All of My Life at 55-Years Old Turned into a Metaphor of this Morning's Bike Ride

It was supposed to be this morning’s bike ride actually, but I didn’t get started until a little after noon. My goal was a 30-mile round trip. I was ready to go but the tires were low and so I lost some time finding the air pump and getting the tires back to where they had been when I last left the bike under the house. I put on my helmet and it didn’t fit. I thought, “could I have gained that much in two weeks since my last ride that the straps on my helmet won’t click closed? I pressed hard and forced them together and got them to click despite how tight they felt.

At first the ride went well. It was colder than I thought and the road wasn’t as smooth, but I hit the big hill a block from us and got up to 20 MPH. I was sailing. Two red lights cut into my time and forced me to get started again, but I was feeling good. Okay, that’s a lie, I was feeling anxious because I really just wanted to be sitting at the computer, not setting on a 30-mile round trip with my own muscles as my only form of propulsion.

When I got to the bike path my plans to turn right were immediately thwarted. There was an American flag there and it was blowing towards the right, which meant headwinds coming back if I stuck with my intent and went right. I went left and immediately determined in my head how far 15 miles out would be to give myself an end point. Within a half a mile I started to hit piles of beach sand on the bike path. I plowed through three of them with the third one being deeper than I had gauged and nearly taking me down.

I stopped for a second and looked down the rest of the bike path. People were walking their bikes through piles of beach sand as far as the eye could see. I didn’t even really ponder my options, I just turned back up the slight hill to the side street that parallels the bike path and began riding down that.

My helmet felt uncomfortable. I had to lose weight.

I found myself gliding again, not peddling at all and yet going nearly my fastest speed yet. I was getting there faster, but with the final destination actually being home, in the other direction, it also occurred to me that I was setting myself up for an unexpected hill to climb on the way back, when I would be more tired, and less able.

The street flattened out and filled with potholes and even with the buildings there was filled with its own piles of beach sand. I skirted these obstacles as best I could, plowing through most of the sand and only having two piles be deep enough to stop the bike underneath me.

Miles later, I reached the turn where I could rejoin the bikepath and make my 15 miles out, but some switch in my head clicked and I simply went straight instead, continuing down the road despite my knowing that it dead ends in about 2 miles, cutting my best possible trip down from 30 to 12.

Twelve miles seemed like a good enough number, a number I could be proud of, a number that most people in the world were not going to bicycle that day, some ever. There was nothing to sneeze about at 12 miles, and so I kept going through more potholes and more piles of sand.

When I reached the dead end I hit the deepest pile of sand yet and almost went over the handlebars. But I didn’t. I caught myself and I got the bike through and I stopped and looked around and it was beautiful, with a body of water and boats scudding here and there. It was not a place I ever intended to go but it was not a bad place to wind up in the middle of my trip. I was proud of myself.

I caught my breath and turned back around. The ride home was mostly smoother. I think my muscles, while tired, had also stretched out and were prepared for the road ahead. Sure there were obstacles, slow moving cars, an old lady with her dogs on leashes stretched across the narrow road, a bunch of teens walking in a pack leaving no room to pass, the potholes, the piles of sand, but I made it through them all. Just as I reached the hill I knew I’d have to climb, another pack of kids walked by the other way. One of them yelled at me, “Your helmet is on backwards.”

I looked at him to scoff, but he was already gone. “Idiot,” I muttered. I’d ridden a good 9 of my 12 miles. I knew what I was doing. What business does some snot-nosed hipster have telling me my helmet is on backwards?

Just in case, I reached up and touched my helmet. It was on backwards.

I stopped and put it on correctly. The straps snapped together with ease. I hadn’t gained weight since my last ride. At least not that much weight. But now I was 9 miles into a 12-mile trip and only had 3 miles to go with my helmet on properly.

I rode those miles back ignoring that I had done it wrong up until then. Proud that I was doing it right now. I reached my home, 12 miles from my first peddle and put my bike away, having not accomplished the 30 miles I started out to accomplish, but having put a hard 12 miles under my belt.

Except it wasn’t 12 miles. I’ve been lying to you. I actually only did about 10 miles total (maybe a tad less). But that didn’t sound as good as 12. And that's who I am.

