By: Billie Routh
Bill and Billie Routh
A couple that bikes together, stays together. That is our motto, and we know it well. I was 75 in April; Bill will be 80 in August. We have been riding for 25 years which is our hobby, changing from a two-wheel tandem to a trike recumbent about a year ago.
Bill started riding in 1973 in preparation for his first cross-country ride in 1976 (and to lose weight). He has ridden a single bicycle cross-country four times. The first three were solo, spending nights in more than 320 fire stations in 100 NC counties and 48 lower states plus seven days in Canada. His fourth cross-country was in 1999 with a group called “Young at Heart.” Each trip was 3,200 miles or more.
During the first 30 years of our marriage, I was the exercise freak: running, swimming and tennis along with raising four children. (In those days men worked and earned the money. Women did everything else.)
At age 50, I started riding one of Bill’s old bicycles. Bill was an expert, having logged over 60,000 miles. I had never ridden a bicycle with gears and hand brakes. After falling on a railroad track and riding two days (100 miles) for the Lung Association, I swore never to ride again, but on our 30th wedding anniversary, we bought a tandem and a new saga began.
Our first goal was to ride to visit all of our grandchildren who were in Gainesville, GA, Dallas, TX, Siler City, and Kernersville. We rode to Kernersville as a day trip, then to Siler City as a overnight junket. On the next trip (to Georgia) on I-85, we were stopped by a highway patrolman who looked at us while shaking his head. He permitted us to continue 20 more miles to Spencer where we would take US 29. When a biker suggested we take SC 11 because the scenery was so beautiful, he failed to tell us it was also very hilly. When we stopped for a drink, a man in the store told us about a couple who had come through the week before. “The man just fell off his bicycle when he had a heart attack and died right there.” The return home was by automobile.
On a trip from Gainesville, GA to Kilgore, TX, our bicycle fell off the new pavement onto the old pavement on a cloverleaf, breaking the back axle. It was 4:30 on a Sunday afternoon in Austell, GA, a town smaller than Thomasville but with no motel. We went to the fire station where we rented the fire captain’s car and found a motel outside town. The next morning we rented another car to drive to a bicycle shop in Marietta where repairs were made.
Things went well until we were biking to Meridian, MS and had seven flats in the rain. As it was getting late in the afternoon, we decided to hitchhike the last 20 miles. A nice young fellow in a pick-up picked us up and detoured to Meridian. (I thanked him and told him that if his mother was ever hitchhiking, we would surely pick her up.)
We had two flats the next day as well as trouble with the shifter due to riding in the rain and dust from the road. We called our daughter to report our location. She drove the last 180 miles to pick us up.
Our next trip was down the California coast. We drove to Dallas and flew the bicycle in a box to San Francisco. The next trip was from Miami to the Keys. Now we ride 17 miles almost every day. Every September we join the Tour to Tanglewood to raise money (more than $30,000 to date) for Multiple Sclerosis. This year will be our 16th year of doing the 90-mile two-day ride.
You need to expect the unexpected when you ride a bicycle. You learn to count on each other and go with the flow.