Round and Round
Some of the best ways to see the world are from the seat of a bicycle
By RICK BROOKS
July 14, 2007; Page R5
As the world’s best cyclists battle in this month’s Tour de France, it’s hard to imagine exactly what it feels like to suffer on a steep climb or to pedal through cheering throngs near the finish line.
Not for 58-year-old Jonas Prince. Seven years ago, Mr. Prince was part of a group that slogged up the same mountain pass in the French Alps that Lance Armstrong blamed later the same day for “the hardest day of my life on a bike.”
Cycling enthusiast Holly Edwards talks with Paul Lin about her adventures on the open road and how the sport has brought big changes to the 60-year-old grandmother.
“The pros take 45 minutes, and it takes you 21⁄2 hours, but you make it,” says the chairman of Toronto-based real-estate and investment-management firm Realstar Group, who lives in Toronto and London.
Reaching the top of one of the Tour’s most legendary climbs made Mr. Prince forget all about the road rash he suffered in a crash near the bottom, he adds.
Since that trip, annual bicycling vacations with buddies have taken Mr. Prince to the Giro d’Italia, Dauphiné Libéré and other famous cycling races.
Cycling trips that indulge Tour de France fantasies or childhood memories of carefree pedaling to nowhere have been around for a long time. Now, though, older adults have a mushrooming variety of tours to choose from, as companies target cycling enthusiasts who might not be as fast as younger riders, but who often have a lot more money.
Bicycles are wonderfully forgiving about the predicaments of advancing age, such as bad knees and spare tires. That puts cycling adventures within reach of people who haven’t ridden in years.
“Absolutely anybody can do this,” says Wes Norman, a 78-year-old retired Georgetown University anatomy professor who last year rode a four-day, 180-mile trip along the Great Allegheny Passage between Pittsburgh and Columbia, Md.
The right trip also can take your life in a different direction. For Holly Edwards, 60, of Guilford, Conn., a 3,100-mile trek from San Diego to St. Augustine, Fla., in 1998 led to a second career as a fitness trainer. After 54 days on the road with WomanTours Inc. of Rochester, N.Y., Ms. Edwards couldn’t imagine being cooped up in an office as a bookkeeper.
