Like a lot of us, I spent much of my childhood riding bikes, but fell out of the habit for a while. Forty years. Then my wife and I moved to New York, where cyclists risk their necks in a daily Thunderdome of cabs, police cars, firetrucks, double-decker buses, messengers on motorbikes, and delivery trucks backing around corners at 20 miles an hour. Not for me! At least not until my 50th birthday, when my metabolic furnace flamed out. Calories started going directly from beer bottle to beer belly. It was time to start exercising. Either that or give up Samuel Adams, and I couldn’t do that to Sam.

I started on a stationary bike in a gym. Working up a sweat while watching TV, I could see how many calories I was burning: about 200 in a half-hour at a smooth pace, enough to cancel out one beer. I felt stronger and more alert afterward, but there was something unsatisfying about being an aging, balding guy working hard to get nowhere. Call it a midbike crisis – I longed to get outdoors again.

On my 55th birthday, my wife bought me an all-black cruiser with fat tires and wide handlebars. That bike is as indestructible as I feel when I’m on it. Riding around Manhattan, I stuck to bike paths along the Hudson River at first, feeling the wind blowing through where my hair used to be. Little by little I branched out into the city.

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Like most cyclists my age, I’m not out for thrills, chills, or medals. Whenever I’m tempted to race a rider who’s zipping up behind me, I remember the day I spent with Lance Armstrong when he was Tour de France champion. When I asked how he could possibly dominate world-class cyclists who were doping if he wasn’t doping, he gave me an icy look and said, “Hard work. Any other questions?”

I had one. “Any advice for a cyclist my age?”

He looked me over and said, “Don’t fall off.”

I have tried to live by Lance’s advice. Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to ride across the Brooklyn Bridge without running into a tourist. They’re always stepping into the bike lane without warning, smiling for selfies. 

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