The Gift

What can be more special than that first real bike?  I still vividly remember mine, a purple five-speed banana seat Sears and Roebuck special, sent all the way to Accra, Ghana, where my family was living, just in time for Christmas.  My older sister got her new bike at the same time, and try as I might, I could not quite keep up with her on our back veranda, which essentially doubled as our own private race course and the place where my parents entertained, both events occurring sometimes at the same time to comic effect.

Being a father has brought back the fond first-bike memories.  Only this time, sans Sears and minus banana seats, we benefitted from the largesse of skiing friends, with kids just a bit older than ours, who'd already negotiated the fleeting year of beginner-to-future-champion-cycling not uncommon to five year-olds.

So, as I watched our oldest son Hayden grow to the almost-bike-ready age of four, I kept asking him if he was ready to take off the training wheels, and did he want to go over to the only flat, largish space around our neighborhood and become a "real" cyclist?  "No" was the constant reply, and even though I knew he was ready and just needed that final push, I allowed him to come to terms with that faltering balance that seems so hard initially but which becomes unnoticed instinct in short order.  

Finally, one dry early spring Seattle Sunday nearing his 5th birthday, I knew the time was ripe, but I couched the opportunity in "don't worry, I'm not going to let go of you and let you crash," and its slight variant, "it's just a chance to practice for the real thing later, when you're ready."  Reluctantly, he followed me out the door, walking beside me as I rode, proudly, his miniscule, bomb proof, shiny silver bike.

The Silver Bike - Logan's turn 2009

We got to the paved basketball court-cum-bike testing zone at West Woodland Elementary in short order, and soon he was on the bike, attempting to ride and turn and balance and, let's face it, do a bunch of things simultaneously that conflate into one fairly sizable psychic hurdle in the mind of a youngster.  Of course, I knew it wouldn't be easy, and so I held on to the seat post, bent over, getting the usual father back pain, and doing my best to keep up with his spurts and weaves and general gravitational dysfunctions.  I was just another dad willing his son's success, with son slowly, unpredictably, approaching that inevitable fail safe moment experienced by all cyclists.

At one point he pleaded, "dad, don't let go!", but I already had, though I stayed right behind him a bit longer, making it look like my hand was still on the bike, giving my supporting role pretense a bit more life, and allowing him to gain quick confidence.  He was into a turn and heading back when he realized that I hadn't been helping him with balance, and one of those smiles that remain forever ingrained in a father's memory beamed from his face as he realized he could ride a bike.

The Silver Bike - Teaching Logan to ride - 2009

Son number two, Logan, had to ride a bit earlier, of course.  Now about to be the introductory bi-pedal stepping stone for its sixth youngster, the shiny sliver bike was still an amazing machine, with a few more scuffs and dings but as intrepid and indestructible as ever.  Better yet, his older brother had used it and just about all of his older friends coveted it, so it had to be The Bomb.  And, just as before, I played the part of balance-helper and then faker, and in what seemed like a nanosecond we had a complete home of cyclists.

As I said, there is something special about that first bike, especially when it's the first bike of both your boys, not to mention two other families' kids.  So, even though the younger one was outgrowing it and the older one was beginning to look silly on it, we dutifully packed it up in our Saudi shipment in 2009, both parents probably thinking that the boys would soon outgrow it, each probably wondering "honey, so why are we packing this?"

The Silver Bike - Working on bikes in our garage - KAUST, Saudi Arabia 2012

The shiny silver bike, of course, had plans of its own.  Our younger one loved being in a place where you could ride every day of the year, and which was as flat and trafficless as Seattle wasn't, and soon the bike was getting more miles than it'd probably ever bargained for.  Better still, as soon as the youngest was off of it, the oldest often was on it, zipping around on it like a BMX Lawrence of Arabia.  The bike went with us everywhere, and the neighborhood kids couldn't wait to get on it and try it whenever, in a magnanimous and reluctant moment, either of the boys decided to relinquish it.  

Then, four years later and a whole lot bigger, and with alternate "big boy" bikes each, we found ourselves packing up for a move to Germany.  Though the bike wasn't getting nearly the use it had, both boys lobbied hard to have us include it in the shipment north.

The Silver Bike - passed on to its 7th new owner. Saudi Arabia 2013

Yet we knew, just like two sets of parents before us, that the bike would better serve the needs of younger boys and/or girls, planting the seeds of possibility just like it had for our boys.  So, reluctantly, and not without a few tears and regrets, we left the bike with a family with a young boy at the cusp of two-wheel bikehood, hoping that the bike would get into the boy's soul even half as much as it had dug into ours.

