By Staff
A good friend of mine, Eugene Biek, lives in California and is an enthusiastic bicyclist.
In our correspondence over the years, he has mentioned many different things about his bicycling, but a lot of them I had forgotten.
I know over the years he kept a lot of statistics.
Recently, I asked him to tell me some of them.
He said in 1973 he and his wife Mary Ellen bought three-speed Schwinns. He said this was his first bike since the one he used to have to deliver papers on his South Bend route (sure would love to see him deliver the Sunday Trib on his old balloon-tired bike today).
In 1979, they upgraded to a 10-speed Schwinn, biked occasionally, but didn't keep any statistics.
In 1981, he started riding to work – a 23-mile round trip.
In 1983, he got an 18-speed Cannondale. Then in 2001, he got a 27-speed Trech.
By this time he had biked 100,000 miles.
As of Dec. 1, 2006, he had logged 134,000 miles since he kept records from 1981.
He has found lots of things along the roads.
Since 1991, he has been putting his road money finds in an old potato chip can (probably the old New Era can that used to be in his back porch.)
He said it now weighs 45 pounds. He said he averages $20 to $30 in finds, including $35 in 2006.
This pays for tubes, he said.
He gets 6,000 miles on a front tire and 5,000 on the rear one.
In 2006, he had 22 flats.
He has found lots of sockets and tools (he found 50 sockets in 2006).
Best thing he ever found was a man's gold wedding ring, no ID and no ad in the paper.
Looks like this was a good day of biking, I'd say.
He has found lots of billfolds – one with a $100 bill.
They all had some identification and were returned.
Gene and Mary Ellen have gone on lots of bike trips.
Their first overseas was one to Holland in 1985.
He said they were the only Americans on the tour.
For the next 20 years they pretty much took a bike tour every year.
Some were in different states.
Others were out of the country: Denmark, Belgium and Luxembourg, France, Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica and New Zealand. On their 50th anniversary they spent a month biking Italy and Greece.
One trip they biked along the Danube from Germany through Austria to Budapest, Hungary.
In the USA they biked Cape Cod, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oregon and lots of California.
He had two major accidents.
One he went off the road into a rocky ditch and ended up head-first, halfway through a barbed wire fence, gouged his helmet, had several stitches and cracked his ribs on both sides.
He said his worst accident was five years ago when a tire went into a missing part of a grate, and this was in heavy traffic.
He went face down to the cement road, smashed his nose, on which he had to have surgery later on to correct his breathing.
He tells me some of his teeth are still without feeling.
Of course, Gene has had a few other spills, but none like those two.
In my pack-rat collection, I have quite a few cards the Bieks have sent us on their many trips around the world.