"You'll never make it!"   My wifes words were still ringing as I threw a leg over the saddle and wobbled off from Wapakoneta, Ohio on the 1972 Midwest Double Century.   A two-hundred mile, 24 hour endurance tour through west-central Ohio. I really looked like the duffer I was, with every conceivable accessory screwed, wired, clipped or taped to my inexpensive 10 speed.   But in the next few hours I would learn more about cycling than I had in all my 29 years.

   Going on the tour had started as a joke.   A week earlier, looking at the paper, I saw an article about the ride.   After reading particulars to my wife, I teasingly said that it sounded like fun and thought I woud try it.  "Are you out of your mind?!" my wife screeched.   "You'd never make it!"  "Whadaya mean, wouldn't make it?!   Don't I have a 10 speed bike?"  and the hairs on the back of my neck were stuggling to attention.   "Sure, that you ride to and from work ... period!   You've never  ridden over seven miles in your life!"  "Well, that trip to work everyday has put me in pretty darn good shape," I blustered,  "and I can handle a 200 miler”.        "Humph!   Idiot!"

   Conversation like this continued off and on for the next few days and before long stubborn pride had me determined to make this ride. So here I was, starting off in a pack of 216 cyclists with bikes I'd never heard of, like Paramount, Fuji, Peugeot and Gitane, all stripped to bare necessities and equipped with those funny, turned-down handlebars.

    Beginning in the middle of this mob gave me an uneasy, closed-in feeling.   But soon there was plenty of room as the others disappeared ahead of me.   Often, as I was passed, they shouted the warning, "On your left."   Boy!  I thought, that really sounds professional, and couldn't wait to shout it myself.   But it wasn't to be, as I never passed anyone.

   At about 50 miles those turned-down handlebars and fingerless gloves others were using started making sense.   Little pains had developed just about everywhere except my hands and there was no feeling in them at all.   Nor would there be any feeling for the next three months.   (Doctors later explained this as bruised nerve tissue.   A kind of damage that is very slow to heal and can even be permanent.)

   Surprisingly I rolled past the halfway mark in fairly good shape. It was about here a lesson in communication between cyclists got pounded home.   Just ahead of me, riding side by side down a steep hill, were two teenage girls from Pennsylvania.  The marked course went left at an intersection near the bottom of the hill.   But the young lady riding on the left missed the arrow and continued on, while the other rider saw the marker and turned into the side of her friend.   Both girls were unconscious when I stopped to help, and they'd each lost a considerable amount of hide on the road.   Drawing on my

days as one of Uncle Sam's medics, I did what I could and  they soon came around.    Though they didn't seem to have any serious injuries their bicycles were bent almost beyond recognition.   Before long one of the tour's sagwagons showed up and carried the girls off for further medical attention.

    It was early July and well over 90 degrees by mid afternoon.   Ten hours into the tour I'd pedaled 125 miles and was feeling pretty proud of myself.   Then the course snaked through a series of hills near Yellow Springs, Ohio all but finishing me.   Rest stops fell closer and closer together, and suddenly a sharp pain hit my lower back.   It was impossible to do anything but take shallow breaths.   A brief rest, laying on my back cleared the trouble, but from then on, if I failed to take a couple deep breaths every mile or so, the pain came back with a vengeance.

   I was ready to quit a dozen times ... only my wife's "You'll never make it!" kept me on that bike.   By this time I was convinced the saddle was never meant to work in harmony with human anatomy, or it had been designed during the Spanish Inquisition.

    While riding alone it was hard for me to think about anything other than the aches and pains that seemed to be demanding more and more attention.  Then I caught up with four members of a cycling club from Whitehall, Ohio who'd stopped to rest.   They had a fully equipped bus accompanying them with food, water, tools and anything else they might need.  Grateful doesn't describe how I felt when they offered refreshments and enough encouragement to nurse me through the final stages.  The five of us drank 22 gallons of water on the way to the finish and I don't remember anyone making a comfort stop.   It just poured out of our skin as fast as we could drink it.

    At five a.m., some 22 hours after we'd begun, I struggled over the finish line, alone, in the dark, seven pounds lighter and so sore it was agony getting off the bike.

   An hour later I stumbled through the back door at home, shot a glassy-eyed

look at my wife and said, "I told you I could do it.   Now help me get my shoes off."