bought a Cannondale and he gave me the Peugeot. What an eye-opener that bike was. It was better in every way than the Panasonic. Without really meaning to, my brother changed my view of cycling with that simple act of kindness. Pandora’s Box had been opened and it had been full of bicycles.

“Let’s do the Lake Hefner Streak!” My brother (Joe) suggested with some enthusiasm. “Let’s do the Hundred” he suggested. By this time the three of us were regularly riding 30 to 40 mile distances but to suggest we do100 miles was crazy. We had two months to prepare so we agreed to go crazy. We started by adding miles to every ride we did. If we normally rode 30 miles in the evenings then we would go 40 and so on. We reasoned that if we could go 75 to 80 miles then 100 would not be much of a stretch. The week-end before the ride we drove the coarse only to find that there were quite a few hills near the
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mid-point of the ride so we decided to do our own hundred mile ride. We left from my house at 7 am on September 11, 1988. There was no wind and the temperature was around 65 degrees. It was a perfect day for three adventurers to launch out. There is a lake about 40 miles or so south from where I lived and so that became our quest, Lake Thunderbird or bust! We stopped every ten miles or so for a short rest and a snack. That is a good plan if you have never done a century before. It breaks up the ride into small, acceptable pieces so you don’t feel quite as fatigued. That is not how I do long a ride now, but in the beginning it was a life saver.

That ride took all day. We got back to my house around 5 pm, ten hours after we took off. We did stop at a restaurant for lunch. A note to any future or current cyclists who may be reading this, DO NOT STOP AND EAT a HALF-POUND HAMBURGER at the sixty mile mark. It is also a good idea to monitor how long you stop. If you stop longer than about 5 minutes you will become very stiff and it will take a few miles to get comfortable again. We had gone to Lake Thunderbird to avoid hills and since we knew what we were doing we didn’t check to see what the hills were like out that way. Good thing too, or we would have just stayed home. As it turned out there were plenty of hills after forty miles. So the real truth is that in our quest to avoid difficulty all we managed to do is face that difficulty without the benefit of other cyclists to draft behind and we had to pay for our refreshments every ten miles. The up-side is that we made it without any problems and we found that those terrible hills weren’t all that bad. I also learned that the New Testament is correct when in the book of James is written “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of you faith develops perseverance (endurance).” James 1:2-3 but it would be a year or two before I quit complaining about the wind and hills.