I've been thinking about the shiny silver bike recently.  Its legacy, including at least four families now, with kids from all corners of the globe who've happily ridden it, stretches back to a time I've learned more of in the past few days, a reminder that it's the little things in life that very often lead to lasting legacy.  The shiny silver bike was given to us by the Lindahls in 2004. Their two kids, Erik and Elyse, learned how to ride on it, but its origin stretches farther back, into the latter years of the 20th century, to another Kongsberger family many of us have been thinking a whole lot about this week.  You see, although dozens and dozens can claim to have ridden that shiny steel bike, only one person first rode it, and that was Torin Tucker, a person's whose inspiring legacy the cross country ski world has been commemorating this week.  The oldest of the Tucker/Lindahl/Evans kids, it was only natural that Torin would be the lead-off hitter in this amazing bike's game.  Sometimes, we don't know the gifts we give, and I'm quite certain Torin never knew that his parents passed the bike on to the Lindahls or, even if he did, that the Lindahls then sent the bike on to our family.  Torin touched the world in ways that many of us are only beginning to recognize; for one unknowing American boy and his buddies in faraway Saudi Arabia, Torin's gift just keeps on giving by continuing its legacy of smiles and dreams.  Thank you, Torin.     

       

Thinking of a friend

This blog exists in great part due to my friend, Scott Tucker.  In an earlier post I've spoken of our history as training and racing buddies in Seattle and elsewhere.  Scott was and is a standout cross country skier, triathlete, and, most recently, runner, and in part due to his achievements and example I've felt awed and inspired.   It was Scott who contacted me with his Ironmania in 2010, and who then called me from Kona that October and told me to get my triathlon butt back in shape so he could meet me on Ali'i Drive in 2011. Had I not followed his advice, qualified in South Africa and competed in Kona, this sporadic column would never have been.  Good or bad, the writing in this blog is due to Scott's original urgings for me to pack my transition bags and get on the Road Back to Kona.
More recently Scott had been living in Boulder, CO, and working at Pearl Izumi.  Although not as excited about his work designing PI's running shoe line as one might expect, having him there made it even more fun to visit in-laws in the Denver area.  The past few times in Denver, including this past summer, we'd gotten together for rides, general hanging out and having fun, comparing notes on training and racing, and catching up on family news.  His daughter had doted on our boys when they were tots, while his son, though quite a bit older than our boys, had gradually grown into the student/athlete example of father.  A keen math/science mind who just happened to be one heck of a cross country skier, he'd followed his parents' examples and was attending a top college, pursuing his academic and athletic dreams.
Which is why receiving news of his untimely death, at a collegiate cross country race in Vermont, where he was competing for Dartmouth, has sent my heart reeling and my thoughts ever returning to Scott and the anguish he must feel.  Being an endurance athlete exposes you to sometimes relentless pain.  The final miles of an Ironman bring emotional and physical deprivations I'd wish on no one.  All Ironman races aren't created equal; Kona raises the pain stakes even more with its heat and humidity and world championship tableau.
Scott has been through all of this and more and yet, as a father, I am sure that  nothing prepares us for the kind of pain Scott and his family must be feeling just now.
They say that outliving one's own child is the cruelest fate.  As adults, we can have our health setbacks, our troubles at work, our challenges in relationships, etc., but having a child die prematurely is a curse that can't be named, or that at least is so statistically rare that most of us are unfamiliar with its wrenching intimacies in the First World of the 21st century.
Competing for a Division I Ivy League school, Scott's son was doing what any of us would want our sons to be doing.  Sport, especially endurance sport, can provide the kinds of hard lessons and real learning we so hope for our children, and my guess is that is what Scott's son was reaping as a member of Dartmouth's legendary ski program this winter.
Cross country skiing may not be so well known a sport as some, but there isn't a sport out there with higher aerobic returns, which is another way of saying that it's a sport that punishes and demands as much as any endurance sport, even as much as Ironman.  No world class athletes have higher VO2 maxes than the top Nordic skiers, not even triathletes, cyclists or runners.  Although there may sometimes seem a fine line between physical demands of competition and death, in reality the average endurance athlete couldn't be more removed from the sad statistical realities of modern mortality inhabited by those with chronic diseases, or those who make poor choices.
Death in sport is rare, particularly in endurance sport.  While triathlon has lost some swimmers over the years (written about in this blog), death during competition is rare.  Particularly for a strong and healthy college student, in the prime of his life, competing in a sport few of us would associate with the kind of risk more often correlated with contact sports like football and hockey, death is all but unheard of.
Which makes today's news all the more unfathomable.
Last April, after hearing of the tragedy at Boston, I went out for a long run and pushed and pushed, hoping to spiritually complete a few of that Patriot Day's abbreviated miles and abridged races.  Running for them in solidarity, as an expression of brotherhood-through-sport, however, those athletes were unknown to me personally - though Scott, incredibly, was in the race that day.
Today, not coincidentally, I went out on my longest run since completing the marathon leg at Kona in 2011, now more than two years ago.  As I ran, I thought once again about the untimely intersection of athletic competition and premature death.  And while I gave thanks for the health of my family and the visible ongoing growth of my boys, chastened and anguished and on the verge of tears the whole way, I was also reminded to take nothing for granted.  We can't know when our last race will be, just as we can't truly know what the incredible demands of training and competition may really preparing us for.  My thoughts are with Scott and his family in this dark hour, praying for a new dawn ahead.