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Five lessons from a legendary cycling coach
Late last month, I read the news that renowned cycling coach Eddy Borysewicz had died from COVID-19 at the age of 81 in his native Poland. He was well-known, among other things, for preparing U.S. cyclists for medal-winning performances in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and for helping develop a young Greg LeMond into the first American to win the Tour de France in 1986. (Earlier this month, LeMond became the first cyclist, and only the 10th individual athlete in history, to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.)
Borysewicz, or Eddy B. as he was known, also played a key role in the development of an entire generation of young wannabe bike racers in the 1980s, including me.
I started racing in 1983 at the age of 15. At that time, detailed information about cycling was hard to obtain in places like rural Pennsylvania, where I grew up. My “training” consisted of riding 25 to 40 miles a day through the hills around my hometown – good enough to prepare me for small local events, but not enough to avoid getting thrashed at the regional level by faster, fitter cyclists.
Something essential was lacking in my training program. Then, in early 1985, along came a book titled “Bicycle Road Racing: A Complete Program for Training and Competition” by Eddy Borysewicz. It opened my eyes to the concept of carefully planned, year-long training programs. To be competitive in May, I learned, training started in December, and each day of the week must be dedicated to a specific aspect of race fitness: endurance, tempo, intervals, sprints, recovery.
My copy of “Bicycle Road Racing” was lost years ago, and much of its 20th century wisdom has long since been supplanted by updated training techniques. But I recently looked through an old copy of the book at the local library, which helped jog my memory about a few of the other ways Eddy B. influenced my approach to the sport.
1. Bicycle racing is hard, so toughen up
Sample quote: “In Poland I have trained when the temperature was 5-10 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). There was no such thing as saying, ‘Oh, it’s so cold. We will train if it warms up tomorrow.’”
As a young, ambitious cyclist, I took Eddy B.’s admonishment about training in bad weather to heart. I was out on my bicycle in all conditions, whether it was endurance rides in the chill air of January, intervals in the steady rains of April, or sprints on sweltering afternoons in July. There was a sense of accomplishment, even pride, in returning from a hard, three-hour training ride soaked to the bone and frozen half to death. As I have grown older, I’ve become less dedicated to cycling in inclement weather, but sometimes it can’t be helped: In June 2019, I signed up for the 130-mile Michigan Mountain Mayhem event near Traverse City. During the first four hours of my seven-hour ride, rain poured from the clouds and the temperature hovered in the mid-40s. The reward was finishing the tough, hilly course in the beautiful, warm sunshine that followed the storm.
2. Intense, sustained concentration is required
Sample quote: “Racing takes great power of concentration. Many a rider has failed to concentrate for one moment and suddenly found himself at the rear of the field. This is the most dangerous position because there is no self-determination.”
This is one of the hardest aspects of bicycle racing, which those who have never participated in the sport have trouble understanding: the need to maintain laser focus from start to finish, even throughout a four-hour race. One momentary lapse in awareness could mean being out of position during a crucial point in the race or, even worse, going down in crash. Over the years, I have also dabbled in running and even trained up for the 1997 Los Angeles Marathon. Although I would never describe running 26.2 miles as “easy,” the luxury of being able to zone out for minutes at a time over the course of four hours made it far less mentally taxing than even the shortest bike race.
3. Bicycle racing is a contact sport
Sample quote: “If you bothered me when I was racing I would hit you with my rear wheel – bang it right into your front wheel and knock you down if you weren’t a good bike handler. I would say, ‘You want to play? What kind of game do you want? I’m ready for anything. C’mon!’”
