Like Riding a Bike

Daredevil stuntmen, midnight equals youth, and the lady I can't leave

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: a tribute to all the bikes that have been with me.

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Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Caesars Salad

My first memory of a bike is forgotten. My dad had a cherry red Schwinn Traveler 10-speed with drop handlebars and a plastic yellow baby seat in the rear that I would presumably ride around in. He didn’t have a helmet and neither did I, as far as I know. I don’t think we have any photos, but I remember seeing the baby seat in the basement of our house, so I know it was used at one point. More on that bike later.

But my first real memory of a bike was walking down the street as a 5-year-old to a bike shop a few blocks away. At the time, we lived on North Railroad Street in downtown Palmyra, Pennsylvania, a small town adjacent to Hershey. It was a primary thoroughfare and still had businesses that did actual business in the ‘80s. On that day, I was getting my first real bike (with training wheels, but still). I remember how large the shop seemed, with bikes hanging everywhere, everything looming above, the way all memories look from that age.

What I remember most though, isn’t the bike itself, but the bike seat. I don’t know if I chose it or my dad picked it out for me, but it was beautiful– a white, signature Evel Knievel seat, emblazoned with the daredevil’s name in script, with a star-spangled blue ribbon across it. The whole thing was inspired by his stunt suit that he wore for performances; I wouldn’t know this because I don’t even think I knew who he was at the time. However, the name alone seemed to speak the language of dirt jumps and tire skids.

I mean, this design rules

JRR Tolkien once said that the phrase “cellar door” is the most beautiful phrase in English because of its phonaesthetics, the way it rolls off the tongue and goes out into the world. He’s wrong– it’s Evel Knievel, an absolute gem of a stage name and an even better name to speak aloud, especially as your fingers trace the gold on your faux-leather bike seat. The first name leaves the tongue like a motorcycle revving up to a ramp, getting just enough speed before hitting the K of the last name, a takeoff of sorts. Then there’s the pause at the height of it all, the long E sound as it arcs over the Snake Canyon or the fountain at Caesars Palace or a row of British buses, right before landing and gliding out at the same place it took off, another “evel” bookending the whole stunt together. No broken pelvises or fractured femurs, just a dangerous name doing wondrous things. I have yet to come across a name that goes harder or softer than that.

And make no mistake, the name was dangerous. The fact that it was literally evil– just spelled differently– seemed like it shouldn’t have been allowed in our extremely conservative house, a place where Skeletor or Pee Wee Herman or Fraggle Rock (don’t ask) weren’t even allowed. I would later be thoroughly thrilled to find out his real name was Robert and his son’s name was Robbie, just like my dad and me.

The crazy thing is that I don’t even think I saw him perform, neither in person nor on television. Maybe I saw him in a library book. He just existed in my mind and on a seat where I’d squarely place my bony butt, and that was enough.

In retrospect, licensing your name to a kid’s bike seat manufacturer may have been jumping the shark (after all, the phrase originated with Evel’s final stunt, which was infamously replicated on Happy Days when Fonzie did the same thing on waterskis). But maybe it meant that every time a little kid swung his leg across it, it was enough to inspire him to explore the neighborhood on his own, jump dirt wherever he could find enough angle to pop a wheelie, and lay down some serious rubber from slamming hard on his coaster brakes.

It wasn’t a Harley, but it had two wheels and it went fast and dangerous. I was Robbie Knievel III, for a time.

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

Appetizer: Easter Eggs After Midnight

My childhood was an assortment of random secondhand bikes, enough to get me around but not much in the way of coolness. Chromed out BMX frames with pegs and colored mag wheels were far outside the realm of possibility. I took what I could get, and in the decade before getting my drivers license, riding a bike was my key to freedom.

By this time we had moved out to the country, surrounded by acres of farmland with friends few and far between. The closest sidewalk was five miles away and back roads were built without the slightest thought of adding a shoulder. That’s what I had to work with, but by the time I was 12 I was regularly riding the mile stretch of road to my best friend Brandon’s house, hoping to God someone didn’t nail me around a blind turn.

