The Ride of My Life - part 1

by David Goldman

“You guys must be the flatlanders.”

Those words were the preface to what turned out to be one of the most difficult and one of the most rewarding days of my diabetic life.

My friend Chris and I looked at each other and silently agreed. We were somewhere in New Hampshire after completing the second day of a one week, nearly 600 mile cycling trip through New England. We had become known as the flatlanders.

It had been my idea to go on this journey. I had started doing what I guess you would call, serious bike riding the year before when I won a cheap bike at our work picnic and, started riding it. The year was 1992 and the cycling really brought me back to my youth when our bikes were our primary means of transportation as well as a source of entertainment. That bike fell apart within a few weeks of riding and I went to the local bike shop and bought a good mountain bike.

There are lots of trails through the woods near my home, so that was primarily where I rode. And, as the bike mechanic had said, it was flat land. Illinois is flat, flat, and more flat. But I did a lot of riding that summer and continued it late into the winter until it got too cold. Riding in a Chicago winter with toes that turn numb within 20 minutes is just not practical. As soon as the weather broke 30° the following spring I was back on my bike and riding again. By then, my friend Chris had started riding with me.

We rode a lot that year. I’d ride before work and we’d do a long ride every Sunday morning. We knew we weren’t very good riders but we were improving. We eventually entered a century or 100-mile ride. Chris rode on his road bike, but I was still riding my mountain bike. Let me tell you, riding 100 road miles on a mountain bike is not a day in the park. The bike is heavier, the tires wider, and the positioning is different, all of which makes distance riding on a mountain bike more difficult than on a road bike. But we grew steadily stronger, and our riding skills improved.

 In January of ‘94 I was reading a cycling magazine, and an ad caught my eye. It was small, but I noticed it because of what it said: Cycle New England for the ADA. The ADA is the American Diabetes Foundation. I called and they said it was a one-week ride starting in Massachusetts and going through New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and ending up back in Massachusetts just outside of Boston. The total mileage varied from year to year, but it was always between 500-600 miles. It was a fundraiser for the ADA of New England and each rider was required to raise a certain amount for the charity. As soon as I hung up I knew I wanted to do it, especially since I was a diabetic. The problem was, I didn’t have a road bike and I wasn’t going to attempt that kind of ride on a mountain bike.

A good road bike isn’t cheap, so I had to agree to several cutbacks in my life in order to persuade my wife to let me buy the bike. The one I really remember was giving up my grande, extra-shot latte every morning. That was a tough one! But with her blessing on both buying a new bike and the trip, I headed back to the bike shop and purchased my road bike.

In the meantime, I had mentioned the trip to Chris. He was immediately interested because he loved riding and his younger sister was a diabetic. He already had a road bike and almost immediately said he wanted to do it . So, we were set. We signed up and began training because we were told there was a lot of climbing almost every day of the ride.

I started riding longer distances every morning before work. I’d ride anywhere from 25 – 60 miles every morning and 60-100 every Sunday. My only day off was Monday. I could feel myself getting in better shape for the ride. At this point I was eight years post kidney transplant but I still had the diabetes to contend with. If anything though, the riding helped. It kept my blood sugars lower, although I was still almost always on a roller coaster ride of high and low sugars. But I felt good. Even after the 100-mile rides I felt relatively strong. Come July, I was going to be ready.

Chris and I flew out to Boston separately as he had friends there he was going to visit before the ride. The ride was starting from a motel parking lot in a Boston suburb on a Saturday morning. I arrived Friday and spent Friday night reassembling my bike in the hotel room. Saturday morning I woke and was rarin’ to go. Chris showed up Saturday morning with his head almost completely shaved – a much different look for him. I think he thought he’d be more aerodynamic. As I was staring at him he said the barber told him, “You have a head like a doorknob.” We never figured out what that meant, or if it was good or bad.

The first day was an “easy” ride. It was going to be about 90 miles of “gentle” terrain. We thought we were riding through the Alps. It didn’t take long to realize that no matter how much you ride on flat roads, it cannot prepare you for hills and mountains. It was a beautiful ride. We went through rural Massachusetts, through Walden Pond, and into a small college town. We arrived at the dorm where we would be spending the night, showered, and went to dinner in the town. Our dinner for the whole group (about 30 people) was being hosted at a local restaurant. We all went in ravenous and literally ate everything they had. We left when the restaurant was out of food. We went back to the dorm, and even though it was about 90° in the room, we slept like rocks.

The next morning we woke up early, ready for another day of cycling. We were both sore in places we had never been sore before. Riding your bike up hills uses muscles that we didn’t know we had and certainly had never used before. Plus, there was more climbing this day.

Lots of it.

Everyone else on the tour was from New England, and they were used to cycling these roads. We started hearing a lot of, “Wait till you get to The Kanc” and, “This is nothing compared to The Kanc.” The Kanc is short for The Kancamagus Highway, a scenic mountain road in New Hampshire. As we rode that second day we learned more and more about it. It’s approximately 34.5 miles of steady climbing with the gradient varying between 3°-7.5°. These angles don’t seem very daunting, but when you’re trying to ride a bike up them, they’re monumental.

We finished the second day’s ride and turned our bikes over to the mechanic who came with the tour. That was a great benefit. You could have a trained mechanic work on your bike for anything from general maintenance to a serious problem, and it was all part of the cost. Chris and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to just have him clean and lube things as needed. So, we left our bikes with him and went into the dorm where we were staying that night. We showered, ate dinner, and when we came out, our bikes were waiting for us. We were ecstatic because they looked like they were brand new. We started talking to the mechanic, and that’s when he said it. “You guys must be the flatlanders.” We said we were but we asked how he knew. He said, “Only strong riders or flatlanders who don’t know what they’re doing would attempt The Kanc riding with these!”

We definitely were the latter.

End of part one