Ride to Redstick

aka

Pedalin' Past Paducah

C’mon along. The Mississippi is calling, so is the Natchez Trace. We’re off to Baton Rouge on a Ride to Red Stick.

Fall 2009. Time to go for a ride. Or an adventure. Or, how about both? After all, it is a most special year.

Fall 1939 found me joining the ever-changing cast of players wandering the earth. So autumn 2009 works out mathematically to be one of those big-time benchmarks in life’s journey.

The "make it a birthday to remember when it’s a number ending in 0 or 5", began back at 50 when, I know not how, Jan managed to score tickets to the Cubs/Giants National League playoffs in both Chicago and San Francisco. So I sat in a Wrigley Field drizzle with college bud Jim Goettsch, a Chicagoan to the core, and witnessed Will “The Thrill” Clark homering off Rick Sutcliffe, then with other men aboard, enroute to providing yet another game in the un-ending heartbreaks Cub fans have long endured. I followed the teams to San Francisco and sat along Candlestick Park's third baseline with my best friend from high school and Giant loyalist, Ron Lange. Timing in 1989 proved to be fortuitous. A week after the Giants put the Cubs in their rear view mirror, Candlestick trembled and shook. The World Series was put on hold; a devastating earthquake leveled much of the Bay area.

Next up was 55. Maybe I hadn’t recovered from the trauma of the Chicago loss in ’89 or possibly it was the anticipation of ditching the my longtime un-rewarded Cub loyalty for devotion to Colorado’s new National League, the Rockies, but very few memories hang out in my cranium when it comes to turning the double nickel.

Aah but 60. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Cumulus Broadcasting taking over our radio stations for a price that was way more than fair, we entered the world of retirement, the land of constant playtime. The fall of 1999 found us wandering Alabama with friends Dick and Joanne Smith. We played the myriad courses making up the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail; dots on the landscape the length and width of the “Heart of Dixie.” From Huntsville to Dothan, Gadsden to Mobile we managed a 36 holes a day golf marathon that Jan found to be a bit over the top. However, moi thought two straight weeks of eighteen holes in the morning, lunch, another round in the afternoon, followed by chucking the sticks in the car trunk and heading for the next course--where motel check-in led to savoring a gin and tonic before dinner--to be a “spot on” daily agenda.

Five years later the supposed trauma of reaching 65 was more than salved by wandering one of my favorite cities-Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called it “Baghdad by the Bay”- with San Francisco friends Jude and Ron Lange. Somehow the onset of advancing age, decried by so many, is more than mitigated by an “every day’s a playday” existence. Plus, and this is a true over-simplification, one either ages or one doesn’t. And the doesn’t, i.e. an ultimate power-nap in a warm condo, strikes one as a most harsh remedy for the occasional ache or pain inherent in the aging process.

So now it’s time for 70. And an adventure. Why not a bike ride? The personal attraction for 21 gears, two wheels and a hard seat has always been a puzzle. But how do you explain what piques a person's interest, or turns their crank. Some folks on the back nine of life collect antique Coke bottles, others fill their waking hours with the lock-step rigidity inherent in being passionate about their personal political party, while others find great satisfaction in rising early on a weekend morning to wander about the local hamlet and sort through other peoples unwanted trash in search of a yard-sale bargain. With me its bicycles.

For almost 40 years a bicycle has provided this Type A personality with the oh-so satisfying fatigue only exercise provides. Running was the exercise of choice for many years. You can do it in the dark, forty-five minutes to a hour is a great run, and it's much easier to pack running shoes and shorts in your suitcase than it is a bicycle. But, running also brings about a state of constant injury, mostly nagging, sometimes serious. Skinny skiing, (a.k.a. cross-country) is also aerobically outstanding but arrives at a bad time of the year, the downhill ski season. And then swimming, supposedly the perfect exercise, ranks somewhere between liver and onions and cats on the lower rungs of my personal favorites ladder.

Aah but bicycles. When time constrictions are no longer a daily occurrence, the bicycle is perfection personified. Oh, the places you can go! I’ve pedaled Iowa several times, crossed North Dakota riding beside fields bursting with color, ridden the North Shore of Minnesota’s Lake Superior with Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” living rent free in my brain for an entire week, and rolled down California’s Highway 1 from San Francisco to Santa Barbara.

Six years ago was the ultimate adventure. Pedaling coast to coast, Florence, Oregon to Westport, Connecticut’s Campo Beach was the trip of a lifetime. But to once again ride coast-to-coast was not an option. Do something once, it’s an adventure. Twice, or more, it becomes a job.

So how about North to South? Originally the plan was to pedal from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. Yet even for the schedule-free retiree, life can get in the way. Plans change. However, the resolve to turn 70 on the seat of a bicycle remains intact. Only instead of setting sail from International Falls the route will now begin further south.

So, c’mon along. The Mississippi is calling, so is the Natchez Trace. We’re off to Baton Rouge on a Ride to Red Stick.

Hopefully Kentucky will be less snowy than Yellowstone in '03.