Riding for Fun

We received this article, originally appearing on www.bicycling.com, from a fellow MOBer. (Thanks Ken!) Thought we would post it here.

Bicycling's Editor-In-Chief looks past the disappointment of the Floyd Landis affair to check in with the real home of cycling: THE EVERYDAY RIDER

By Steve Madden

Tulloch called Friday night to ask about a ride on Saturday. It would have to be in the morning, he said, because Isabel had activities in the afternoon, and he would have to drive her. And he and Kim had a date planned that night. So, yeah, 9:30 a.m., at my house.

He showed up five minutes early, like he always does, do-rag in place. Said he didn't want an espresso, just wanted to ride, and that he had time for a couple of hours at the most, but he had done 50 miles yesterday so he was a little creaky.

We rode the flats to loosen up. It was my first time on a bike in a week, and it was good to feel the knots leaving my body. We saw the guys from Bikeland II heading home after their ride, and a team from Liberty Cycles hammering along.

Tulloch and I hadn't seen each other in a couple of weeks, so we caught up as we rolled through the Swamp, a route so familiar we didn't have to offer each other hand signals. I said the scar on his wrist was healing nicely; he said the wrist still hurt a little after surgery, but what really hurt was the almost two months of warm-weather cycling he'd missed because of his wipeout.

He told me about a minor car accident he'd been in, and how he blamed it on a lack of sleep caused by staying up late to watch the Tour de France on OLN. He said he was thinking about buying a new bike. I told him I liked the new SRAM road group I was testing. I beat him up the hill on Skyline Drive; he said he didn't know we were racing. The climb up Hardscrabble was as hard as it always is, and he waited for me. Tulloch asked if I was still jet-lagged. I said I was.

He said he couldn't make Sunday's group ride because he and Kim were taking Isabel and a friend to the beach, but that he would be around all week if I wanted to ride; that it was supposed to be crazy-hot but he'd probably go out anyway, after he did some chores around the house. He asked if we were still going to do that ride in Princeton and if we could drive down together, gas being so expensive. Then we said, "Thanks for the ride," and headed our own ways.

Like most of you, I spent much of my summer apologizing for cycling, answering questions posed by family, friends and colleagues about protocols and B samples and Operation Puerto and the efficacy of Jack Daniels as race preparation. One guy told me cycling was about to become as irrelevant as the once-mighty sport of boxing now is.

It was tough to argue with him. When you don't know who or what to believe, it's hard to mount a cogent defense even of something you love.

Except for this: The soul of cycling doesn't reside in the pro peloton. Rather, it is in the 8 million Americans who ride at least twice a week. They don't get paid, but their rewards are many. You know. You're one of them. So are the people on your weekend ride, and the newbies training on the local rec trail for a charity ride. And guys like Tulloch. We all keep it alive, for all the right reasons.