On The Road

Douwe was laid low by a double whammy of lung cancer and prostate cancer. He fought them off for years but they finally caught up with him on August 9. He died at home in San Francisco with his long-time girlfriend Leslie at his side. He was 82.

Douwe was born and raised in Haarlem, a small, charming city just west of Amsterdam. Like many a young man from that seafaring nation, he began his adult life on ships, as a steward on the Holland-American liners plying the long route between Europe and the Dutch East Indies. This is when ocean liners were still staid and quietly elegant. (I sailed from New York to Southhampton on Holland-America’s Statendam in 1966 and can attest to their luxurious but understated charm.)

Douwe found his way to San Francisco and the larger Bay Area in the ‘70s. After that beginning as a steward on luxury liners, he spent most of his adult life in the higher echelons of the service world: maitre d’ at the Blue Fox, manager/sommelier at the St Francis Yacht Club, general manager at the Concordia Argonaut Club, and more in the same vein. One of his gigs was as head waiter in Thom Weisel’s private dining room at Montgomery Securities. (Weisel founded the cycling team that would become US Postal with Lance Armstrong and crew. Douwe often met with the team members when they dined there.) His old-world charm and sophistication made him a natural in those roles. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about wine but he always loved finding those medium-priced hidden treasures on the middle shelf at Trader Joe’s.

Douwe smoked as a young man and it eventually came back to haunt him. In 1985 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and given six months to live. Most of one lung was removed and then more chunks were carved out until he was down to less than one complete lung. Riding a stationary bike was part of his therapy to build up his remaining lung. He bought a real bike and that began his long love affair with all things cycling.

If you’re counting, that six months to live in 1985 ended up stretching out to 37 years. After the original diagnosis, he counted every day, every year, as bonus time. And that right there is the essence of the man: he accepted the cards he’d been dealt and never once complained. He would laugh and say, “What are you gonna do? Just accept it and enjoy whatever life you’re given!”

I met Douwe in the very early ’90s through our mutual friend Robin Dean. Robin hooked up with Douwe on one of those American Lung Association three-day biking fundraisers around Napa, Marin and Sonoma Counties in 1987. As much as I count Douwe as one of my all-time best friends, he and Robin were even better friends. And that’s Douwe in a nutshell: if you knew him even a little, you wanted to be his friend. For all his worldly-wise sophistication, at heart he was simply charming…amiable, witty, happy. His smile could light up a room.

Needless to say, with less than one complete lung, he was not exactly a speed demon on a bike. For some of his acquaintances in the bike world, that was his defining feature: he was soooo slow! But no one ever heard one word of whining or excuses from the man about his level of performance. He simply plugged away at it, doggedly but cheerfully. Always happy to be out there on two wheels.

Considering his disadvantages, he did pretty damn well with his riding. He and Robin used to like to ride the Wine Country Century on the first Saturday in May, party well into the evening, then drive down to Berkeley and do the Grizzly Peak Century the following day. Try that with two lungs!

Perhaps not surprisingly, he gravitated to the world of randonneuring for his cycling challenges. Speed may matter for the vedettes at the front of a typical brevet, but slower riders are welcome as well, and the time limits for finishing are quite relaxed. If you can manage the distance, you can take a good long while to get ‘er done. Douwe did all the qualifying brevets ahead of Paris-Brest-Paris, I think in 1999. For some reason, he missed one of the required 600-km events and petitioned to be allowed to ride it on his own on another date. He did so…solo, through day and night, with no support. That’s 372 non-stop miles for you non-metric types. He made it to PBP (at 1200 km, the crown jewel of the randonnée world). He started but did not finish. Got to Brest and partway back before having to hop on a train to complete the return to Paris. He then hung around and cheered his friends home at the finish.

He was a member of both the Santa Rosa Cycling Club and the Sacramento Wheelmen. Because he lived in San Francisco—in a snazzy little penthouse atop Laurel Heights—he wasn’t a regular on weekend club rides. But he was a regular on our summer club tours. He often rode alone because of his lack of speed but he almost always finished the daily stages. And he was always happily in the thick of things when we circled ‘round our camp chairs and convened the wine club after rides…no such group would have been complete without him. His last SRCC tour was the Mendocino-Lake Tour in 2021. He took part in a number of tours in Europe as well, including one on which he summitted le Mont Ventoux, one of his prouder cycling accomplishments. (Again: try that with two lungs!)

