The Last Bike Ride

It was a girl's bike, and my dad swung his leg through the gap in front of the seat rather than over the seat like he used to. He had not been on a bike for a while, but I was visiting, so we pulled the old bike out of the spider webs and pumped up the tires.

I was worried about this ride. We had to cross several busy intersections in downtown Janesville, Wisconsin to get to the Rock River Bike Trail.  I did not know how "The Bear," my dad's nickname, would negotiate these hazards on the way to the trail.

Turns out he didn't stop. When we got to a busy street, he just turned to go with traffic until he got the chance to do a U- turn, then he would do so, return to the intersection, turn right again and keep heading in our intended direction.

"Dad, you can't do that. It's dangerous."

"Oh yeah? Watch me."

As the younger rider, and chaperone of this excursion, I did not approve of this tactic. My protests, of course, were useless.

The Bear is 83 years old. He has an irregular heart beat, early signs of dementia, and perhaps a dose of Parkinson's. I am worried about him.

Thirty years ago, when we were still estranged after my tumultuous adolescence, we found we both liked bikes. We stuck a truce while riding together in Arizona, Colorado, and Wisconsin. The Bear came with me one year to a police auction and bought an old, signed, hand built (Otis Guy) mountain bike frame that we built up together. Later I and my sibs went together to buy him a full suspension Specialized Enduro FSR.  He loved it.

For a decade or so, we explored the trails around Tucson, one of them called "The Chutes." Descending the banked roller-coaster curves, woop-de-doos, and dips, he let loose a hoot before shouting "This is better than skiiing. Hell, this is better than sex."

I did not say TMI, but thought it, enjoying his glee and new-found bliss.

The years were not kind after that. He was hit head-on by a drunk driver intent on killing herself. He recovered slowly after being med-evaced  to the UW trauma unit. Then his wife, my mother, suffered and died from Alzheimer's. All of this along with losing close friends to sickness and old age.

Military service in Korea and Viet Nam had been hard, but the losses of strength and loved-ones were almost unbearable.

So we rode. In the breeze of coasting down to the bike trail, I let go of worrying enough to get a taste of us in younger, easier times. I could even go way back to being a kid and watching my athlete of a father grinning on an old Schwinn.

When we got down to the park, The Bear pulled up to a curb so he could reach the ground with his good foot without getting off the seat. I asked if he was having fun. He said "Does a wild bear shit in the woods?" and grinned, a big grin.

Then he was off and I tried to keep up, to head off cars as we flew through stop signs and tried to negotiate the flows of traffic without interrupting the joy of rolling, just rolling.