But then, something happened to put my plans on hold: A friend in need reached out, and I abruptly decided I needed to move back to the Colorado mountains. This was a one-way trip. I used all my savings to ship my stuff back to Colorado, including my carefully-boxed Trek, and buy one-way plane fare to Denver. Within days of arriving, maybe within hours, I realized I’d made a huge mistake, but I felt trapped, and made the best of it.
Over the next couple years, my cycling dreams began to slowly recede into the distance. I rode during the summer, and I still cherished my Trek 515, but I bought a car, became a construction laborer, then a carpenter. I moved to Breckenridge, took up skiing, and finally ended up living at the top of Peak 9 at the top of the Breckenridge ski area, for two years, living the life of a full-fledged ski bum. At the end of this, nursing knee injuries, I decided to come back to San Diego.
When I got back to San Diego, I picked up where I had left off. I had sold my car (which wasn’t working anyway), and I once again dedicated myself to living car-free.
A couple years later, in early 1988, though, catastrophe struck: My beloved Trek was stolen from a bike rack in front of Seaport Village.
I had locked it to a bike rack at the entrance to Seaport Village with a heavy-duty cable and padlock. When I came out after work, my bicycle was gone. The cable was on the ground, cut, with the padlock still holding the two ends together. There was a police station less than a block away (it’s a Spaghetti Factory now). In shock, and fighting back tears, I walked over to report it. The policeman was sympathetic, but talked me out of filing a police report, because, in his words: “We won’t recover it. It’s probably already in Tijuana.”
I was crushed. Gradually, I grew resigned to riding the bus while I saved money to replace it.
Later that year, though, life took yet a different path. I’d met my future wife in late 1987, just before New Year’s Eve. We started dating in March 1988. Then we got married in March 1989. That summer, I began attending college, quickly discovered I had a talent and passion for computer programming, studied Computer Science for a few years, got a job as a programmer, and had two kids. Bicycling just wasn’t on the list anymore.
Occasionally, I had a wistful thought about bicycling or bike touring, but I didn’t have any regrets. Bicycling had become a youthful memory.
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