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Franklin Furlong is a technology guy who says his Friday has opened up a whole new world of possibility for him - including when he was out of the saddle recovering from cancer. Joint March winner of the Cycle Oregon/Homecoming Story Contest. THE IMPORTANT stories I have to tell about my Bike Friday are not when I have been on the bike, but when I have been forced out of the saddle. Out of the saddle, I was able to reflect on the meaning of my cycling on a Bike Friday. When something important is missing, you appreciate its value. It was in 2003, a year of big personal and family life change in my life that I purchased my New World Tourist. It was an extravagant purchase, not untypical of a man my age going through an important transition. In September 2003, I participated in Cycle Oregon 2003 and the Bike Friday Homecoming just before and throughout the event. The experience of pedaling distances I had never dreamed of, and over mountains I had never dreamed of riding beyond launched me successfully into a period of 4 years of personal growth. As psychologists will point out our outside in the world journeys parallel our inside world. The experience of riding – being unfolded – contrasted with the feeling of being folded up. The experience of traveling in automobile or a bigger bike contrasted with the feeling of getting closer to our real human size with a smaller bike. With bicycling there is the glide effect from wheels on payment. Walking, there are two shocks to your body with every pace. Left foot forward, right foot forward. Boom. Boom. In the past four years I have been to Cycle Oregon 2003, Lon Haldeman’s Bike Friday Desert Camp 2004, and (almost) over the French Pyrenees from Quillan to Biarritz, France during the 2004 Tour de France on my NW World Tourist. Nothing prepared me for being knocked off my bike – metaphorically speaking - to appreciate my New World Tourist. I had embarked on my heroic journey to France for a 2004 cycling tour with Seattle-based Cascade Bicycling Club with every expectation I would be successful riding over the historic Tour de France mountain passes: Tourmalet, Col d’Aubisque, Col de la Core and Col de Marie Blanque. I was not. The first problem was one of scale. Cycle Oregon and Desert Camp did not prepare me for the Pyrenees. The grades and elevations are in a different class. However, I was not prepared for the daily doubt of my ride leader and for plain old tire failure and no replacement. Both 'knocked me off my bike' and taught me valuable life and Bike Friday lessons. |
Nothing prepared me for the looks of our German tour guide leader when I unfolded my Bike Friday the morning of our departure in Quillan, France. I had been traveling in France for 10 days before joining up with the tour and could speak French. So, I was accepted. However, as the sole folding bike rider I was encountered with a derisive stare. You cannot get over those mountains riding small. I had been warned about this, but there it was, real. Every day, the tour leader would meet me at the breakfast table and ask me what I wanted to do, ride in the in van? Nope I said, I’m starting out on my bike and riding up! It was a kind of challenge he gave me everyday which led to a sort of like you-dislike-you relationship over dinner every evening. However, the ability to ride everyday despite the small bike and my actual ability to speak French served as poetic justice. I could ride and speak the native language. We all take personal criticism every day because of who we are. What is the implication, because you are small or your wheels are small, then YOU are small? You are not, and don’t absorb the doubts of the taller, with bigger wheels. However, what I could not recover from, was a flat caused by overheated rims descending the Col de Marie Blanque. It must have been the excessive braking descending Tourmalet the day before that weakened my back tube and tire. I am too cautions about speed buildup going downhill. But I wasn’t a mile downhill when my back tire had an explosive blow out. I was able to get a ride back to the hotel, but I search all the next day in Pau, France for a tube and tire to fit my 20 inch wheels to no avail. I actually took a taxi cab tour of Pau that day to one bike shop after another looking for the right size tire to no avail. At each bike shop I would ask the bike shop owner to give the taxi cab driver the directions to the next bike shop. It was an interesting cultural experience, but I wasn’t able to get back on my bike again for the last day of the ride. The lesson: If you are going to the trouble to be different, or are different, pack your own special gear. The world is not going to accommodate you. It is a world with people who ride on big wheels. |
It was in November of 2006 when I got knocked off my bike again, by some bad news. I was angry and peeved at my family physician for sending me for a biopsy with a below 4 PSA score. However, the urologist eventually told me my family physician’s intuition was right. I have prostate cancer, early and something I can recover from, but I have cancer. I chose surgery. After surgery, the urologist gave me the good news about the good surgical result, but the bad news not to ride for 4 months until I healed. This is what I have come to call, folding up. Just like our bikes, when faced with a crisis or exhaustion or simply the end of the ride we fold up to recover, to heal, to protect ourselves, to rest. These intuitive Bike Fridays mirror this unfolding and folding up process and so are the perfect life companion. I am almost three months into my enforced fold up. I have been walking. I have lost weight. It was last month when I volunteered at the cider stop on the 25th annual Cascade Bicycle Club Chilly Hilly that I was jealous of all the bikers that were gliding down the road on their wheels, big or small. I really wanted to unfold and get back on the road to wherever over the horizon, over some big mountain. And so I want to come back home to my Bike Friday this Fall and participate in Cycle Oregon 2007. In the meantime, I have ordered a new tikit to ride to work to my new job (starting May 1) at the University of Washington. It can be a bookend to my personal cycling journey of these last four years. There are mountains to climb and a distance still farther to ride. Franklin Furlong, New World Tourist and Pocket Crusoe |