I only had one accident at that time and it was my own fault. I was riding to Brandon’s house, which was really a double wide trailer on a dead-end road. His grandma’s boyfriend Ron owned and lived in the place and I guess since he had a bunch of dirt doing nothing, he decided to dig out a pond. That’s just what you do with dirt. It was fed by a runoff from somewhere, but even with a degree of moving water, ponds still collect algae. Not this pond. Ron made sure his pond stayed clean, which required a staggering amount of chemicals that kept it a perpetual shade of tropical, aquamarine blue. I have yet to see a pond look like it. The closest thing I’ve seen is a glacial lake in the Rocky Mountains and this was not that. This was, however, a de facto swimming pool, as none of us knew anyone with an actual pool. We were redneck rich and we took advantage of it fully.

That meant we needed rafts or things to float on, so I dragged out the boogie board that was stored in the basement for the 360 days a year we weren’t at the beach. To get that boogie board to Brandon’s, I had to balance it on the handlebars of my bike while I rode on the two-lane road to his house (I tried riding one-handed while tucking it under my arm but it wasn’t working on account of the hills). Barely a hundred yards from my house, I found myself flipped over the handlebars and laying on the ground. The leash from the boogie board had dropped off the top and got caught in my wheel, wrapping it around and stopping the bike in its tracks. No helmet, of course, but somehow I escaped without injury.

Eventually, I grew tall enough to fit onto the frame of my dad’s old Schwinn, the same one I mentioned in the first course. Having a whole ten gears and larger wheels to pick up more speed and faster distances– that was a game changer.

I spotted this identical bike in Baltimore last year

By this time, my friend group had shifted. I was 15 years old and summers meant late nights, and though I didn’t drink or party, we still liked doing things that were risky. Mostly this involved riding our bikes after midnight– no helmets, no headlights, no reflective gear– on those same back roads. I’d empty out my JanSport backpack and we’d pedal under the stars back to the base of the mountains, a peloton of gangly kids drenched in sweat, ears blinded by the sounds of peeper frogs. Our destination was the local driving range, which again was just a trailer that served ice cream next to the Manada Golf Course.

You could access the far end of the driving range through the woods that ran along the links, so we’d ride our bikes on the cart path from the clubhouse to the end of the 12th hole, three shadowy figures slipping in and out of the beams of moonlight and the cover of treeline. Eventually we’d ditch our bikes and creep through the woods before arriving at our scavenging grounds. We’d look out on the range and there they were– Easter eggs hidden in plain sight. It was a free for all. Hundreds of golf balls went into our backpacks, as much as we could hold and still pedal home. They weren’t range balls either– most of them were balls found in the ponds on the golf course, which meant that they were good quality. After packing them until the zippers bulged, we saddled back up and rode home, giddy with excitement over our haul. Once we arrived back, we’d sit on the carpet in my parents’ basement and dump them all out, taking turns choosing which ones we got to keep.

We did this a bunch of times, ending up with hundreds of golf balls, enough to last me years. Somehow we never got caught. At the time, golf was having a heyday– Happy Gilmore was pretty much my role model, and a young Tiger Woods was breaking boundaries in the sport. I didn’t actually know how to play golf, and this was a decade before YouTube, so I just bought a Tiger Woods tutorial book, grabbed an old driver and set of irons, and got to work whacking balls into the field behind my house. And that’s how I learned how to play.

