Bicycles and Icicles

In which we consider the cycle of life and death.

We get our instructions before we celebrate Dan Park with a January bike ride.

It’s a January Sunday in the old hometown. Overcast and 15 degrees with a slight breeze to shrink the wind chill into single digits. Foot of snow on the ground, sidewalks with a layer of ice supporting a few inches of crunchy crust on top. Whataya say we take a bicycle ride?

Twenty-five or 30 of us townies have gathered outside 42 North Brewing Company astride a wide assortment of two-wheeled conveyances—fat tire bikes with knobby tires, mountain bikes, road bikes, vintage three-speeds that have a decidedly mid-20th-century look to them, and at least one of those new-fangled electric bikes, my trusty Class II e-assisted steed, Pythagoras.

We could be talked into such foolishness for only one reason—Dan Park.

When Dan left us in November, we knew there would be a need for some kind of something to celebrate him. It wouldn’t happen in a church or funeral home where a speaker or speakers tried to capture his quintessence as the bereaved sat neatly in rows. It likely wouldn’t happen sitting down or standing still. A bike ride, especially a bike ride with beer, a bike ride with beer and barbecue and bluegrass and talk of Blue Jays and baseball and coffee that he sometimes had black—now that would do…we hope.

Dan and his life partner, Sherry, loved cycling together.

And that’s what we did. With his life partner Sherry’s blessing, the hardy and humble bundled up and saddled up. To be fair, we didn’t ride very far,—about nine blocks—from the brewery, along Main Street to Elm, past his favorite coffee shop, to Oakwood Avenue, past the house he shared with Sherry, to South Willow and his wonderfully unique store, Chain Ring Rhythm. At Chain Ring Rhythm, for more than a decade, you could buy bikes and the stuff that goes with them while enjoying the advice and wisdom and good humor of Owner Dan. AND you could buy acoustic instruments like ukuleles, AND fly fishing equipment including Dan’s own hand-tied flies, all of it in a delightfully chaotic jumble, softened by Spotify’s bluegrass and Americana channel. How many shops like that have you visited?

Chain Ring Rhythm—just your average bicycle, acoustic instrument and fly fishing shop rolled into one.

In front of the shop, now in a kind of suspended animation with his passing, we toasted Dan with a beer—just the proper tonic when it’s 15 degrees.

Nothing like a cold beer when it’s 15 degrees. “Beers up to Dan.”

Then we rode back to the brewery the long way, adding a few blocks, round trip comfortably under three miles, average speed, 8.16 m.p.h., said some smartass guy with a Strava app.

We turned a few heads on Main Street.

Back at 42 North, there had been talk of some kind of memorial program when musician Marty Peters took a break, but frankly, there were so many people drinking beer and talking about Dan in their own little groups of two or three or six, that it would have been superfluous. And getting that many people to quiet down across the length and breadth of that cavernous room would have been impossible. So we let it be what it wanted to be.

Celebrations of life are the way we deal with the certainty of death but the uncertainty of what it really entails. In my (ongoing, thankfully) lifetime, I’ve been to all sizes and shapes of funerals and memorials—from formally religious to solidly and scandalously secular, from staid and stuffy to hilarious to wild and woolly. At each, we say something like, “That’s what he or she would have wanted,” having no idea if that’s the case or if, indeed, some mechanism exists wherein the deceased is aware of our efforts and will offer an opinion, perhaps even hold us accountable on some future dimension beyond our ken.

We hope he enjoyed it as much as we did.

Can you imagine yourself arriving in Purgatory or the Bardo or Limbo or some post-death off ramp to eternity and being accosted by the friend for whom you had organized a celebration of life, only to be told, “I can’t believe you had bagpipes! I hate bagpipes; you know that. And ‘Amazing Grace’ instead of ‘Brokedown Palace’ like I wanted? My mother made you do that and you caved. You let my ex come? And frankly, I thought more people would cry. ”

No, I can’t imagine that, either. We convince ourselves we carry on this way out of respect for the departed when really we hold these events for ourselves. Think for a second how it would be if someone died and nobody did anything, just went about their lives without so much as a pause. We think it would dishonor the dead, but, really, it would really make us uncomfortable.

A friend, a former writer in my workshop, wrote a wonderful book called “Death is Not the End,” about communicating with her son who died half a world away in China at age 31. Lori Armstrong has an ongoing relationship with him, has conversations of a kind with him, receives guidance from him, recognizes his presence wherever she goes. Me, I stand in front of my parents’ headstones and ask for something—advice, an update what they’ve been up to, approval (or criticism) of my life choices—anything. They are mute. Nothing, just my memories. But it works for Lori, so who am I to offer my two cents?

All I know is that we had a wonderful day at Dan’s bike ride and drink up. I told many people how Dan had gotten me back into cycling at age 63 when I traded him some help setting up his new shop, Chain Ring Rhythm, for agreeing to resurrect my ancient Fuji touring bike. Then, he convinced me that the old Fuji was ready for the scrap heap and should be replaced by an e-bike, which he ordered and set up for me, later attaching panniers and a nifty trailer. That was five years ago.

Four thousand miles later, countless shopping and leisure trips around the village, I am a somewhat of a townie icon in the village, a poster child for commuter cycling its health benefits at an advanced stage of life. So far, I have not needed a celebration of life. Thank you, Dan Park; my celebration of your life continues every time I hop on my bike.

And when my time comes, you’ll figure what to do. Just make sure there is some beer handy. And…no bagpipes, okay?