Publisher's Synopsis
"A Long Ride Coming" is a deeply personal memoir filled with poignancy and tinged with wry humor. The book takes the reader on a 1,900 mile bicycle ride from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Mexican border and then from Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California. The journey meets steep, challenging terrain and memorable, once-in-a-lifetime characters. But the book is much more than a story about a bicycle trip. "A Long Ride Coming" unveils a tribute to a father who died when the author was just 18 years old. When told by a doctor to keep the news of his father's terminal illness a secret, the deception led to nearly 50 years of regret and despair. Testing his stamina and age, the bike ride begins at the Golden Gate Bridge on September 11, 2014 and ends nearly exactly one year later on the Golden Gate. In between, the author finds solace and a fitting tribute to a father who died too soon. From the book: The doctor left the room and left my mother, my brother, and myself to fend for ourselves. Fend off such assaults as when just a few days later, the surgeon summoned us to his office. My father was still in the hospital, still reeling from his surgery, when the doctor in all of his professorial genius opined that we were not to tell my father of his terminal disease. "Keep it to yourselves," he said in whispered, conspiratorial, haunting tones. "The patient shouldn't know. If he did, his last few months would be even more uncomfortable." So when my father returned home and for a brief time felt good and hopeful, even going back to work for several days, his wife and two sons had the insufferable burden of lying to him. "I'm so damn glad the worst part is over," he'd say during his short reprieve. "I told you I'm going to beat this thing..." But we were committed to obeying doctor's orders, committed to the code of silence.