I kept that Schwinn in our shed, but it came out at night, especially when it came to visiting my girlfriend under the cloak of darkness. Picture this: a 15-year-old, whose girlfriend lived three miles away, who also had a basement bedroom with window access. There is no highway too long or river too wide to stop that train from arriving at its station. Here’s how it worked: Like Ethan Hunt preparing for an impossible mission, I would wait until my parents went to bed, then stay up a bit past midnight. This was not unusual, as I usually stayed up til 3 or 4 a.m. almost every night. Earlier in the evening, I would prep for my departure. Lift the basement window, crack the screen just a bit. Unlock the shed and leave it slightly open. When the time was right, I’d climb out the basement window, then walk along the grass edge of our driveway (we had a stone surface so that was a no-go), slip the bike silently out of the shed, then tiptoe it across the shortest width of the driveway to the grass at the bottom of the neighbor’s hill, where I could walk until I reached the road. And then I was on my way.

The shortest route to her house was down Route 22, a four-lane highway with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour. It had a decently wide shoulder, but it was still a highway and again– I rode with no lights, no helmet, no safety apparel whatsoever. The traffic was light at the time, but I’m still shocked that I never encountered a state police officer and never caught a flat tire on the debris scattered alongside the lanes of traffic.

When I was close to her house, I’d ditch the bike under the umbrella of a willow tree in front of her best friend’s house, before walking the last hundred yards up the road. The more I write, the more I realize this sounds like a John Hughes movie come to life, and I guess it kind of was. She would leave her bedroom window cracked, and I’d slip through, the only light coming from the Aiwa stereo playing Third Eye Blind.

Believe it or not, those hours weren’t as risque as you’d think– we were still church kids after all and “true love waits” was a defining moment of our youth group generation. But we were still teenagers. To this day, I often play out the scenario of her dad discovering a 15-year old boy in his daughter’s bedroom at 3 a.m.. And I hope and I know he would’ve kicked my ass, as any good father would do.

I always assumed my parents knew I was sneaking out. Years later, I brought it up in conversation. They did not know. I was good at my job. Sorry, mom, you were good at yours too, it’s just that in this case, I was better.

Soon after that, I got a car and then went to college and didn’t ride a bike again until my thirties.

Right now, that red Schwinn frame sits outside the chicken coop at my parents’ house, leaning against some cinder blocks, collecting rain and cold and silence. I kind of hate looking at it, because it was there when I needed it, the literal wheels that took me on some of the most memorable moments of my youth. And now it sits, all of its grand adventures, the touring mode locked and forgotten.

I want to make it go again, but in reality, it’s just a lot of work to get it up and running. I have no real need for it anymore. The boy grew older. He became busy with life and other things and forgot. He bought other bikes. But that red Schwinn gave and gave and I swung from its branches and maybe someday I’ll sit down on its frame again and rest, just for awhile.

But I won’t bring it home, because my wife will murder me if another bike finds its way into this house.

Course 3

The Main: Bikepacking Beers and Rear Milk Crates

A year ago, I was reading a goal book that I inevitably ditched halfway through reading, because that’s what January is for. But before I gave up, I managed to fill out a few pages of my favorite moments in life. As a runner, many of them popped up to the top– finishing my first marathon, doing an epic 23-mile run/bushwhacking adventure from my house to Ellicott City with another friend, exploring Tokyo the day after the marathon.

I was surprised, however, to see how often bike riding came up on the list. Because for so long, it was absent from my life. After my first car, biking fell to the wayside. For fifteen years, I was a consummate believer in the gospel of American car culture. Cyclists annoyed me and bike lanes seemed like an infringement on my constitutional rights. When I first moved to Baltimore, I would actually drive from my house in Canton to my restaurant job in Fells Point, then try to find parking at three in the morning after my shift ended. It was a one-mile drive.

But living in a city will change you, and I began to change. My landlord/roommate rode a bike, a single speed cruiser, and I asked him once if I could borrow it to ride to a bar to meet some friends. I barely made it. There were monstrous hills (they were small), it was so far (again, it was a mile away), and the tires must have been flat (they weren’t). I was just horribly out of shape. This seems absurd to me now, because my 6-year-old often rides that exact same stretch and more on the way to school. However, at the time, I was a big fan of cigarettes and had virtually no aerobic endurance.

