The Great Bike Ride

“After a time, habituated to spending so many hours a day on my bike, I became less and less interested in my friends. My wheel had now become my one and only friend. I could rely on it, which is more than I could say about my buddies."  -- Henry Miller, My Bike and Other Friends

I've spent a good part of my life on a bicycle. If I were to calculate my hours on a bike, I bet the time spent would come close to my time spent sleeping. 

It occurs to me that sleeping and cycling have a lot in common.

When we sleep our consciousness travels through cycles from wakefulness to unconsciousness to subconsciousness through dreams to wakefulness again. When we ride a bicycle, our legs spin causing the wheels to turn and subsequently the gears in our head to cycle. The bicycle and sleep account for two of life's great necessities.

At times, while riding a bicycle, I relive periods of youthful exuberance, those halcyon days of self-propulsion riding down a sidewalk, into the street and through the neighborhood, rolling along, smile on the face, wind in the hair and bugs on the teeth. 

There was a period between junior high and college, when bicycles were verboten by the mentality of high school coolness. You didn't want to be caught riding a bike to school, or on a date with your girlfriend. You either rode in a car or hitch-hiked. Buses and bikes were not cool.

So I hid my bike at Richie Ramirez's house less than a block from school. From there, we walked together to the institution of male adolescent mayhem and teenage angst that was Pomona Catholic Boys High School. Ours was an internment under the directorship of clergymen most of whom were fresh off the boat from that cold, green island across the Atlantic known as Ireland.

Sexual frustration by the staff was tempered by punches to the gut and knees to the groin of the male student body. Discipline was augmented by the hands of a few mean-spirited deviants from the athletic department.

Conventional wisdom dictated that you either played football, raced muscle cars on the side streets or partied like it was 1999. But you did not ride a bicycle.

Due to the geography of our Southern California environment, beaches -- sandy, sun-drenched picture-postcard places -- were within our reach. Coastal oases with bikini-clad girls and foamy surf served as our first and foremost refuge.

"Let's ride our bikes to the beach!" I said to my brown-eyed piano-playing friend, Richie. He also played organ in a rock band and he owned a Schwinn 10-speed. We both had 10-speeds. I had purchased mine with paper route money -- $65 -- at Coates Bicycles in Pomona. It was a blue beauty, a Continental.

By automobile, it took about an hour to get to the closest beaches, Newport and Huntington. The auto route required a few highway interchanges through burgeoning Orange County, before it became The OC. A few citrus groves remained. Knots Berry Farm was no longer a farm but not yet a full-scale amusement park. Disneyland was in its prime. The scent of orange blossoms lingered faintly.

By bicycle, it would be a little tricky, but I convinced Richie that it would be an adventure. We could do it. I studied a map to plot our route.

"It'll be bitchin!" I said.

"Bitchin!" he agreed.

We rolled out of Pomona early Saturday on our bikes with sleeping bags strapped to rear racks, heading toward the tiny rural enclave of Walnut and the La Puente Hills beyond. Today this area is plastered with freeways, strip malls and houses. The morning sun spread light over the undulating yellow hills that smelled of horses and hay.

We told our parents that we would be staying at a friend's parents's beach house on Balboa Island.

By mid morning we reached California Highway 39 -- an early road from Azusa to Huntington Beach -- a section of which became Beach Blvd as it ran some 40 miles through a series of cities without distinguishing borders except for their names: La Puente, La Habra, Anaheim, Buena Park and finally Huntington Beach. This would be our long, but straight shot to the ocean.

Beach Blvd. turned out to be a less-than-hospitable road for bicycles. It was a main drag of stop lights and commerce. We had barely begun this section of our journey when oranges were thrown at us. We were nearly run off the road by joy-riders who gunned their car engines and burned screeching rubber behind us.

The traffic noise and heat of the day bore down on us, but we kept on pedaling toward the beach, a distant paradise.

By mid-afternoon with the golden sun in our eyes, we hit Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) where a strong on-shore head wind held us up, blowing a cool breeze in our faces and making harder to pedal. We had reached the Western edge of the continent. On our bicycles! 

We found Balboa Island, the hub of beach vacation fun. Its narrow streets and bustling sidewalks left little space for bicycles, although the aroma of hamburgers and french fries at Jolly Roger's restaurant was more than welcome. We ate juicy burgers. We soaked in whiffs of suntan lotion and sweet candy confections. It was a scene of bare feet, legs and arms and bleached hair.

I'm sure we appeared to be a couple of vagabonds with our sleeping bags, bicycles and sweating bodies. 

"This is the life," I told Richie.

"Yeah," he said, not too convincingly. But we were smiling. We were there, in the moment. With our bikes. 

That night we rolled out our sleeping bags and fell asleep in somebody's back yard. The house was vacant. In my mind, it was never a worry. We were free and mobile on our 10-speed adventure.

The following day it was much hotter as we rode along the same main drag, retracing our route home.

Somewhere in the middle of Orange County between the beach and home, Richie said: "I need to rest." His face was dripping sweat; his flushed brown skin gleamed in the sun. He was exhausted. 

We found a hamburger stand with an awning and shade. Richie stretched himself out on a bench, lying on his back with his eyes closed. I brought him a paper cup of water. He was trembling.

The shade felt good as I allowed myself to relax and keep an eye on Richie, who had fallen into state of stillness. His trembling had stopped, which reassured me. We must have traveled at least 80 miles yesterday and today and we were still a long way from home.

Because I was not tired it crossed my mind that Richie just wasn't in very good shape. I was hardly sympathetic. Even a bit perturbed with the interruption. We were so unprepared for any disruption. When I look back, I realize that he was likely dehydrated and his condition could have been severe. Much worse than I was able to admit.

After about a half hour of recuperation, he said, "Okay, I think I'm ready to ride." He rose slowly from the bench, a resurrection of spirit and will. We took it fairly easy the remainder of the way.

We crossed the hills and pedaled into Pomona Valley at the foot of Mt. Baldy, although we rarely saw the mountain during the summer when the dingy, stinking brown smog backed up against the San Gabriel Mountains. Unleaded gas has changed that, one of the best things ever for the air quality of Southern California.

We had completed our round-trip, full cycle, to the beach! It wasn't anything we could brag about. It sounded insane. But it was an accomplishment that we shared and fondly remember to this day. I couldn't have done it without a friend like Richie. I was impressed by his comeback on the ride home. Today he runs 10K races, while I settle for the cushion of a bicycle saddle, forever attached to the two-wheeler.

That evening, I gazed at my reflection in the mirror, which I hadn't seen in two days. I saw an unfamiliar, dark face the color of a purple onion. I was sunburned to a crisp and I loved it. 

"I even got burnt," Richie told me later.

I had proved to myself the power and independence we had on a bicycle.

© Kevin Samson, Silence of the Oranges, a working title memoir