Not good biking weather

I sit near the door

man in tights

black Lycra shorts

my favorite jersey

six-years-old

yellow helmet tucked

under my arm

I sit near the door

waiting out the rain

my mind on the asphalt

I should be biking but

I’m not so instead I read

a poem or think I read

a poem or imagine I read

a poem, Luci Shaw perhaps

hiking a rocky seashore

or Wendell Berry walking

the woods and keeping

the Sabbath especially

in the rain

I don’t need trails

in the woods or rocky climbs

by the seashore, not today

anyway instead just a ribbon

of asphalt that replaced

the railroad tracks that

carried dreams then

but now the dreams

are carried only

on two inflatable tires.

It’s still raining.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

"Dancing Priest" -- The Writing Process

It started as an image evoked by a song. The image was a priest dancing on a beach. The song was “Luna Rossa” sung by Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis.

This started in October 2002. At the time, I was working as an independent consultant. The recession had taken its toll on my consulting business, though, and I would soon start to look for a return to regular employment. In the meantime, that dancing priest kept buzzing around my head.

It buzzed for three years. I essentially wrote the story – the entire novel and then some – in my head. Nothing went to paper or the computer screen.

I started mentally writing the story because of having trouble falling asleep. I began to think about the dancing priest, and what he was doing dancing on a beach. I made him part of a tour group that included a young American woman. The group had a dinner in a restaurant. The priest, an Anglican from Britain, and the American woman started a mild flirtation at dinner. I imagined a conversation between the two of them embedded within the conversation by the entire group at dinner.

The story grew and changed. The tour group disappeared. It was just the priest and the woman accidentally meeting and having dinner together. Then the beach disappeared. The priest became a young man studying for the priesthood in Scotland, the woman an American exchange student.

Two years into this “mental writing” process, I took up road biking. A few weeks later, so did the priest, except he rode for his university’s team and was a contender for the British Olympic team. By this time, he had acquired a full-blown history – born in England and raised by Scottish guardians. The mental writing at night before falling asleep continued.

Looking back, I can tell when this whole exercise started to get truly serious – early 2005. How do I know that? By the dates on documents I was beginning to collect for research. When my wife would ask about the pile of news stories on Britain, I would mumble something about a “writing project” – I wasn’t ready to tell anyone, including her, that I was working on a novel.

In the summer of 2005, the mental writing process – and the story – had become so involved that I needed a way to keep track of it. I began to make notes and outlines. And then, one day in the fall of 2005, I started writing the story on my computer.

Once I started, it was almost as if I couldn’t stop. The words came pouring out of my head, except it wasn't a “stream of consciousness” exercise – I had been writing and editing and rewriting the story in my head for three years. It flowed and flowed, and the flow became a torrent. By the time I finished, I had a manuscript of more than 150,000 words – closer to two novels than to one.

So I did what any writer would do – I split it roughly in half, and started rewriting the first half, over and over again. Rewriting, and new ideas, caused the first half to creep back up to 100,000 words, and so I began to edit and cut. (One of the cut scenes, the story of how the hero’s parents first met, is the story “Gratitude” I posted on Nov. 17.)

By this time, given the amount of time I was spending typing, I had told my wife what I was up to. At some point, she read an early version of the manuscript. I asked her just to read it for the story – and not edit it (she’s a first-class editor but at that point I had not done any serious editing myself).

She started reading. Some days into it, she called me at work and left a message. She was in tears. She had reacted to a certain scene in the way I had hoped she would, the way I had hoped any reader would. (The publisher – a man – had the same reaction to the same scene when he read it.)

I spent a good year on rewriting and editing. In the meantime, the story kept growing and developing. I completed the second manuscript, and there are six others in various stages of creation – from a 4,000-word story summary to a 70,000-word manuscript.

I went to a writer’s conference, where I met with an editor who had critiqued a section. We introduced ourselves, sat down, and then she said, “What happened to Henry and Anna? I have to know!” I took that as a good sign.

At the same conference, I met with an agent, who threw up all over it. “It won’t work,” he said. “No one will accept a romance like that. And it needs to be vampire chick lit,” a reference to the Stephanie Meyer “Twilight” series that had just become all the rage. “Look,” he said, “I just signed a multi-book deal for an author who’s writing about a woman who’s a late night radio talk show host – and also a werewolf. That’s what’s publishers are buying.”

I sent carefully constructed queries and pitch letters to all the usual agents, and received all the usual form rejections. Some of the queries were major projects – and I concluded that agents are trying to discourage as many people as possible.

