On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 4/1/2023
Memories
It was 40 years ago this month that I and my wife and our two little tots packed up our kit and kaboodle in San Francisco and moved to Sebastopol, Sonoma County…a place where cycling is as good and as interesting and as challenging as it is anywhere on this planet.
I’ve been cycling all my adult life, ever since I bought a Gitane when I moved off-campus at University of Oregon in Eugene. In my years in the Bay Area, beginning in ’68, I rode frequently, sometimes commuting to work and sometimes exploring The City and Marin from homes in SF and Ross and Bolinas. But it wasn’t until I moved to Sebastopol that cycling became something of an obsession for me. By the mid-‘80s I was deeply mired in the local cycling culture and thoroughly hooked on learning my way around this vast network of North Bay back roads. 5000 to 8000 miles a year, mostly in Sonoma, Marin, and Napa Counties, but with a large sampling of Mendocino, Lake, and Solano Counties too, with SF, the East Bay, and South Bay thrown in now and then.
But this column, under the header Memories, is mostly about the oft-repeated local rides: the week-in, week-out, weekday and weekend rides that begin and end at my front door. What I’ve been thinking lately, as I doodle along the little roads in my extended back yard, is how many memories have piled up along those roads over the past 40 years, like high banks of snow. I don’t remember every detail of every ride over those 160 seasons. That would be some sort of madness. However, I can’t help but recall all manner of moments from years gone by, as I pass this or that landmark along the roads. Not all of the memories are of one event, one moment, fixed in place and time. Some are more of a continuum…things happening repeatedly or frequently over a span of those many years.
Case in point…
There is an old farm house along Canfield Road, about five miles south of my home. It sits on a little rise a ways back from the road, just as the road lumps up over a little hill (so I’m going slowly over the mini-summit when I pass the house). For many years, almost every time I rode by, an elderly couple would be sitting out on the porch, taking the afternoon sun. And as I’d ride by, I’d look over and they’d be waving at me. So I’d wave back. It was the nicest, simplest form of good cheer and respect and bonding. I doubt they would be familiar with the word, “Namaste,” but it pretty well fits the moment for me.
This went on for many years, whenever I was on that road, perhaps twice a month. It never failed to brighten my life a little. Then one day I noticed a wheelchair ramp had been built off the front porch. On another day, I saw a younger couple helping one of the older folks down to a waiting car. Not too long after that, I rode by and found the chairs on the porch empty. They stayed empty. The house is still there, still the same. The chairs are still there. But the couple has moved on. I still see them sitting there, lifting a hand to wave, but only in my mind, in my memories.
On another day on the same road, heading out on a ride, I realized I’d left home with my water bottles empty—Doh!—and right then I saw a woman on the front porch of a cottage just off the road. I swung into her yard and asked if I could fill my bottles. When I got up close to her I was, in the best/worst way of men, totally bowled over by her beauty. Masses of black hair, dark, flashing eyes, a perfect face, a body out of a fantasy, snugged up in a form-fitting tank top. Oy! Only in storybooks or traveling salesman jokes would this lead to anything more. For me, that was all it was. She cheerfully filled my bottles and waved me off. I continued on my way, with my poor brain momentarily bent sideways by this brief exposure to young loveliness. And, again, I still recall that moment every time I ride by that pretty little cottage.
I don’t imagine I’m unique in hauling a packed suitcase of memories around with me when I roll along my familiar homeboy roads. I bet, if you think about it, you will notice yourself flipping through a sort of Rolodex of memories when you’re riding. No? Yes! Perhaps it’s a function of age: the more the years go by, the more memories there are…more looks backward than looks forward.
So many memories from group rides…both the regular Saturday morning club rides and the bigger events, the centuries and doubles and brevets. Getting hooked up in a slick rotating pace line. Feeling feisty and spanking some young punk who thought he could drop me on a climb. (That one is definitely a memory: definitely in the past. I’m not spanking too many other riders these days.) That lunatic dance on some whirling-dervish downhill: three or four sky pilots carving the corners together, dinking and diving. So…much…fun!
I’ve lived through—ridden through—complete cycles of paving on some roads. They were in terrible shape when I first moved here, then got paved to black-satin perfection…and now, 30 or so years later, they’re getting close to terrible again, all patches and cracks.
Of course I remember all the places I’ve crashed, both the big ones that ended up in the ER and the little ones that only produced some minor road rash and shredded bar tape. Sometimes the near misses and close calls are almost more memorable than the crashes: when I flew off the road and somehow kept it upright; when several thousand pounds of speeding metal brushed by my elbow with no more harm done than a spike of adrenaline.
Then there are the bonks. The hot days when I bit off more than I could chew and had to struggle home in some miserable survival mode. Or had to climb in a sag. Not too many of those but there are a few of them in my big log book of memories. Or the cold and rainy days. The ones that were awful and the ones where we thumbed our noses at the weather gods and said, “Bring it on!” Got our hard-ass thing going.
I’m happy to say the happy memories far outweigh the funky ones. Unless you have a chronically gloomy turn of mind, it’s always nicer to remember the good times than the bad ones. On balance, I think most of us will agree that it doesn’t take any revisionist history or spin-doctoring to conjure up more good memories than bad. Even the most starry-eyed pollyanna wouldn’t keep cycling if the good times didn’t add up to a much longer column in our ledgers than the bad times…the bonks and crashes and nasty weather and hassles with psycho-drivers. Those things happen; they’re recorded in our big book of biking. But against those not-so-great moments, we can pile up a mountain of moments ranging from merely pleasant to blissed-out euphoria.
I did a nice ride yesterday, out in this green-as-Ireland springtime. It was the 30th annual Apple Cider Century, a ride I introduced to the club calendar all those years ago. I haven’t missed a single one since. A date in late March is no safe haven. It has rained on maybe a dozen of them down the years. Even stinging hail out on the cliffs over the ocean once. We’ve had to cut a few of them short, running for cover with the weather dogs snapping at our heels. And we did at least one of them the next day, after the storm had rolled through. One way or another, I’ve managed to log at least a few miles on every one of those weekends. 30 years ago I was hammering along in the front group. 30 years later I’m somewhere near the back…but still doing it. Still getting in those glorious springtime miles and still banking a few more memories. One of these years—not yet, dammit!—I may not be able to do the ride. At that point, I’ll have to rummage around in my memories to enjoy it one more time.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net