Ode to a Bicycle, One Bicycle in Particular
I used to rollerblade from our apartment in Rogers Park on Chicago’s far north side down to my office in the River North neighborhood, just north of downtown. That was when the wind was from the north. When the wind was from the south, I would throw my Rollerblades over my shoulder and take the el to work and then roll home in the evening. It was a 10-mile trip.
At the time, I was playing hockey two or three nights a week. Skating to or from work was a great workout for a hockey player. I loved to skate and still do, but rollerblading had its limitations. I couldn’t do it when there was ice or snow, and headwinds or crosswinds could make skating brutally hard work. Rollerblades do not have gears. The commute was also time-consuming, taking anywhere from an-hour-and-a-quarter to an-hour-and-a-half, depending on the wind.
My best friend, Tom Waterloo, had been pushing me to get a bike. He had followed me up to Rogers Park about a year after Carol and I were married. Our place was right on the lake and Leone Beach Park was just steps away. Tom had taken one look at the lake from our little balcony and our bedroom and said, “This is amazing!” He got an apartment just down the back steps from our place. We were on the third floor of our 1920s building and Tom was on the second. (Carol accepted it without complaint, god bless her. She still calls Tom, “the third person in our marriage.”)
Tom’s office was about a half-mile from mine and Tom was riding every day. He kept telling me that a bike made much more sense than rollerblading. The commute time was 45 to 50 minutes, and the gears made the wind much less of a factor. Plus, you could do it every day, even in winter.
I resisted getting a bike until we moved from our apartment to our home in Evanston in 1991. The extra three miles made the skate commute almost two hours. It was no longer practical, especially with two small girls and Carol and I both commuting to the city.
I broke down and bought a cheap bike from a fledgling mail order business, Performance Bike. It was a chromoly steel bike with flat handlebars and thumb shifters. I rode the hell out of that cheap bike for 10 years, riding in sun and rain and slush and snow and salt and hail and sleet — until one fall evening as I was riding up Ravenswood Avenue approaching Devon Avenue on my way home, I noticed that every time I turned the cranks, the pedals were scraping the pavement.
I got off the bike to find that the downtube, the sloping tube that runs from the headtube that holds the fork, stem and the handlebars down to the crank/pedals, had detached from the headtube at the weld. The only things holding the frame together were the two cables for the rear derailleur and rear brake that remained fully attached.
A couple of days later, I went up to Higher Gear in Highland Park and plunked down a thousand bucks on a brand new, 2003 LeMond Wayzata, a beautiful Reynolds 853 steel frame bike with flat handlebars and Shimano gearing. The bike was designed by Greg LeMond, the first American to win the Tour de France, and was built at the Trek factory in Waterloo, Wisconsin.
I always liked to cycle, but I fell in love with cycling on that bike. I rarely missed a day riding to work, even in the harshest weather. I especially loved riding when the temperature was hovering near zero Fahrenheit.
The lake is spectacular on those icy days. In the early morning, little steam devils spin out of cracks in the ice and the lake is like a giant slushy. Waves move in slow-motion and the surging slush emits a low roar. Icebergs stack up along the shore.
I would wear a full face mask (sometimes two), ski goggles, three sets of mittens, two pairs of wool socks and two or three pairs of neoprene shoe covers. Riding home in the winter darkness, often with a headwind howling down the lake unimpeded, made for a helluva’ day of cycling.
I still own that Wayzata. It now has 63,000 miles on it. It has taken me not only to and from work, but to many beautiful places in the Midwest and to nearly all of my 49 radiation treatments at University of Chicago in Hyde Park, including the 37 treatments I had five days a week back in the summer of 2012.
One of my worst recurring nightmares is of coming out of a coffee shop to discover the bike has been stolen. I have other bikes (because all real cyclists have multiple bikes), but none holds a such a place in my heart as my LeMond Wayzata. It made me fall in love with cycling, and I’ll be forever grateful.
ADDENDUM
I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Tom Waterloo and Jeff Berk.
Tom kept pushing until I bought the damn bike, and Jeff insisted that I ride with his weekend group. Jeff didn’t even act embarrassed when I rolled up to the group — on their expensive road bikes wearing bike shorts and colorful cycling jerseys — in a t-shirt, a pair of cotton shorts and riding my flat bar LeMond.That’s the kind of friend he is.
After a few weeks, Jeff even lent me his old, beautiful, celeste green Bianchi road bike because I didn’t have a road bike. Eventually, I bought my own road bike, but so many other beginners benefited from Jeff’s largess with his Bianchi. Jeff and I rode together almost every weekend for many years.