Michael Kennedy, Sonny Bono, and Me

“Pizza, pizza, pizza… pizza to stop” I thought and tried, but I wasn’t stopping. I kept going faster and faster down the slope while snow slapped like frozen cotton balls into my face and a large tree came closer and closer and the premature deaths of Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono within a week of each other flashed through my head.

I probably shouldn’t have tried skiing… I’m not athletic and racing down a snow-covered mountain at 80 miles per hour requires a certain level of physical ability. Besides, if I was going to try skiing I should have done it when I was younger and didn’t have a family… along with me… on the top of a snow blanketed Rocky. But there I was, 42, six foot three, 225 pounds, more likely to cause an avalanche then perform a downhill, wrapped in wicking underwear, two layers of sweaters, ski pants and a ten-pound ski parka. I had the full mobility of Hannibal Lector strapped to a hand truck.

Oddly, I wasn’t scared. Okay, I was pretty scared.

I probably shouldn’t have tried skiing but at the time I was making good money and skiing is one of those expensive things that people who make good money do.  Luckily I’m no longer doing that well and am much less inclined to do it again.

Anyway, having never skied before I was aware that this could be the only time I ever did. I decided I would do it right and that meant Colorado. That way when friends talked about their ski vacations I could join in and not be some kind of Big-Bear Bunny-Run failure. I’d be able say, “I’ve skied Colorado,” carrying the gravitas of Bogart’s “We’ll always have Paris,” which was so much more romantic than “We’ll always have San Bernardino.” And right now, standing here, I can say that I’ve skied Colorado and leave it at that.

Unfortunately, that’s not all there is. It never is. There were winds and deep snow and steep mountains and frigid air and trees. There were trees.

We were scheduled to fly out early on the morning of December 26. The night before, after a long Jewish Christmas, we cleaned up the house, threw away the wrappings and boxes, and dragged the tree out to our front yard where it would be picked up by a tree service. When you’re doing well you pay for weird things like having your old Christmas tree picked up by a service.

My wife lit some candles on our ersatz fireplace mantle. My daughter read to herself from a picture book and my son played with a brand new hand-held video game arcade he’d been given.  I lay awake in bed the way one does when one knows he is waking early, marking away the passing of each hour by convincing myself that I’d be fine with four decent hours of sleep, that I’d be fine with a solid three hours of sleep, that I’d be fine with a power two hours of sleep.  Luckily I was still awake when it was time to leave for LAX.

I booked us into a hotel in downtown Denver. I figured we’d spend a day on the slopes and the rest exploring a great American city that none of us had ever seen before. Denver’s the capital of Colorado and we could see the capitol dome from our hotel room. As I was looking at the dome my wife asked me, “Did you blow out the candles on the mantle?” I had no memory of doing so and neither did she.

While we had cell phones, this was in the days of the flip phone when you didn’t have an entire Rolodex on your phone like you do now. In fact you still knew what a Rolodex was. A panicked call to information followed with an even more panicked message being left on our landlord’s answering machine. About thirty minutes later, our landlord called to say she was in our living room and the candles had not only been blown out, but also had apparently been put away too. She wanted to know why we’d left our Christmas tree in the front yard. “We went skiing,” my wife explained.

“In Colorado,” I added.

The next morning we had Denver omelets for breakfast; when in Rome right? I looked at my two cherubs and imagined that they would shine on the slopes having inherited some previously undiscovered athletic ability from my wife’s side. As we went to our room to get our stuff for the day, my son tripped over my daughter’s foot and smashed his one-day old hand-held video arcade into the wall, shattering it.

“Did I break it?” he asked. “I’m not sure,” I lied, wanting him to believe he owned it for more than a day. I hid it in my suitcase with a plan to buy an exact replacement when were back in LA, a plan that never came to fruition.

Soon we set out to explore Denver. My Santa-Monica-raised children had never experienced sub-freezing weather, let alone the single- digit day Denver was having. They began to sob, causing us to buy additional gloves, scarves and knitted hats to get us back to the hotel, where we watched Nickelodeon, ate snacks, and looked through the window at the capitol dome.

One day I would still like to see Denver.