Soon after, my best friend Andy moved to Baltimore to join me in a haphazard business venture. He lived downtown, so he bought a bike from the local bike shop to make it over my way. It was a steel frame SE Draft, a sturdy single speed that had everything you needed and nothing that you didn’t. He rode it for a year or so before he and his wife moved back to Pennsylvania, at which point it switched ownership to me.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but eventually it would become one of my most prized possessions with priceless sentimental value.

Around that same time, I started making some life changes to become healthier– turns out I did have something to live for– and part of that was starting to move again. At first, it wasn’t far. Riding my bike a mile or two on Baltimore hills was brutal. But eventually, it stretched to five miles, then 10, then 25, and more.

Baltimore was still relatively new to me at the time, so I was excited to explore. Back alleys with barking dogs and the eerie silence of entire vacant blocks. The monthly bike parties, a raucous ride through every part of the city. The stillness and crisp cold of a January night ride, bombing the hill through Patterson Park.

Exploring some vacants

After enough time in the saddle, the bike begins to feel like a part of you. You pick up on the nuances of the braking, the weight of the frame shifting around bends, the slight differences and rolling resistance between different types of tires. You learn quickly to buy puncture-resistant tires, after changing and patching tubes once a week. You figure out how to flow with traffic, when to push and pick up and when to quickly hit the brakes when a car is about to hook you.

Speaking of cars, riding a bike in a city– especially a city like Baltimore with near zero bike infrastructure– is risky. I get why people don’t do it. But it can be thrilling and weirdly adventurous. Like, I’m doing this thing that I’ve never seen anyone else do.

A handful of times when I worked for the Coast Guard, I’d make the trek from my house to my office in Glen Burnie. It was a distance of ten miles, but it was riddled with danger and death-defying maneuvers. Exit ramps from I-95 with no shoulder, the colander-inspired surface of the decaying Hanover Street Bridge, the entire experience of Curtis Bay, one of the most murderous areas of Baltimore at the time and a land that time forgot. Tractor trailers and oil tankers on their way to the refinery on a two-lane road with no shoulder. But there was so much beauty in that ride at dawn– taking the commuter water taxi across the water as the first glow of light touched the surface. The herons in the reeds of the Patapsco or the Hopkins crew team slicing through the water, a metronome of rowers cutting glass.

Eventually, I got into bikepacking, which rendered some of my best life memories. My best friend and riding partner Zach, whose goal was to ride his fixed gear bike for the entire length of the C&O Canal Towpath from Georgetown to Cumberland, Maryland, a 185-mile route along the Potomac River. I joined him in Harper’s Ferry and finished it out with him, logging 125 miles through mud and torrential downpours. It’s still the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, and I’m sure I’ll write about it more at another date.

Other bikepacking trips followed, more friends came along, though we preferred to call it bikeslacking on account of us bringing way too much gear, from cast iron pans to full steak dinners to six-packs of beer. Sitting around a campfire after a long day of riding, playing some country music on the speaker, then retiring to the tent for a worn-out sleep. I can’t think of a better day.

The gray lady accompanied me on some of those trips, but I also swapped in a bike I bought for $25 off Tom, who lived in the storage shed behind our house. I recently donated that to a bike nonprofit because it was taking up too much space in the house.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. As with anyone who spends time on the road, accidents are sure to happen. I’ve been doored twice, once thrown into the road downtown on the way to a bike party, where the bystanders near Lexington Market just laughed at me, offering no help whatsoever. Another time an old man threw his door open wide as I was checking traffic behind me; I looked up with no time to brake and slammed his door backwards, cracking the front fork of my bike in the process.

The best crash was on me– riding home after five too many Natty Bohs at the Orioles game, I was flying down Pratt Street coming onto the walkway behind Phillip’s. Liquid courage was running strong through the veins. It was dark outside and I knew there were some poles with chains somewhere, but thought I was splitting an open section. It was not open. I saw the chains at the last second and stood up but it was too late. I flipped over the bars, shoes went flying off, personal items popcorned everywhere. The next day, I could barely walk, with two huge bruises across both thighs where the chain caught me when I stood up. I was not wearing a helmet, but have worn one ever since.

