NewsArticleBody
A wonderful story reminiscent of Lance's 'It's Not About the Bike' - David Fastovsky's Air Friday helped buoy him during the turbulence of cancer - and complete a century soon after chemo. Joint March winner of the 2007 Cycle Oregon/BF Homecoming Story Contest, together with Franklin Furlong's Out of the Saddle: When My Friday Really Taught Me Something. IT WAS NOT surprising that I took my 1997 Air Friday on my year-long visit to Mexico City in 2004. I wanted to explore, I needed to commute, and yet still hang with the big dogs - whomever they might turn out to be. No other bike that I owned had the versatility of the BF. It provided the physical means - as well as a little touch of necessary psychological comfort - to allow me to unreservedly explore the new world into which I was going to be immersed. But Mexico, as it turned out, was only the beginning. The first six months were compelling enough. I navigated all around Mexico City, dodging buses, vying with cabs for lanes, and whipping the Friday between cars. The world's largest city - with its estimated 6 million vehicles - is a real test for a bike. Gaping potholes. Hard acceleration around diesel-belching busses. Sharp stops behind lurching traffic. I can't remember ever wearing out brake pads in 30+ years of commuter riding, but after four months in Mexico City the Friday needed a new set. My life, however, abruptly hit a speed bump in March, 2005, when I discovered that I was unable to take deep breaths. It had to be Mexico City pollution-induced asthma, I assured myself, so I compensated with a less-aggressive style of riding which at least got me to work and back. But after visiting doctors in April and June, and dutifully imbibing or injecting a 2000-peso laundry list of drugs, nothing had changed. It still felt like there was a clamp on my half-filled lungs. Finally, it was August and time to return to the United States. Within four days of our arrival, I learned I had Hodgkin's lymphoma. Here was an unexpected and unwelcome turn of the cosmic wheel! |
"Don't." Three treatments later, he finally acquiesced. I was doubtless wobblier than Lance at his chemo'd worst, but at least I was on the BF again. A friend of ours regularly rides a Leukemia-Lymphoma Society benefit century around Lake Tahoe ("The World's Most Beautiful Bike Ride"). She would be doing that ride on June 4, 2006, and given the circumstances, I thought that it would be especially timely to support her. My wife agreed, but suggested that I do the ride myself. I pondered: The chemotherapy sessions would end in late February, and I had been riding (sort of), but could I do a hilly century by June 4? "At least I won't be overweight!" I thought, and so I signed up for the ride. The only certain thing at that point was my choice of bicycle. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has a finely honed "Team-in-Training" operation that conditions folks for century rides. They inspire you and they train you, so by the time you get there, you're pumped, you're tuned, and you cannot fail. I went to my first training ride. "Is that your regular ride?" asked the trainer, referring to my BF. He told me later he thought, "Poor guy, having to ride 100 miles on those little wheels." Little did he know that, to the disbelief of my wife and friends, I had chosen my Air Friday over my other two bikes: a Colnago C40 and a custom titanium tourer! |
 Thankfully, things began to look up in the early months of 2006. I started riding my BF a little bit faster and longer, my physique improved, and on the Team-in-Training rides, it was generally agreed that the Air Friday was not a bicycle to be lightly dismissed. What's more, my friends and family really kicked in on my behalf, and we raised ~$11,200 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We were ready. In the midst of a week of miserable weather, June 4, 2006, dawned an exquisitely beautiful day on the California-Nevada border at Lake Tahoe. The air was crystalline, the colors vibrant, the sky cloudless. Doubtless it's my addled memory, but somehow all was right with the world on that day. And so I rode the ride. Those 451 wheels ate the uphills, and then, cresting and dropping into the high gears, the bike zoomed downhill at speeds in the mid-40s. I finished the ride with a respectable average speed of 17.5 mph and got in well ahead of the big crowds. It was a great ending to an unexpectedly long journey. So what is compelling? Certainly not the ride, pleasant as it was. And although I consciously viewed the BF and me as a team (even my Team-in-Training web page talked about supporting my "little team within the Team"), I have never been the kind of cyclist for whom bicycles are the ultimate means of personal expression. Yet in those dark winter days of 2005 - 2006, my Bike Friday obviously represented life and freedom to my teeming brain. As I look back, these events, so intimately tied up with that bicycle, now embody for me a sense of transcendence and even rebirth. Who could have guessed that the cosmic wheel, for me at least, has spokes? David E. Fastovsky, defastov@uri.edu RELATED LINKS Air Bikes A look at the unique suspended, packable Air Fridays Setbacks and Cycling How some Friday folks get over all kinds of hurdles great and small This article as it appeared as the March 2007 Travel Story of the Month |