Why I Ride a Bike

At first, it was the crappy Raleigh M20 that I used to tool around the city. I was floored that anyone would spend TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS for a bicycle. It felt like the most extravagant purchase in the world, and the first time I took it out and rode a lap around Central Park, I thought I was a hero. Cat Hill, just past the Boathouse, nearly killed me. The big downhill at the top of the park just looked too scary, and those first few times, I cut across the 92nd Street Transverse, peering into the bushes on either side of the path, wondering just where the Central Park Jogger had been dragged, beaten, raped, and left for dead. There were blue police cars (at the time, they were still blue!) stationed throughout the park.

Matt and I took occasional rides together. He is much taller than I, and was a much better natural rider. With him, I had the courage to ride the entire loop of the park. He always left me behind on the Great Hill at the top of the park. I would find him waiting for me at the top.

Once, he said to me, I don't think I want to ride with you anymore. It's not enjoyable because you are too slow. Slow? I'll show you slow. Slow burn.

We broke up. My friend Heather and I signed up to ride in the Five-Borough Bike Tour. On Staten Island, before we got on the ferry, we saw Matt with his friends.

You have to go and say hello, said Heather. He is looking at you and he looks so sad.

Fuck him, I said and rode off with my broken, self-righteous heart to get on the Ferry.

But a seed was planted.

I will ride a bicycle cross-country. I vowed to myself. I will show him. I started to do research on the internet while I was at work. This was in the spring of 1998.

I found a cross-country bike tour. But it would take two months to make the trip. I file it away in "Things to Do Before I'm Dead," and look for something else.

On a whim, one June day, I go into the Boston-New York AIDS Ride Office and register. Three days, 275 miles, how hard could it be? I ask myself. My walk back to the subway takes me past Luma, where Matt is the maitre'd. He is inside the door, and I stop on the sidewalk outside. We just look at each other through the doors. His eyes light up, and I feel that everything in my heart is written on my face. I walk on to the subway to go home.

I don't know a soul in the AIDS Ride community. I have the paperwork they gave me, and one of their recommended bike shops is Sid's on 34th Street. I enter with trepidation -- a rank beginner who knows nothing about bikes.

I purchase a Cannondale M500. Matte black with gold lettering. It costs FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I was floored that a bicycle can possibly cost so much money!

On my first official training ride with other AIDS Riders, I am scared and alone. I don't know anyone else there. Everyone looks so much more prepared and spiffy with their skinny-wheeled racing bikes and lycra gear. Uh-oh. I introduce myself to the "sweep." The sweep is the designated last rider -- he is kind of the good shepherd of the flock. His job is to make sure that no one gets left behind. His name is Elliott. By the end of the day he will be my hero, my savior, and my first friend in the AIDS Ride community. He escorts me gently up the hills, as I am the slowest rider of the bunch, save for an older gentleman named Bobby.

I am young and healthy and the undisputed worst rider ever. But if I don't have bicycling chops, I do have something else, and that's grit and determination and heart. I ride every mile of that ride and take my seriously sore ass home with pride and tell my roommates, "I rode 60 miles today!" I consider that ride, with Elliott on my wheel, encouraging me and telling me "you can do this," the beginning of my journey.

As well, that ride marked the change in why I ride. I started riding because I was mad at Matt. I was eating my lunch in Nyack, and something Elliott said to me pierced my heart. "I'm a fifty-year-old gay man. There aren't many of us left, honey." And the truth of that hit me, so hard, that it was as if I had been punched in the chest. An entire generation had been practically wiped out by this disease. I tried to imagine spending the previous decade going to funeral after funeral after funeral. It was beyond my ken.

On one of the training rides, the riders get very spread out. I spin around a bend and come upon another rider who has crashed on gravel. His first words to me as I approach him are, "Don't touch my blood, I'm HIV positive." I try to imagine what it must be like to have an accident and your first words to the person who is coming to help you have to be a warning. It is beyond my ken.