I kept writing and editing. Then one day, a friend who had published a book himself and was working on a children’s book asked to read the manuscript. The world didn’t change overnight, but it began to change.

Images, from top: University of Edinburgh; men’s road race at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing; part of the ceremony at the ordination of Anglican priests; mission style church (similar to the one in the novel). All are elements of "Dancing Priest."

Davis Phinney's "The Happiness of Pursuit"

Since I started cycling seven years ago, I’ve read a lot of cycling books – about the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, memoirs of famous cyclists and histories of the sport. After a while, I began to know how some of these books, especially the memoirs, began to sound alike, following a familiar formula of biography/great races I have known/cycling as a metaphor for life.

Davis Phinney’s The Happiness of Pursuit is decidedly different. Perhaps it’s because his life has been decidedly different.

Phinney is one of the great cyclists. He was part of the 7-11 team that cracked the Tour de France open for American-based squads. He won stages in the Tour de France. He biked the infamous Passo Gavia stage in the 1988 Giro d’Italia – the one that included a snowstorm and cyclists getting frostbite and has passed into cycling legend.

In 2000, retired from professional cycling but with a burgeoning television commentator career, Phinney was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

In The Happiness of Pursuit, written with Sports Illustrated senior writer Austin Murphy, Phinney weaves four connected stories into the story of a life – his professional cycling career, his relationship with his father, his battle with Parkinson’s, and the cycling career of his son Taylor, who’s become an accomplished cyclist and biking champion at an incredibly young age.

He tells his story with candor and insight, two qualities often lacking in other cycling memoirs. His struggles with his disease, how a distant-at-best relationship with his father grew into something important and meaningful after his father was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, Phinney’s less-than-endearing personality in his early racing years – all are treated openly and honestly. He worries less about other cyclists’ shortcomings and failures and more about his own, and gradually the reader comes to see that this is a man who’s come to terms with himself, his life and with a crippling disease.

What also shines through is his love for his family. His wife, Connie Carpenter, won Olympic gold for cycling in 1984 and was a champion in her own right. And she is depicted here as one strong woman, who carries her family as her father-in-law and her husband both struggle with disease. Phinney also tells the story of Taylor, who starts his cycling career at 15 and starts it with fireworks (and the fireworks show is still going on).

The Happiness of Pursuit also differs from other memoirs in this important fact of Phinney’s life: the cycling career is put into its proper perspective. It’s important, yes, but Phinney comes to understand it for what it is – a career, and a successful one, but not the most important thing about his life.

The Happiness of Pursuit by Davis Phinney with Austin Murphy will be published June 1.

Is it ever right to quit?

In the summer of 2004, I decided I was going to do something I had always wanted to do – and that was biking. I had reached an age when it was time either to put up or shut up – if I didn’t do it now, I thought, I’ll never do it.

So I went to the local bike shop and told the young salesman what I was looking for – a basic bike. I wasn’t interested in racing or mountain biking, but more biking around suburban St. Louis and some of the converted trails-from-railroad-beds that proliferate around the region. He put me through the paces, asking a bunch of questions, measuring my height and leg length, and talking about some of the areas that he knew were good for beginning bikers. He ended up selling me what was then called a hybrid and now is called a leisure bike (I like “hybrid” better), and had me test it out in front of the shop to make sure it was a good fit. It was.

I got my new bike home, got my helmet on, and took off for my first official ride on my new bike.

I made it four blocks. I got off the bike and laid down in someone’s yard. I thought I was going to die. I didn’t know my neighborhood was constructed on mountains. It was hard – and my leg muscles were simply not prepared for even that short ride. I got back on the bike and coasted (downhill) home. I almost gave it up right there.

But I kept at it. Four blocks became a mile, one mile became three, three became five. I rode all over the suburban streets in our community, then branched out into neighboring communities. I found that I could ride to an official trail, Grant’s Trail, without too much trouble – it started four miles from my house and ran for an additional eight miles. One Saturday I rode it four times, and rode enough around the parking lot at one end to reach a 50-miles total. A half-century, I thought. Then I rode to the Arch from my house, and then one Saturday rode part the Arch up the Mississippi River to the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

That was a 57-mile roundtrip over varied roads and trails. I knew I was ready for my first century – the 100-mile Flat-As-A-Pancake Ride in southern Illinois. Except it should have been called almost-but-not exactly-Flat-As-A-Pancake.