And still, that SE Draft endures. It’s a beast of a bike, though at this point the only original parts remaining are the frame and the handlebars. After having kids, I’ve avoided the riskiest routes. Less lane splitting, stopping (or at least pausing) at stop signs, helmet always, taking side streets or riding through the park, even if it’s a few minutes slower. I want to be around to experience some adventures with them. There have already been plenty of those, especially when the times I’d get home from picking them up at daycare and realize I forgot to buckle them into to the Thule bike seat. Centrifugal force was my best friend on those days.

Things change, but some things stay the same.

Riding to Orioles games is still one of my favorite pastimes. Last fall, I biked with my oldest son Rye in the rain to the Orioles opening playoff game in 2023. It was cold and wet but I brought a change of clothes and by the time the game rolled around, the sun came out and it was all just a dream come true. He fell asleep in the sixth inning, but it was for the better– they lost the game and eventually the series.

And if I could paint a perfect evening, it would be riding with my wife or some friends over to Camden Yards on a Friday evening in late June, the longest days of summer upon us. Riding the back streets of Baltimore with the smells of grilling and the sounds of clinking glass coming out of corner bars. Arriving to the stadium, the most beautiful one in all of baseball, and rooting for the home team. Hopefully a win, then a ride home on our bikes along the promenade, quiet except for the chimes of docked sailboats lulling the gulls to sleep.

I’ve never done a century ride, I’ve never gone after Strava KOMs, I have zero interest in wearing a full-on cycling kit and drafting off teammates. But cycling the way I have has brought me to some pretty amazing destinations, with journeys that were even better. I hope it brings me more.

Hopefully passing it on to the next generation

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

First off, one of my first ever Substacks was about the cold and my love for Merino wool. Well, I just wrote an entire extensive guide to Merino wool and my love for it, so please go check it out here. I also wrote a review of the Mizuno Neo Zen, which is a really great running shoe, you can read that here.

A lot has happened since the last newsletter, including Christmas and New Year’s, so here were my highlights:

1. Christmas was great. I bought the kids an original NES and it came with an old-school 9-inch monitor that’s just fantastic. Also, yes, it’s what they asked for, not the Nintendo Switch. For whatever reason, they love old video game platforms. Truthfully though my favorite gift for all of us was the Home Alone Lego set, and the add-on lighting system that took my six hours to install on Christmas Day. It was worth it, as you can see:

Also, my wife is about to leave me from playing “Somewhere in My Memory” for the 463rd time.

2. Had a great New Year’s Eve at our friends’ house. Actually had a ton of fun playing dueting some songs on guitar with my friend Laura on the piano. Favorites were “Head Full of Doubt” by The Avett Brothers, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, “Feathered Indians” by Tyler Childers, and “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron. Need to practice more for next year, because my fingers were not feeling good the next morning.

3. Every New Year’s Day when we’re together, my friend Tim and I run a half marathon to kick off the year right. We’ve done it five out of the last seven years, the only one I missed was on account of a stage 10 hangover a few years back. This year, we ran 15 miles with 1,000 feet of elevation and a bitter headwind. It was… fine. Glad I did it, and great to spend a couple hours in good conversation, but my body was feeling it since I’ve only run more than 8 miles once since the Chicago Marathon.

There’s so much more, but that’s just a bit of what I was blessed with over these past couple weeks.

I think this is going to be a pretty great year, despite all the tragedy in the news. And if it’s not, well, what can you do?

Thanks for being here, thank you for reading (if you made it this far). I plan on doing some really cool stuff around here, so stay tuned for that.

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. We took off a week for the first time in over 300 episodes, but you can listen to past episodes here.

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Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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