I got an invite over Facebook from Emmett Jordan to join in the Tour de Greenbelt, one of the Labor Day Festival activities. While I was pretty sure he invited everyone he knew, I started worrying he’d specifically invited me and I didn’t want to let him down, so I mentally committed myself to going and to writing this for the News Review, which meant there was no getting out of it.
On Sunday morning I stood in my leggings and T-shirt, checking out the crowd. What I wanted to see were people who looked like me – large people, large people who perhaps, as I had, bought a new bike in April 2020 imagining spending the pandemic, however long it lasted, biking around the DMV, making new friends and possibly being invited to the Olympics. At no point during this bike purchase did they imagine the reality of what would happen, that they would then spend 16 hours a day for the next 16 months sitting in front of the computer eating their spouse’s M&M collection, and not ride the bike at all.
I was in high spirits as we took off from Roosevelt Center and headed over to Greenbelt Station. For one thing, I had walked this route for the News Review not too long ago and it had been fine, so, like, how hard could it be on a bike? For another, I do love to cycle and it was a true pleasure to be back on a bike again. The folks on the ride were good-natured and encouraging, and it was, as advertised, a friendly ride at a slow pace.
When we got to Greenbelt Station, I checked my phone to see if the Olympics had called. Not yet. From there we headed over to Springhill Lake Recreation Center and that is where things, for me, began to go seriously wrong.
I can’t tell you why, exactly, other than to say that there were a lot of uphills, and gravity and I don’t always get along. I knew exactly what was awaiting us as we left the Rec Center – an uphill to the bridge, an uphill to crest the bridge, a brief downhill before the turn to Ivy Lane (uphill), a slightly longer downhill to the lights at Kenilworth, and then the incline from there to Buddy Attick Park and beyond.
By the time we were passing the entrance to Buddy Attick Park, I was muttering to myself. As I was last, the only person around to hear me curse was Ify Okoye, who was acting as sweep. The sweep is the person who makes sure no one gets left behind, a role I appreciate. I came to appreciate it a lot more when she rode along beside me and said, “You can do this. Just a couple of little rollers left and we are there.”
I looked at the horrifying hellscape that is Crescent Road and groaned. “I’m not going to make it.”
“You’re going to make it,” she said, riding me in. “Just a little roller here.”
I made it.
There was a second leg of the journey, which left shortly afterwards from Roosevelt Center to Schrom Hills Park and back again, and I absolutely did not have the gas in the tank to do that ride. I wasn’t sure I had the gas in the tank to get home. But seeing my daughter Anja, who also had biked the first leg, get ready to join the second group, I thought “what could possibly go wrong?” and jumped back on my bike to do it, too.
We rode over the Spellman Overpass and through the parking lot at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, where we were stopped by a red light at Route 193 and Frankfort Drive. When the light turned green and I tried to mount, my leggings tangled in the front of my bike seat and I had a sort of awkward dance as my bike went down with my pants caught in the seat. Jordan literally stopped traffic so I could cross Route 193, now on foot and pushing my bike, ego slightly bruised. I stopped checking for texts from eager cycling teams.
By now I was very much at the rear and City of Greenbelt Park Ranger Patrick Mullen, the sweep for that section, kept me company. We talked about the National Park Service because it is clearly my destiny to work there one day, and he kept me safe and un-run-over. When we got to the hill on Hanover Parkway alongside Eleanor Roosevelt High School on our way back to the Spellman Overpass and I said, “I’m not going to make it,” he said, “You’re almost at the crest.” Which was a bald-faced lie and I loved him for it. Okoye was waiting there at the crosswalk and she rode with me the rest of the way. We were dead last, me and the two sweeps. The two encouragers.
The Tour de Greenbelt is a yearly event with the Labor Day Festival, presented by Greenbelt Recreation and hosted by Jordan and Greenbelters Laurie and Jeff Lemieux of Proteus Bikes. I can’t tell you I loved the whole thing, but I love that I did it, and I am already looking forward to doing it next year. There is no way I would have finished it without Mullen and Okoye, however. If there is a gold star for moral support, they should each get one. Thanks, new bike friends.