RIDING WITH FRIENDS
Riding together is the super food of sport.
Editor’s Note: Today’s essay is by my friend Chris Ullman, a public relations ace and advisor to presidents and billionaires; the author of Four Billionaires and a Parking Attendant: Success Strategies of the Wealthy Powerful, and Just Plain Wise; a professional whistler, cyclist, and much more. (And yes, click on each link!)
Our mutual friend David Marchick organizes a multi-day bike trip every year, which has been named, the Tour de Dave™. A few weeks ago, we rode through New York state’s Finger Lakes region, from Syracuse to Seneca Falls and Penn Yan. On the WhatsApp group, I asked if anyone would like to write an essay about #RidingWithFriends. Chris quickly volunteered to share his reflections.
I’m grateful that he did. You will be, too.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
—Author unknown
Buffeted by 43 mile per hour wind, tears flowed from my eyes. I dared not wipe them away for fear of losing control. My two barely one-inch wide wheels were all that connected me to the steep, curvy road. I was on a nine-mile descent coming out of one of the highest sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Shenandoah National Park. It would have been fun even if I were alone, but I was with my biking buddies, which made it so much sweeter.
When I was a teenager I bicycled with friends all the time, tackling centuries and 400-mile weeklong jaunts summer after summer. Together we gasped and grunted on steep climbs and hooted and yelped on speedy descents. Fixing flats was a team sport, and commenting on cute girls we passed was fun and innocent.
As an adult, though, most of my biking for the past 30 years has been utilitarian. I have 45 minutes to ride my 11-mile loop as fast and responsibly as possible to stay healthy, not necessarily have fun. All those rides I do alone. The fresh air is nice and the satisfaction of a Personal Best motoring up the big hill coming out of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, give me satisfaction and some joy.
But when my wife dutifully (and lovingly) asks how my ride was, sharing my after-the-fact experience pales in comparison to real-time commiseration and celebration. Riding up a monster 10 percent grade for a couple of miles with a buddy whose labored breathing sounds like your own is unmatchable. Same goes for looking back and up at a nine-mile descent with a friend who similarly cheated death through watery eyes.
And then there’s the latest frames, components, gadgets and clothes, borrowing chamois butter, taking turns drafting, and talking smack over whose bike is outdated or whose Strava data looks fishy. None of it works if you aren’t biking with buddies.
One time on a rainy downhill my slicker puffed up like a sail, slowing me down and providing 15 years of merciless chain-yanking fodder for my buddies. To the extent that men show their affection through mostly gentle ribbing, regularly biking with friends more than exceeds the minimum monthly requirement of love needed to be of sound mind, especially at a time when 25 percent of men have not even one close friend. How sad for those men. How blessed are my buddies and me.
Biking with buddies, I like to argue, is the super food of sport: it couples exercise and skill with technological innovation and camaraderie, all of which makes ridiculous climbs more palatable and sublime descents more celebratory.
So, just as a falling tree heard by no one makes no sound, a solo bike ride may not have even happened if it wasn’t shared with friends.
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