My Best Ride Ever!	download/print this article
By: Justin Whiting

Just last fall I was driving out to see my mother and listening to the radio. I like to listen to talk radio throughout the afternoon. The DJ’s guest was a member of the “Beer Drinking Team of America”. These guys love their beer. It was a fun mindless conversation until he made a statement, which provoked a thought. Apparently the team was discussing great beers and great tastes. Each telling the best beer they had ever tasted and why it was. What was the setting? Who were they with? The fellow on the radio stopped the conversation in mid discussion and told his group a very simple fact. Great beer has nothing to do with taste. What? He had my attention. “Great Beer” he said “isn’t about the taste it’s about the surroundings of the moment”. Who you’re with, what type of day prompted you to a have beer with them, the time of day, the event defines the beer and changes for ever the taste of that beer. Wow! I thought, he’s right. Cycling may be summed up in the same manner. Cycling is not about the bike, the cycling gear, or the trainer set up in your basement. It is completely dependent on the day or experience that it brings to the individual. So I asked the same question to myself (without the beer). What’s the best day of cycling I have ever had? That’s easy I’ll never forget that day.

I’ve cycled all over the United States from the North Carolina beach roads to Golden Gate bridge and my best day of cycling was here at home in Ohio on a fall day taking a long lunch hour. It was October in Ohio and that means the beginning of the end of cycling season. With in the next 2 months the first freeze would come and I would be sent down to the basement to ride on a trainer for the next 3 to 4 months. It was about 10:30AM and nearing lunch; my schedule was clear for the next couple of hours and the sun was shining outside. These were the facts of the moment; the facts that lead me to leave early on lunch for a quick ride in the park near my house. Home was only 15 minutes away, and I figured I could put in a quick 20 miles, shower, and be back at work in an hour and a half. From the window of my office, the day was absolutely beautiful. Sunny skies and puffy billowing clouds. The trees had put on their fall overcoat and the coloring was magnificent. Our spring had been full of rain; the summer had been very hot, and the conditions where ripe for a colorful fall. Mother nature had come through. Fall is why many of us northerners stay in the north and will not move elsewhere. There’s magic in the fall. Maybe it’s the colors, or possibly the temperature changes; perhaps it’s the beginning of the holiday season or beginning of winter. We don’t understand it fully but we know it for what it is-magic. This was to be a magical day. I was on the road before I knew it and riding the back the streets, which lead to the park. It was a wildly windy day but I don’t remember a head wind of any kind. The 5 miles of back road leading to the park were a breeze, literally. The wind and cool temperatures had been perfect for riding in; I found it hard to break a sweat. Turning into the park the sun came from behind a cloud and lit up the road. I rode down the hill to the park road where I do a 5-mile out and back. It’s funny how life sneaks up on you and slaps you in the face, while whispering in your ear. Look up! Look around! See what I’ve given you! Watch my magic! Just as I began the out and back the wind kicked up in a swirl pulling the leaves from the trees. It seemed as though all the leaves were coming down all at once. A snowstorm of leaves was upon me. What a site! The sun poured down from above putting color and shadow in every leaf, casting each leaves shadow on the pavement below me. The treetops danced above me in union with the leaves and sun. Fred Astaire couldn’t have choreographed a finer dance routine. I was awe-struck and stopped. I’d never stopped on a training ride. Never. When nature gives you front row seats to the best show in town I suggest you stop, watch and listen. So, there I was on the side of the rode looking up at the trees, watching the wind and leaves play in the sun, when I noticed the cars passing by. They didn’t see what I saw. Locked up in their cars
behind the wheel and focused on their world they were missing the best show in town. I got back on my bike and slowed my pace down to about 10 miles per hour soaking in every moment. It was absolutely unbelievable, so perfect. The sun. The leaves. The wild winds and the shadows created by swaying trees and falling leaves. Then there’s the smell and wind against your skin. If you’re a northerner you know the smell I’m talking about, it’s the smell of fall, the smell of raking leaves, it was everywhere. All my many years of riding I’ve never experienced anything like it. I rode to the end of the road and turned around fully expecting that the magic had ceased and the sun had ducked behind the clouds. I truly believed all the leaves had fallen to the ground. Not so, for the next 5 miles the dance continued, and I watched and laughed outloud. So many leaves came down I expected the trees to be near empty, but they looked full. Magic, I say. Those 5 miles was so perfect I went back and rode it again. Watched again. Laughed again. For a moment, I thought I was the only one privileged enough to see this wonderful show put on by mother nature, just as that thought occurred to me another cyclist rode by me looking up in the air smiling and yelled to me “Can you believe this?”

It’s been 4 years since that ride and I remember it like it was yesterday. I’ve tried to duplicate it on several occasions in the fall. Unfortunately, either the sun wasn’t out while the leaves were falling or rain pulled the leaves off of the trees or I simply wasn’t around the date of the dance.

I think I rode my Trek that day or was it my Raleigh; I hadn’t got the Rivendell yet. O well, It really doesn’t matter the ride would have been perfect on any bike. I can’t remember if I had a beer later that day to celebrate Mother Nature or not.