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The Return of The Native

By Joe Kurmaskie

A Florida boy, twenty years gone, leaves the Northwest to ride his state again to see what’s changed on two wheels.

To verify my cycling credentials I could offer a wall of bib numbers, flash team sponsored jerseys, talk about the continents I’ve toured by bike or show a video of an elephant chasing my rear wheel in Zimbabwe.

What I usually say is that I grew up riding a bicycle in Florida in the 1970s. The room always goes quiet.

I’m lucky to be alive, but I’m also lucky in the way that people who attended Woodstock are, or those who rushed for California gold, marched on Selma or laid the country’s first railroad tracks. I was fortunate to be inside something as it was becoming, something organic and ad hoc, both dangerous and beautiful ... Roads were being paved just beyond my front wheel, often the blacktop still drying as I’d blur by stunned work crews. Bike lanes were no more than a pipe dream sparkle in some advocate’s eye. Boats on trailers and RV’s were passing me without as much as a tap of the brakes and horns were blaring in my direction the way cops fire warning shots. I was never more than a slick wet patch or a slotted drainage grate from hitting the ground. Wind, lightning and cul de sacs where you could lose hours of your existence puzzled, trying to figure a way out were frequent.

To put it in perspective, imagine riding inside a pinball machine. It made me fast, loose, hard and confident, but only because I knew no other way. I had to ride. I needed it, even if I had to steal it from a deep place.

The flip side was bikini tops catcalling me on any given ride, postcard sunsets, swimming before, during and after a ride, year-round pedaling weather, turning my face up to greet a warm summer rain, roads that had no traffic yet, riding in the moonlight on a back road with salt spray on the breeze and the sound of wind chimes ... no limits or rules.

Like I said, I’m lucky to be alive. It’s been twenty years since I tempted fate, but I’m going back to the blacktop of my youth to assess the damage and progress for those still reaping miles of grace and speed in the sunshine.

I’ll be riding A1A to see if the young and numb of spring break want to put down their drinks and go for a ride on the wild side. I’m rounding up my old racing buds to retrace our training rides along “Alligator Alley.” I once pedaled in a paceline that included five young and improving athletes fighting headwinds, dodging gators sunbathing on new blacktop and ten-minute rainstorms that would force us to the ground — sometimes in a ditch where we’d lie completely still, making ourselves small enough so the killer lightning would choose to ignore us. Let’s hope men of a certain age can still out pedal those gators and Florida’s weather. I hear the state is overrun with pythons now so that should make it sporting.

I’ve planned a return to the bike and canoe touring company I ran in northern Florida in the mid-80s. I want to see if the old routes are still covered in Spanish Moss or paved over with strip malls. I’ll meet with bike advocates and clubs, and with people who don’t think bicycles belong anywhere but in a garage or under a ten-year-old’s bottom, far from pavement. I’m going to dip my wheels in the ocean and the gulf and in as many rivers as I can find in between.

I’m going back to feel my southern-fried roots and fry my skin. I’m going back to see what’s been left, lost and gained on two wheels.

If I go missing, send a search party, follow the sound of Jimmy Buffet music in the Keys and check the all-you-can-eat buffets. It’s easy to lose track of time in the outback of America, the Vegas of the South.

Joe Kurmaskie rides a bike for the joy of it. His latest book, “You Might Be a Cyclist” is now available. For more information go to www.metalcowboy.com or follow Joe’s adventure at www.arkel.ca.