I challenge any AIDS denier to walk up to a gay man in his 50's and say, "You know, AIDS doesn't really exist." I equate them with the Holocaust deniers. My friend J, who is not only a gay man in his 50's, but is also Jewish, taught me that. If the Holocaust didn't happen, then where is my family? If AIDS isn't real, then what happend to all of my friends?

Three months later, I am on 8th Avenue, riding in from the most grueling experience of my life, having completed my first AIDS Ride. I am sobbing from exhaustion and joy. I have ridden every mile from Boston to New York over 3 days. I have suffered on an 8-mile hill at the end of the first day. It has been terrible and wonderful. But I have completely forgotten that I signed up to do this ride with the fire of "I'll show HIM!" in my belly. And along the way, it became, "I'll show me. I can do this."

The next year, 1999, I decide that I want to be a training ride leader. Elliott and so many others showed me that kindness and commitment are the most powerful forces on earth. I want to help other scared, slow beginners find that place inside themselves that says, "yes, I can do this." And know that if they can do this, they can do anything. I stumble into a ride leader partnership with Nancy. A gentle, kind, loving woman, who is a much better rider than I, who agrees to ride with me for god knows what reason. She is witty and sharp and looks better in her lycra than I do. We have fun and become friends, leading and sweeping many rides together.

I hear about someone selling a Cannondale R300 compact frame road bike. It is just my size, and the guy is selling it for THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS. Feels like a bargain to me.

I feel overtrained and tired, though, from riding all the time, so I decide to take two weeks off the bike to rest. Our first ride together after my recuperation, we decide to scout a ride in Staten Island. It's an ugly, traffic-clogged course, up through Manhattan, across the GW Bridge, through Hoboken and Bayonne and across the Bayonne Bridge onto Staten Island. Once on Staten Island, we loop around to the south, then hook back through the middle and over Todt Hill. We chose the route specifically for its traffic challenges, knowing that the riders need to be used to riding with cars brushing by their left shoulders. But because it's just us, and we don't have to watch out for two dozen riders of varying skill levels, we are out having fun, and pushing ourselves and each other. We are riding hard and fast and feel extremely studly.

We stop at a grocery store to buy lunch. Sitting outside, sweaty and dirty, I feel a twinge at the back of my right knee. Better cowboy up, like all the best riders do. I take four Advils and say, "I'll ride through it." And I do. Four more advils when I get home and an ice pack on the back of my leg should take care of that little twinge. But the little twinge bothers me all week.

Wake up on Saturday, and it is hot. Steamy. There are heat warnings on all the local news channels. We decide to ride anyway.

Early morning. 7:00 am. Our group meets at the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt at 72nd & Riverside. My leg is still feeling a little, well, twingey, and I'm glad that I am the sweep. It's a large group of riders, 20 or so, and we get spread out quickly. At the back of the pack, I'm rolling easily along, chatting with my friend Sam. Just past Riverside Church, we decide to pop into the lavatory in the park, since we know it's the last one we will see before Hoboken. I hand my bike to Sam and take one step to cross Riverside Drive.

What I feel isn't exactly pain. Just a completely alien sensation. An unzipping, only it's under my skin.

"What the--" I find that I am on all fours in the middle of Riverside Drive and don't know how I fell down. Sam laughs at first, and so do I. We both think I must have stumbled somehow. I get to my feet and take another step. And fall down again.

I stand again and just freeze in place, in the middle of the northbound lane of Riverside Drive, looking around at Sam, who finally realizes that something is really, really wrong. He dumps both of our bikes by the road and runs out to me.

"Ummmm, something bad just happened, Sam."

Can you walk?

Interestingly enough, I can, but I can't lift the heel of my right foot. My leg clumps along like Frankenstein as I try to walk. It hardly hurts. I just can't walk. I think I need to go home.

Sam flags a cab and loads my bike into the trunk. I climb into the back seat and mutter to myself in disgust. At my apartment on 52nd Street, I