The French cyclist and author Jean Bobet wrote what is still my favorite book about cycling: “Tomorrow we Ride.” The front cover is a photograph of Jean and his brother, the great French champion Louison Bobet, riding side by side down what one could call a proverbially quiet French country road. The book is a lamentation on growing old together and also a story about sibling friendship and love.
More than a decade ago, my brother and I were amateur bike racers. We were, neither of us, elite by any means and raced in the frustrating middle category of 3. In the U.S. this means that you are incredibly fast by average cyclist standards but suffer like a dog in races with the top riders in the region. Category 3 is, in fact, mostly its own realm of erstwhile national team members in their 50s, up and coming juniors, guys in their 20s who are willing to take crazy risks, and people like my brother and I who admittedly didn’t quite fit into any of those groups but loved to race and ride hard together.
In our 30s, we strayed away from competitive cycling as we got married, had families, started careers. I, in fact, stopped riding altogether for several years. Yet we always come back to the bike. This beautiful machine has always been a tie that binds us together as brothers. It is the template for our wide ranging conversations on family, politics, art and music. We can do a 40 mile ride in a rainstorm, start the ride discussing Steely Dan and end on the Hegelian Dialectic, and no times seems to pass at all. There is no one with whom I’d rather ride and the experience transcends boundaries of both our regular human lives. We achieve something special. Every ride.
This isn’t limited to conversational rides, either. We both are creeping into middle age but we are very fit again. My brother runs half marathons now, I still dabble in bike racing a bit. While visiting last week, we did our famous 26 mile “hammer-fest” ride where, starting at around mile marker 8 we switch up to the big ring and do our best to ride one another off our respective wheels. This year, it was a test of early season raw power for both of us. Nobody got away until the last sprint to the finish road sign, where he got the tiniest gap at the end.
“How did I not drop you?” I asked as we warmed down on the city bike trail. “You’ve gotta earn it, man” he said, in his trademark laconic older brother patois. We both had big smiles. It was the first test of the year. There would be more this summer. And we also knew that, perhaps on the century ride we do every year, we will have come close to figuring out the world’s problems.
And I realize, again, that I am one of the luckiest guys in the world.
