Old Man on a Bike

A bicycle ride through time

The early part of day had been clear. But now the radar on my weather app shows a few dots of light rain southwest of me. It’s bound to dissipate, I suspect. A bike ride sounds like a fine idea.

That morning I did what I have been doing for a decade now. Climb from the sheets early, right around dawn. My mind says stay, but my body calls me to get up. Old bodies don’t need so much sleep. That’s what they tell us. I think that’s malarky. Either way, it’s my aging body that I’m aware of as I rise. The same one I had when I my parents bought me an English racer bicycle one Christmas back in the late 1960s. The same one that I balanced through the streets on those super thin tires. The same head on the body that rode without a helmet. The same body that fell over the handlebars coming down one of the familiar steep roads in my Western Pennsylvania neighborhood when a car pulled out from a parking space, and I slammed on the brakes. That fall today would likely kill me. Okay, maybe not kill, but would certainly break a bone or two. Last summer I took a tumble on my bike and this creaky skeleton and old skin endured some knocks and scrapes. But I was lucky, I had on long bicycle pants and a helmet.

These mornings it’s hard not to notice when you ache, there’s a fog in the head, and the back is stiff. Hard to believe it’s the same body that as a catcher in my teenage baseball league had crouched at the plate and blocked runners barreling for home as it waited for the throw from the cutoff man, never considering the approaching pain. The same body that jumped on snow sleds on icy days never to notice the bitter winds of a below-zero winter afternoon. The same body that ran a few 5K races back in the day, and regularly hiked mountains. The same body with the right hand that was broken throwing a punch in high school, missing the bully who threatened me and instead hitting a concrete wall. The same one that endured bee and wasp stings while running barefoot on the lawn, that climbed high on thin branches of the big apple tree in my parents’ yard, the body that weathered two dog bites from the snarling pets of homeowners on my childhood paper route. The body with the nose that was broken twice, once falling on a metal milk carton on the family porch and then breaking it again while sliding across the living room carpet and colliding with a coffee table. This body is a catalogue of scars, evidence of a body in full use, a reminder that it can only take so much until it gives way to time and abuse.

None of this occurs to me as I straddle my bike and head out. A few hours have passed since I awakened, and the body has limbered up. I am essentially young again. At least the young I remember.

I take a familiar route—through the tree-lined neighborhood with few cars to worry about, eventually making my way to the road along the train tracks. Here I can sprint a bit. There’s little traffic and the road is rather wide. The heart and head awaken to the open air. This is a good stretch, and the old body can take it. Twenty miles is a common distance for me. Maybe I’ll give it another go today.

About six miles in, there’s a familiar numbness in my right wrist. I know this feeling well. I tend to lean harder on that hand while it grips the handlebar and if I’m not readjusting it frequently it begins to tingle. That didn’t happen five years ago.

About ten miles in near the end of the road along the tracks, my left calf begins to tighten. Not pain or stress. It’s more of a locking-up. Most of the time I can ride through it. So, I count on that. Again, that didn’t happen when I was fifty-five.

I approach the fifteen-mile mark and realize I’d forgotten my water bottle. Forgetting is not unusual these days—keys, wallet. I stop in a coffee shop and ask for a glass and use the restroom. At the bathroom mirror, my bike helmet still on, I examine my face, the face on this old body. My eye lids are drooping at the corners. There are more noticeable wrinkles at my temples. And just right of my nose is a tiny scar, unnoticeable unless one moves in close. The original gash has faded a great deal over time. I was a boy running through the stretch of woods near my home and tripped on a fallen branch. My face fell to the brambles and a broken twig cut me. It was a bloody and scary. That was so long ago, but the evidence of healing remains, the proof of recovery, the miracle of the human body to mend itself. And standing at the mirror, I realize what I’ve been doing.

I recently read Paul Auster’s memoir, Winter Journal. In the opening section, he chronicles his life through the life of his body—the scars, the “assaults” on it. That passage had somehow stayed with me unconsciously, and now at the coffee shop mirror, I see, like Auster once did as at his own mirror, all my very own “assaults.” For sixty-seven years I have been witnessing my body mending. The collisions, the accidents, the nights of too much wine or whiskey, or no sleep. The wounds have come, and the body has recuperated, and it’s still doing that despite the non-negotiable fact that someday, maybe without warning, this body will no longer restore itself. Auster wrote: “…all life is contingent, except for the one necessary fact that sooner or later it will come to an end.” He was more than right.

When I return to my bike, the skies have darkened. To the west the colors have turned from shades of pewter to charcoal. I am about three miles from home, and as I begin to pedal, I feel the first of the rain drops—light, almost delicate. I take the bike through a parking lot and onto a tree-lined street, hoping the big overhanging branches might protect me. I hear the growl of thunder above and in moments it begins to pour, a gushing rain. I lean into the weather and pump the pedals and soon I am laughing.

This body still works. It’s still alive, still healing.

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—This post is in remembrance of the late, great Paul Auster and his beautiful and poignant take on the aging man.

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David W. Berner is the author of the forthcoming memoir Daylight Saving Time: The Power of Growing Older. The book is the recipient of awards from the London Book Festival, the Firebird Book Award, and Literary Titan. PRE-ORDERS are available now.