Aside from the official club rides and parties, maybe my favorite memories of him revolve around the weekends when he would drive up from the city and we would party from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, with other friends in the mix. A ride on Saturday and another on Sunday morning. Or if it rained, a chance to sit around the breakfast table with cups of good coffee, regaling one another with our old bike blarney. Good food, good beer and wine…good times. No matter who else was included in those jolly weekends, we never really felt happy hour was officially launched until Douwe would push in through the kitchen door, a cheery grin on his face and his arms full of bottles of reds and whites, smoked salmon, cheese, and often a bouquet for the lady of the house.

Douwe was a good-looking guy and a dapper dresser. He always looked put together…the shoes, the shirts, the slacks. It was the same with his bike kit: always very well turned out, on the premise that if you can’t be fast, you can at least look fast. Many a woman in the club had a bit of a crush on him. One of them once said to me: “He’s the perfect metrosexual…sigh!” His bikes were as stylish as he was. Always top of the line and lethally elegant.

When the lung issues finally got to be too much, he bought an e-bike and was able to extend his cycling career for several more years. Overnight, we went from soft-pedaling the climbs to keep him in sight behind us to having to dig deep a bit to keep him from disappearing off the front. He loved it and we loved that we still had him as a riding companion. Our rides went from centuries to 20-miles and a cup of coffee, but we still were having fun; still getting out there together.

He rode almost every day, right up to near the end. Lord knows how many times he rode across the GG Bridge…many, many hundreds. He liked to ride around to Tiburon and would often call me while sitting on a bench by the Angel Island ferry dock…just to remind me that he was out on his bike while I was stuck in a chair in front of my monitor. He’d say, “I’m out riding; why aren’t you?”

A couple of years ago his long-standing battle with lung cancer became more challenging when joined by a nasty prostate cancer that his oncologist described as spreading like wildfire. It had metastasized into his spine. We had one of those delightful weekends here last March, thinking it might be the end. But he rallied around one more time and was still out on his bike until the summer. But finally, finally…the two-cancer tag team pinned him to the mat. Knowing the end really was near this time, a small gathering of friends was organized here in Sebastopol for Saturday, August 5. I think 14 people were there…all old friends. Many others would have loved to be there but we didn’t think he could handle a larger crowd. It was a wonderful afternoon and at times pretty emotional. We tried to keep it upbeat but a lot of hearts were aching.

Years ago, Douwe commissioned Patrick Amiot and Bridgette Laurent to create one of their whimsical sculptures for the terrace of his apartment in San Francisco. Of course it was a cyclist…Douwe to the life, right down to the Paris-Brest-Paris logo on the jersey. It stood out there for years, overlooking everything from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. Just recently though, knowing the end was in sight, he bequeathed the sculpture to our friend Clay Popko, and it now has pride of place in Clay’s front garden in Sebastopol. Bridgette came over and touched up the paint so it looks great. Douwe was able to see it installed in its new home when he came up for that final visit.

Leslie drove him back to San Francisco on Sunday. That’s the last time I saw him. He died three days later. As the tired old line goes: we are poorer for his passing but richer for having known him.

Intimations of mortality have been much on my mind lately. My mom died on July 15, three days after turning 102. She died peacefully in her own home, with me and my wife and my brother and sister with her. It was a good end to a good life…a cause for celebration rather than grief.

Two weeks before that, we had managed to drive her from her home in Bend to our old summer vacation town on the Oregon coast for our annual family reunion. In spite of poor health, she was determined to get there and have that week as the final capstone to her life: one more visit to her beloved beach and one more time to be with her three kids, four grandkids, and three great-grands. She spent the week looking out at the ocean view with all of her family gathered ‘round, pretty much in a state of blissful rapture. At the end she said, “Now I can go home and die.” And that is what she did. You could hardly plot out a nicer exit strategy.

We will miss both Douwe Cornelius and Annis Rebecca. Both classy people who made our lives better. But we rejoice in what they gave us: the many years and all the good times. The shared adventures and quiet moments. It’s hard to write this without becoming a bit misty-eyed. Those good souls are gone. Those windows have closed. But we’ll hold them close in our hearts.