Icy gusts blasted my wind-burnt cheeks, stinging to make them feel like a pin cushion, as Mother Nature delivered an unmistakably clear message that cold winter weather had arrived while I pedaled my bike over the ridges and through the hollows of East Tennessee.
Thanksgiving had come and gone with our annual ritual of sharing what we were thankful for highlighting our time together around the dinner table.
My daughters 3 and 5 — in preschool and kindergarten — were healthy, happy and thankful for stuffed animals, dolls, friends, Grandmas and one Grandpa, and most of all, Mom and Dad.
My wife and I were most thankful to have two amazing little girls in our lives, even if we weren’t sure what to make of our lives at that moment.
Just a week before carving our turkey, my position as Editorial Director of a corporate communications company had been sliced, ending a brief nine-month stint, the end of which had been triggered by the economic upheaval of 9/11.
I remember talking to so many people and watching countless others on TV discussing how the events of September 11, 2001 had shaken their worlds and helped them realize what was most important in the world: The people you love, not your job.
I shook my head over and over wondering why those people needed such a wakeup call. I have always cherished family spending quality time with my daughters as my priority. My jobs were means to that end.
As I rode my dual-suspension Jamis through Appalachia’s rolling hills covered with thick forests, my rides morphed from pleasurable mental daydreaming of what grand career opportunities might come next to focus on harsh realities of unemployment.
My eyes scanned the edges of the woods for miles and miles and miles, looking for downed trunks and limbs that I might be able to come and harvest for our fireplace, to keep the house warm through the long winter months if we hit a wall and couldn’t pay our bills.
I did, on occasion over the course of the next four years while my wife went back to work earning half of the salary I had left behind, sneak back to the hollows at night and drag firewood out of the forests. There are times when every penny counts.
Strange how bike rides can have so many different faces.
Of course, we survived our Tennessee years, and left that chapter behind when we quit our jobs, sold the house and what else we could, and spent the summer of 2005 living in a popup tent camper as we explored the American West in search of a place to call home.
After 85 days and 8,500 miles we landed in Oregon, and picked up right where we left off in continuing our modest lifestyle.
We knew the challenges we would face when my wife and I decided before having children that until our daughters reached middle school, one of us would be at home to raise them.
Back in Tennessee I found odd part-time jobs that could supplement our income without interfering with my day job as stay-at-home Dad. I worked evening grocery store inventory, delivered newspapers from midnight to the wee morning hours (after writing for newspapers for most of my career), and I eventually started substitute teaching at my daughters’ school.
When we landed in Eugene, I managed to earn a spot as a part-time sports copy editor for the local newspaper, working nights from 8 to midnight. I also convinced them to let me write a weekly outdoors column.
We downsized to one car, and I commuted on my bike to work, as well as rode it for many an adventure for my column.
We were getting by, never riding too high, but never really too low.
Then the Great Recession hit. My position again disappeared in a blink, and I began a fruitless two-year search for full-time work. At one point my wife was also unemployed for a spell.
That’s when my bike rides again returned to reconnaissance missions, noting where I could easily harvest blackberries, apples and hazelnuts, just to name a few staples.
Oh sure, those contributions barely registered a blip on our grocery budget, but apple pies, blackberry muffins and zucchini bread with hazelnuts always brought smiles to my daughters, then middle schoolers.
Eventually my career course found a way to right itself — just in time and just long enough to get those girls through college without any debt.
Then, you guessed it, Covid hit, once again spitting me out of the full-time workforce.
But those gals are now an aerospace engineer and a second-year medical school student, who look back at those days when Dad was at home looking for work rather than at work looking to get home.
They smile and assure me they never felt worried because I never looked worried. They wonder how I managed that, living through two years of endless rejections on the job market.
I wonder that myself these days, especially when I ride my bike through the forests with downed timber, on and on past the brambles bursting with blackberries, and orchard trees loaded with apples, cherries, peaches and hazelnuts.
Most of all, I wonder if those countless hours on my bike had anything to do with it.
What do you think?
Time to ride
