On the Road with the Bike Group

Road Bikes

Earlier blogs touched on auto and wheelchair travel over the past year on my Road In Retirement journey. Before retirement and disabilities, I actually owned several road bicycles and would hit the pavement on many excursions throughout the Midwest. Many don’t know it, but I was a road biker nearly four decades ago, long before it all became a cool thing to do outdoors. I owned a Ross, a type of skinny-tire road bicycle with ten speeds. As a camp counselor during summer break from college in the 80's I took a group of high school kids on a 374-mile trek through Wisconsin. I could fill a book with stories on that "road;" mostly of the horror genre. But biking returned to me for a season here in North Dakota with "the Bike Group." 

The Bike Group

Various names were proposed for our informal twelve-person bike group, but the highly unoriginal "the Bike Group" is the only moniker that stuck. I firmly believe that friendship is an institution of God, exemplified by Jesus, and necessary for descent human thriving. The Bike Group fits that definition. Jesus used the term "friend" a lot. He defines friends in several parables as people filling different roles that impact others. We may all have different groups of friends which is common and necessary. Besides the bikers, I continue precious friendships with school-teaching colleagues. In Luke 15 Jesus describes friends that simply rejoice with us in life. In John 15, he distinguishes a deeper friendship; to the point of laying down one’s life for a friend. I rejoice with my Facebook friends who just heard good news and I receive support the same. But I don’t go on trips with them. So, the Bike Group is all of the above, a group of friends that Chris and I laugh and cry with and thank God for; and probably will continue doing so when the "rides" cease. We would lay down our lives for any of these individuals. Our example is Jesus who laid down his life for all of us.

Trips

Every year for about sixteen years (hotly debated) the Bike Group would plan a 2-3 day trip somewhere here in the Midwest; usually a city in Minnesota that was close to that state's hundreds of miles of beautiful paved trails. As we all headed toward retirement, our trips became increasingly less trail-intensive and more focused on all the side activities that came with a couple days of togetherness. Those side activities ranged from quilt shops to shopping in general, to bible studies and magic shows, with sweaty "trail-side" restaurant or landmark stops, to evenings on pontoons, riverboats, or cheap bleacher seats at a Twins game. One of the trips involved a scavenger hunt . . . using trucks  . . . with a time element. Let’s just say that luckily no one was injured, no vehicles were damaged, and no traffic tickets were issued. These trips built immovable friendship foundations with deep life conversations on the trail during the day and uncontrollable laughter during side activities in the evening. 

Bonds that Stick

More than a superficial social group of casual friends, I think our bike group established Proverbs 18:24 bonds that get close to the strength of wholesome family relationships. As I have progressed in Parkinson's disease, my biking devolved to shorter trail excursions, to early exits back to the hotel, to an e-power bike, to an e-power trike, and sadly to staying back at the hotel with one of "the friends" to play games or go shopping. This is part of life and I think I have accepted it. All of us "bikers" have encountered our own unique challenges, physical ailments, bike crashes with injuries, and other circumstances that are whittling away at our bike group congruity. We don’t see those challenges as friendship ending, just changes in the road. The bonds continue to stick as distances increase.

Appreciate Your Bike Group

So my metaphor for the day is to find and appreciate your "bike group". If it evolves, changes, or grows smaller, just stay the course and offer friendship until you can’t. Love those friends, be kind and unselfish, and allow them to be kind and good to you. And forget those pickleball groups for engaging friends—the number one cause of health insurance claims for people in retirement. Ok just kidding . . .  about the forgetting part . . . not the health insurance part.