These century rides go on regardless of the weather. This particular ride started in a cold, light rain, the aftermath of a thunderstorm. I was thankful for the rain-repellant bike jacket I had brought along, although it didn’t do much for my helmet or my biking shoes. About 15 miles into the ride, the sun emerged and the day turned sunny, but stayed cool – almost perfect biking weather.

A good portion of the ride went in an easterly direction – and I was surprised to find that the wind could blow from the east. As the miles piled on, I noticed even more experienced riders struggling with the wind, which I found encouraging.

There were rest stops set up every 25 miles. At the second one, we were warned about water in the road some two miles ahead. As I reached the area with the reported water, I saw that if there had been water it was now all gone. Two miles later, I discovered that the water report should have been “four miles ahead.”

The water on the road was six inches deep – at the highest point, which was the yellow-line median. It was deeper on the sides. A few of us riding together stopped to scout the situation. We could see some bikers plowing through the water ahead of us. But we couldn’t see where the water might end.

Do you know what happens when a group of guys looks at something like this? Does reason prevail? Or do they see this as a challenge, a test, something you’ve got to get through?

The deep water on the road lasted for more than half a mile.

Once out of the water, the road became a series of sharp little curvy descents and sharp little curvy ascents. I’d been riding for about five hours, some 60 miles into the ride. I knew lunch was only 10 miles ahead.

By the time I reached the Lions Club where the lunch (as much pasta and other carbs as you wanted to eat) was served, I was tired, sweaty, chilled, my shoes and sock still drenched from the water. The wind had continued as well. I had ridden just over 70 miles, and there would be 30 head of me.

I was exhausted. I ate my lunch with the other bikers. There was little talking at the tables. We were all exhausted. I had to make a choice: continue on for another couple of hours to finish the century, or pay heed to what my body was telling me and quit.

I decided to listen to my body. I rode another two miles to my car, and went home.

Looking back, I made the right choice. I had ridden a total of 72 miles, the longest I had ever ridden at one time. And that was enough for a then 54-year-old amateur cyclist who had been biking for 18 months.


To see more posts about “quitting,” please visit Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista.

153.2 Miles on Gravel, 6 on Concrete

This afternoon, our group of 13 men from our church rolled into a parking lot in St. Charles, Missouri, completing a bicycling adventure that began Friday in the same parking lot. The adventure lasted two days and 159.2 miles, most of that on a gravel trail, an old railroad line called the Katy Trail that stretches across most of Missouri. In fact, the Katy Trail has the distinction of being the longest, narrowest state park in the United States -- 225 miles long and eight feet wide.

On Friday, we drove to Rocheport, Missouri, with a little timeout along the way to fix a blown tire on the RV, and had dinner at Les Bourgeois Vineyards. The view was spectacular from atop the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River. If anything, the food was better than the view. I had trout with spoonbread, with a glass of Vidal Blanc.

If this is how they do bike retreats, I thought, I could do one every weekend.

We continued on to New Franklin, Missouri, or actually about two miles past New Franklin, to stay at the Katy Road Roundhouse Park. As in camping. And tents. My wife snickered when I said camping and tents. My wife knows me.

I got to sleep in the RV, through the kindness of Todd, the retreat leader and RV owner. When we registered for the trip, he asked me if I had a tent. Nope. A sleeping bag? Absolutely -- an old one belonging to my oldest son, who's now 29. The sleeping bag has Superman on it. Todd took pity, and said, "Well, you can sleep in the RV -- there's an extra bed." Sold, I said.

Cyclists who do these kinds of trips are used to camping. They have great camping equipment and know how to use it. Then there's me, whose idea of roughing it is staying at a Ramada.

The campground had full bathroom facilities. Two working sinks, two showers and three toilets. Except two of the three toilets were broken. And, as I discovered at 5:30 in the morning, the showers only had cold water. So me, a host of daddy longlegs and one small spider danced around the cold stream of water. It's an adventure, right?

I survived the shower and the spider, and then sat outside the RV in the growing light. The quiet was incredible, the silence broken only by an occasional bird singing. It's amazing what you can hear in the quiet, when you slow down to listen.

My normal everyday breakfast is a bowl of Cheerios and a cup of coffee. To start our trip right, we had hot oatmeal, coffee, orange juice, grapes, and granola bars. Not only does Todd fix blown out RV tires like an Indy 500 pit crew, he also cooks. And cooks well. And then we're all going to find out how well he plans and orchestrates the itinerary. It looks simple, but it's not.

NEXT: 93 miles from New Franklin to Hermann.