I Am a Cyclist

By Gary Rubin

I am a cyclist: Genus ? Cyclist, Species- Road Warrior, and Phylum - Touring Rider. If you are still reading this, chances are that you too are a cyclist or at the very least trying to gain better understanding of one.

Almost every child in America has had the universal experience of the moment they launched into their first unassisted two wheel ride. Like a baby bird taking flight from the nest, it is a child’s first flight. As children grow, most often that sense of joy experienced during the first flight fades or is replaced with other pursuits of happiness. For those of us that never lose that specific joy or perhaps return to rediscover it, are cyclists.

In 1972, I remember mowing lawns and providing caddy services at the then racist Bethesda Country Club to earn enough money to buy my first 10 speed, a white Gitane. My parents were mortified. I signed up for an American Youth Hostel trip that year and rode from Hartford to Montreal. I was hooked.

I grew up like Dave Stroll, the main character in Breaking Away. Instead of fantasizing about becoming a football or baseball star, I dreamed of winning the Tour De France. I built a racing bicycle with Campagnola parts and tubeless tires. Nobody had clip in shoes or helmets, Cyclists had toe clips and cloth hats with tiny brims. Greg Le Monde would ultimately become our hero and cyclists would scour the back pages of the sports section for scant press releases by AP or UPI giving race results.

In 1980, after graduating from Boston University, I stood firmly at the intersection of Boyhood and Man. Unlike my peers that immediately interviewed for jobs and launched careers, I took a temporary menial job at Macy’s Liquor in Alston, MA unloading kegs and cases to save enough money for a solo bicycling trip across country. My parents were again mortified.

Late July 1980, I walked into International Bicycle Center in Alston, and bought a white Fuji Royale 12 speed with front and back racks and saddlebags. The salesman gave me a scrap of paper with a phone number and told me to “call Billy, he is organizing a ride across Massachusetts.” In that moment, some stranger’s ride across Massachusetts seemed trivial to my solo cross country trip and I tossed the scrap of paper away. While Billy’s ride would become the first Pan Mass Challenge, in 1980 it was not even a blip on anybody’s charity radar screen. The biggest story of the year was Terry Fox, a courageous one legged cancer patient amputee, attempting to run across Canada to raise money for, and awareness of, cancer. He terminated his journey in Thunder Bay, Ontario after averaging a marathon each day and covering 2,000 miles. I drew inspiration from Terry and was a couple hundred miles away from Thunder Bay, days before he was forced to quit. I had considered riding there but decided against it. Terry Fox sadly died several months later. I rode for seven weeks and covered more than 4,000 miles. I gained 50 pounds of muscle and learned more about myself and this great country than all my previous years.

So why were my parents so mortified that I was a cyclist? Every parent secretly dreams their children will be exceptional and unique, but then worry that their children will be seen as different. It is difficult being a minority. Clearly the vast majority in our culture are passionate about their cars. A great many are intolerant and even indignant that we as cyclists are on “their road”. The intolerant see us as having the wrong passion. It is the same type of intolerance experienced when heterosexuals believe that homosexuals are wrong. Perhaps, Share the Road signs should also have the gay pride rainbow.

In 2010, after 27 years of marriage and raising a family, after years of coaching soccer and basketball, after 22 seasons of Over the Hill Soccer, I reconnected with my old trusted friend. I dusted off my Fuji Royale, connected into the cycling community, made new friends, and rode my first Pan Mass Challenge. In 2011, I was the last PMC rider to leave Bourne, on day 2, as another smug rider, had maliciously tossed my beloved bicycle into the trash. Angered and humiliated I furiously rode non-stop to Provincetown and boarded the 11:45 fast ferry back to Boston. On the ferry, I first met Steven Branfman, learned first hand of Jared Branfman, and became acquainted with Team Kermit. I felt an instant bond with Steven as a cyclist and a man. Steven openly wept as he recounted Jared’s experiences. I explained to Steven that I was moved by his story, but unable to cry with him because I had my own tears beaten out of me as a child. I wrote to my PMC donors that I felt like I had met the cycling community’s equivalent of Jesus. Steven embodied Lance Armstrong’s sentiment “it is not about the bike”.

Steven, Ellen, and Adam Branfman started Team Kermit after Jared’s own courageous battle against brain cancer was lost in 2005. The team name is in honor of Jared’s sense of humor. Jared, whose skin tone bore the effects of chemotherapy, stated “Kermit the Frog is my hero because it is not easy being green.”

One month prior to my chance encounter with Steven, an 18 year old Wayland girl named Lauren Astley was murdered by her ex boyfriend. She was once an angelic 4 year old girl that I taught in Sunday school. A year later Marina Keegan, who I once coached in soccer, died in an auto accident days after graduating from Yale. Google search her graduation speech The Opposite of Loneliness, it went viral after her death. Last year Eric Chase, also from Wayland, died of Leukemia before he could complete his senior year of college. Like Jared Branfman, Eric courageously battled, and then he passed away in the burn unit as the chemotherapy had melted away his skin.

We all deal with death and loss in our own ways. I rode the 2012 PMC silently in Eric’s honor and intent on purposely dehydrating to honor Eric’s painful struggle. There is no accepted handbook for mourning loss. No Mourning for Dummies. In Ken Burns’ epic documentary, The Civil War, people 150 years ago poetically expressed their pain, suffering, and losses. Today, people en mass rely on Hallmark. What is the correct way to mourn? To answer such complicated questions, Christian scholars pose the philosophical question, “What would Jesus do”? I don’t know Jesus but I now know Steven. He has a strong personal desire to keep the memory of Jared alive. In direct conflict with that desire, mourners are told by experts that they need to come to terms, move on with life, and let go of the past. This paradox of life is a common denominator for all who suffer tragic losses.

As a cyclist, I realize that cycling is a metaphor for life itself. When I cycled cross country was I trying to leave boyhood, was I riding toward manhood, or was I simply living in the moment? The challenge in life is in balancing a healthy allotment of all three perspectives. It applies to all of life’s joys and sorrows.

This year was my first PMC as a member of Team Kermit, an eclectic group of people and riders that includes novices and a previous Race Across America Champion, pace line riders and lone wolf, seasonal and year round riders. The common denominator is that all are passionate cyclists and compassionate humans. Steven ironically could not make it any easier “being green”. The Team embodies the principle of balancing cyclists’ three perspectives: sharing the sorrows and joys of the past, riding with childlike joy in the moment, riding towards a future cure for adolescent brain cancer. The Monday after the PMC, Team Kermit gathers for a cookout and openly supports each other through tears and laughter. It is a time and place where there is no dividing line between cycling and life. It is an honor to be part of such a distinguished group and one more reason to be proud to declare, I am a cyclist