Surprisingly emotional ride

One of the great things about the sport of cycling is the fact that on any given day you never quite know what adventure is just waiting for you down the road as you roll out of the driveway.

Today I had good intentions, to ride to Wales and back, putting on a few more miles than the three previous days as I work to make my goal of riding five days in a row this week.

I struggled into a west wind early. For much of the first five or six miles all I could think about was when I would turn around and cut this short. My legs were heavy from Wednesday's climbing. The wind made it seem more chilly than yesterday despite warm sunshine on my face.

I took a picture to inform those of you who ride the New Berlin Trail that the construction is making progress and soon we'll have our smooth crossing at Calhoun Road. 

I joked with one of the workers who gave me some grief, teasing me about the path being closed. Of course it wasn't, but I decided this would make a good turning point. There was no way I felt like riding into that west wind all the way to Wales today.

And so I headed back the same way I came, feeling a little disappointed in myself for not doing more out there on such a nice day. Unsure of what was to come next, I glanced at Highland Park Cemetery on my left, a place I have ridden past many times on this and other routes. It is the place where my grandparents, who raised me, are buried. I had not been there in years.

For some reason I stopped on the path and cut across the grass to get to the cemetery. Slowly I rode around trying to remember exactly where my grandparents' plot was. Several times I thought I had found it, walking my bike over plot after plot searching. But alas the more I tried the more lost I became.

Not one to give up easily, I rode to the office and asked a lady to look it up for me. She obliged and handed me a map. Those of you who know me know handing me a map is like handing a blind man the keys to a car. Even with the map it took me several more spins around the place, both on and off the bike, as my search continued.

At one point the sound of a nearby train horn cut through the crisp autumn air. Significant because at that moment I was awaiting one of those spine-tingling incidents when the dead reach out to communicate with you. You see, I remember my grandma once telling me that she loved the sound of a train because it made her think about just getting on board and being swept away to some far away and exotic place. To this day I think of her when I hear a train horn. 

Too bad there was no magical moment. I looked around while I listened to the train and saw Johnstons, Weelars, Millers...but no grandma and grandpa yet. Perhaps that stuff only happens in Hollywood.

Finally I put two and two together on the map and found their section. And yes, I finally found where they are buried. I laid my Madone down on their grave and cleared away some of the overgrown grass from the marker.

 

For some reason it felt right to put my bottle down there too for the picture. My grandpa would get a kick out of my riding now. I can still see him sitting on the front porch of our house in West Allis, his feet up on the railing and a cool drink on the table as he waited for me to come back from a run. He always thought my running was such a waste of energy. "Why don't you use some of that energy to cut the grass," he'd say. But deep down I know he understood my training. It used to drive me crazy when I would come back from a hard three-mile effort and he'd look at his watch and say, "about 20 minutes on that one."

Well, ask any runner who is doing a timed three miles and ABOUT anything is a four-letter word. Didn't he understand that fractions of seconds meant the world to me?

As I stood there looking silly I suppose in my funny shoes and spandex, I remembered that somewhere down there is a gold watch. Nothing fancy mind you, just a Timex that I had given him for Father's Day. You would have thought I gave him a Rolex the way he smiled and put it on that day.

He died five days later.

Sometimes in the rat race that is our day-to-day lives we forget things we should never forget. Today I remembered.

Season Miles: 2,604