The next morning we got up at five to have breakfast, put together our ski outfits, and get to the railroad station. We had reservations on the seven AM ski train to Winter Park. It was colder and darker than the day before and the wind felt like an ice-covered sledgehammer. Still, bundled in our ski clothes, it wasn’t that bad.

The train however was heated to what felt like 100 degrees and we had to peel and peel and peel. I got down to jeans and long underwear just not to collapse.

As the sun rose the train began our trek. Industrial Denver rushed by the windows only to turn into the slope of the Rockies. We climbed above the city. We were cocooned in the train’s dizzying heat as winds and flurries danced over the barren ground around us.

My son danced too so I asked if he needed the bathroom. He looked at me like this was the most brilliant suggestion anyone had ever made ever and nodded furiously. I pointed it out to him and watched him head down the aisle. I realized he had never used a bathroom on a train before, which had me a bit nervous, but I figured, he’s a smart kid, he’ll figure it out. He came back much calmer and happier. He explained that it was hard to pee in the toilet with the train rocking.

I went off to the bathroom myself only to discover the floor soaked with my child’s urine, sloshing to perfect rhythm with the song of the steels wheels on the steel rails.

We neared Moffatt Tunnel, which we were told is the longest railroad tunnel in North America, spanning the Continental Divide. The conductor announced that vestibules had to be sealed to keep the train from filling with diesel exhaust. I was starting to question the whole idea of a Colorado ski trip when the assistant conductor came on the PA and told everyone that we had to have all our ski clothes on and all of our personal property packed because the moment we came out of the tunnel we would detrain very rapidly.

It seems that the train had to stop on the mainline and there were monster coal trains waiting to get through so we were only allowed a few moments. Okay, I can do this, I thought, dressing my son while my wife dressed my daughter. We were all bundled, Jews in bubble wrap, ready to go, when the conductor came back and said, “Ladies and Gentleman, put the long underwear on if you have it. It’s ten degrees with a wind-chill factor of negative five.”

It was ten degrees out with wind chill factor of negative five and there was a colossal coal train waiting to use the tracks so we all had to scamper like vermin facing a can of Raid?

The words that ran through my brain at that moment were, “I’ve killed my family.”

Somehow we detrained, got into the lodge, rented skis, put on the skis, and found our way to the ski teacher. “This is going to be a good story to tell,” my wife said. Little did she realize that was the only reason I was doing it. “Yeah, I’ve skied Colorado. How’s the rock shrimp and endive salad?”

The ski teacher was an Australian Olympian (at least he seemed like one). I’m sure Jim Lampley interviewed him once on Wide World of Sports. He had zero body fat, a Crocodile Dundee accent, and the kind of charisma that only a good-looking foreigner in an expensive ski parka can have. I felt very important and wealthy having an Australian ski teacher.

He took us to something called the magic carpet, which was basically a moving walkway like you see at the airport, only shorter, running up a very gentle hill. Think of a front lawn in New Jersey, in a nice neighborhood with hills, add some snow and the moving walkway from the airport and you get the idea of where we were most of our ski day. I flew my family to Colorado to ski on a hill that I could probably have pushed a stalled Cadillac up… by myself.

The four of us rode the magic carpet up the gentle hill while our wallaby shusser skied up. As a kraken-sized coal train trundled below us, we were taught that you point your skis like French fries to go and like pizza to stop. He taught us how to get up from a fall with skis on, which I felt was sort of like the driving teacher teaching you how to install a new airbag after a crash.

Over the next hour or so each of us skied five feet here, seven feet there, monumental runs that thrilled us and had us all dehydrated and desperate for cup after cup of the icy cold water from a cooler perched near the top of the magic carpet.

It’s amazing how willing one is to move in sub-zero weather and with the equivalent of a couple steel-belted truck tires’ worth of clothing around them for a cup of water. I cross country skied my way back to the magic carpet, carefully placing each ski on it with all the agility of a moose… that was wearing skis. Once on top, I sucked a cup of water down the way one does in the desert and then made my next run down the mountain, which was more like the slope of a dog’s back… not when it’s sitting, but when it’s standing on all four legs. French fry was effective. Pizza on the other hand, not so much.

