Men Approaching (or past) 60

Well, I’m in this age category.

I have a long time friend in this category, John Walker, who just completed a cross-country bicycle ride. John’s on the other side of the “60 hill” and you can read about this years successful attempt , and his earlier, but “not quite” attempt in 2007, to ride his bicycle across the United States (San Francisco, CA to Virginia Beach, VR). Awesome achievement.

My wife (I anit saying which side of 60 she’s on … ) has a friend who is a classical guitarist, and for his 60th birthday this year, he put together 4 completely different concerts, performing them over 4 months, the last two of them within a week of each other. IMHO, that is the musical equivalent of doing two triathelons a week apart.

Yeah, you can tell he’s of a certain age.

I’ve just completed my third Iron Butt ride, a 1000 mile ride in the Colorado mountains in less than 24 hours (19 hours, 20 mins). But, one of the folks who rode celebrated his 80th Birthday after the ride on Sunday, finishing about 10 minutes after I did. The ride, Colorado Classic 1000, is sponsered by a Denver area BMW motorcycle club, BMW Motorcyle Club of Colorado. If you are interested in rides in Colorado, they have them weekly, so visit the site and see what they are up to.

80 and Rode 1000 miles in 24 Hours

80th Birthday Cake

Yeap, 80 years old and not only still riding his “mosicle”, but doing a 1000 miles in a day to celebrate his birthday. Yeap, he’s of a “certain age”.

Why do folks of a certain age challenge themselves? Aren’t we supposed to kick back and cruise? What’s up with all this striving, pushing and huffing and puffing?

Mortality. I think that’s the reason.

In our 20’s, we knew we were “immortal”, and engaging in crazy stunts was our way of celebrating we would live forever. At a “certain age”, we know we are “mortal”, so we engage in striving, pushing, and huffing and puffing. Either conciously or sub-conciously we are following Dylan Thomas’s advice, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night“.

Yeap, 20 something and 60 something men have a lot in common – Mortality – except we are looking at opposite sides of the same coin.

BTW, my wife accompanied me as passenger on that 1000 mile ride. I wonder if she has reached “a certain” age as well?

1000 Miles, 24 Hours, 1 Motorcycle, 2 Up

On Saturday, June 20, 2009, the Colorado BMW Motorcycle Club hosted the Colorado Classic 1000 ride. The route was challenging as it was non-interstate and covered a number of great mountain roads in Colorado. Several of them I hadn’t ridden before, but they are on my “great roads to revisit” list. I attached a map of the route.

2009 Colorado Classic 1000 Route

Jim Bay and John Johnston (IBA members), a friend of mine, Pete Mathews, and my wife (as passenger) all partook. Neither Pete nor my wife had done an Iron Butt ride before.

Unfortunately Jim had to drop out due to some electrical malfunction on his bike part way through the trip. A loose wiring harness connector was the problem forcing him to head for the garage before night fall hit. He managed to get it back to the garage without major incident.

The weather was “not the best”, cloudy, rain, and at times down right cold, so this added additional challenges to the ride. Wolf Creek pass was challenging with hard rain, fog and quite cold.

We departed at 5:02 am from the start at the Holiday Inn in Lakewood, Colorado and arrived at the finish in Crested Butte, Colorado at 12:20 am. The GPS distance was about 1024 miles. My wife got very cold, but hung in there to complete the ride. Those that finished later said it was snowing/raining as the rode from Gunnison to Crested Butte … typical summer weather in the Colorado mountains 🙂

This is my third IBA ride certificate. I did not expect my wife to want to come on this ride, and she certainly surprised my by saying “Sure, I’ll go with you.” She rides, but her night vision is not great and she didn’t want to take her bike. I think riding passenger for 1000 miles is actually physically harder to do that driving the bike. So, my hat is off to her for accomplishing something I don’t think I could do.

Here are some pictures from the ride.