Soon my five-year old was done for the day and my wife took her into the ski lodge while my seven-year old, our astonishingly patient and kind Aussie ski instructor, and I shared a ski-lift seat up the mountain to take what we learned and perform a downhill run.

Did I mention this was in the days before smart phones? Because I think of all the times in my life that I didn’t have a camera, besides the first time I got naked with a girlfriend, there are few others I regret not having at camera with me anything like riding up the ski lift in Winter Park, Colorado, over the pure-white slope with thousands of hundred-foot-tall pine trees all around us, each holding foot-high layers of snowy powder upon each and every branch, extending as far as I could see.  It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, ranking just below, once again, the first time I ever got naked with a girlfriend.

I turned to my Vegemite-loving teacher and asked him if this was a smart thing for us to do. He assured me that we were just taking the easy hill.  Besides, I was doing well and would be okay going down the mountain myself. He added that this was why people came to Colorado.

I was doing well. I had a sudden boost of confidence, very similar to the time I got an “A” in Geometry despite having had no idea whatsoever what the teacher had been talking about all semester.

As the ski lift reached its zenith our instructor told us how to jump off and come up standing. I fell on my face. But he reminded me how to get up with skis on and I got up and brushed myself off and I followed him to the course. Meanwhile, on what seemed a couple miles lower than us another coal train decimated everything in its path, while on what seemed a couples miles higher than us, skiers raced down an absolute vertical, shussing through the trees like they were negative magnets and the trees were positives.

Then, with a flick of the poles, my son and our instructor began the run. I followed, trying to go as slowly as I possibly could, but it was really just a few seconds before I was out of control. I crashed into a pile of snow to stop. I took a deep breath and discovered that standing with skis on wasn’t quite as simple without instruction. I looked down the run and saw the kangaroo man and my son gently French frying and pizza-ing while faster skiers passed them. I was happy to have given my son a Rocky Mountain high.

I took a deep breath and tried again. I was going well… too well… I was up to what I estimate to be 80 miles an hour within five seconds, which is pretty good when you consider a Porsche needs about seven seconds to reach that speed.

This was the easy hill.

I passed my son and our ski instructor. I’d like to say I saw a look of concern on their faces, but I’m going to be honest, I was passing at too high a rate of speed for light to catch up with me, so I probably was looking at what their faces had been seconds earlier.

“Pizza, pizza, pizza… pizza to stop” I thought and tried, but I wasn’t stopping. I kept going faster and faster down the slope while snow slapped like frozen cotton balls into my face and a large tree came closer and closer and the premature deaths of Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono within a week of each other flashed through my head.

I hit the side of the tree, hard enough that it hurt, but not hard enough to break anything. I fell into a mound of snow and rocks and twigs however that did hurt. I lay there for a bit, delighted beyond delight to no longer be moving. Man being stationary felt great. But I also realized I was only about a quarter of the way down. My son and the teacher pizzad perfectly to where I was. He told me once again how to get up with skis on and all three of us made our way back to the run.

The only additional instruction I heard was, “lean back.”

By this point snow had gotten into my son’s boot and he began to wail in pain. Our instructor was now left with the job of getting both of us off the mountain. He warmed my son’s foot with his bare hand, which stopped the crying. Then he picked my son up, skis and all, and put him on his back. He skied gently and slowly right by my side, speaking Australian, as a leaned back and pizzad the entire way down. All I could think was, “it’s so cold, I’m so thirsty, there’s so much more mountain left.”

When we finally reached the bottom I knew that this man had saved both my and my son’s lives (all right I’m being a bit of a drama queen, but seriously, if not for him, we’d both still be on that mountain trying to figure out how we were getting down). I reached into my wallet and pulled out a few bills. They weren’t ones or fives. I tipped him a happy-ending level gratuity, not that I have any idea what a happy ending tip should be, but rather… honestly, I’m just guessing here.

As we found my wife and daughter and all shared hot chocolate, as one does when one skies in Colorado, I felt good… and not just because I’d taken my ski boots off, which is possibly the greatest non-erotic orgasm known to man. I was proud of myself. I had skied… not just that, but I had skied Colorado.

And now, I could say that and would never have to do it again.