Thankfully, the majority of cyclists (including me) never indulged in such dubious or dangerous tactics. But we needed to be prepared for those who did. More often, though, contact during races was unintentional, the result of riders not paying attention (see previous lesson), or swerving to avoid a dropped water bottle, or simply lacking the skills to hold their line through a corner. Dealing properly with unexpected physical contact while speeding down the road at 25mph meant honing bike-handling skills on easy training days: for example, finding a grassy field to ride across at slow speed with teammates while bumping elbows, handlebars, and wheels. The object was to learn how to ride straight, stay upright, and, if necessary, push back without going down. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that many road racers in the U.S. still have not embraced, and too many of them don’t spend time developing these skills. As European cyclists are fond of saying, Belgian grandmothers have better bike-handling skills than most American professionals.
4. Data and metrics can improve training
Sample quote: [After nine minutes of hard effort on the indoor trainer, stop and take your pulse.] “Do this with your fingertips on the carotid artery beside your Adam’s apple. … If it is 170 beats per minute this schedule is perfect. If it is 160 or less the work was too easy and you should use bigger gears. … When you get 180 or more the work was too hard and you should use lower gears. When your pulse exceeds 180 on the first set you won’t be able to handle the second one.”
This was the first time I had heard about paying attention to heart rate. Of course, using your fingers to take your pulse in the middle of a training ride is less than ideal, and has long since gone the way of the dodo thanks to technology. Also, it is woefully unscientific to suggest that all athletes should train based on the same heart rate levels. (According to the old 220-minus-age formula, my maximum heart rate should be 167, but in practice I still reach the low 180s during interval sessions.) Now, with heart rate monitors and power meters dominating the training landscape, it’s hard to remember that long-ago era when I measured my cycling efforts purely according to my own perceived exertions while chugging up the hills of central Pennsylvania.
5. Proper nutrition is important (but don’t always take dietary advice from an old-time European coach)
Sample quote: “You may burn twice as many calories in a four-hour road race as a factory worker will burn in a full day. To replenish these calories you must eat food that is necessary as well as food that you like. For example, I never ate horse meat in my life until an eight-year period when I was racing. Horse is considered very good meat because it has no fat. In Europe riders eat it a lot. It is also much cheaper than beef and pork. But horse meat? It didn’t sound good at all. At first I ate only a little, then more, and then I was eating a lot. I rode well on it. When I stopped cycling I stopped eating it.”
This was one of the most memorable passages in the book, and in the 1980s it resulted in baffled parents of young cyclists across the country fielding queries about where to source horse meat. But it did help me realize that I had to put more thought into what went into my body to fuel my training and racing program – a lesson that seems increasingly important as I grow older.
Above: The author in action in a bike race somewhere in New Jersey circa 1988, while riding for the New Age Cycling Team based in State College, Pennsylvania.
Kodiak Spotlight: Bear biologist Joy Erlenbach
This article was originally published in the July 17, 2020, edition of Kodiak Daily Mirror newspaper.
Joy Erlenbach didn’t spend much time outdoors as a kid. One of four children of a single mom who was always working, Erlenbach never really had the chance to go outside except to do chores.
So to this day, she says, it boggles her mind to think about how and why she became enamored of wilderness experiences.
The love affair started when she was a teenager in Burlington, Washington.
“When I was in high school, a friend and I saw an advertisement for a search and rescue organization that needed volunteers, and so I joined and went through a bunch of training,” she said. “That was my introduction to backpacking and surviving in the woods. And I just sort of fell in love with being outside.”
Meanwhile, Erlenbach had always harbored a love for animals that made her think she would someday become a veterinarian, but as she spent more time outdoors, she realized she didn’t want to become a zookeeper or spend her days working in a vet’s office.
“I wanted to be outside with the animals,” she said. “When I was researching degrees for college, I stumbled upon wildlife ecology, and I read the description and it was like light bulbs went off – this is it, I get to be outside with animals, this is what I want to do.”
In 2004 she started the wildlife ecology program at Washington State University, which is home to one of the few facilities in the world that houses adult brown bears for research.
“I guess that’s where it all started because I got to interact with bears at pretty close range like most people don’t get to do,” Erlenbach said, adding that her early volunteer work at the research facility mostly consisted of “just shoveling poop and helping feed the bears a couple times a week.”
But she also began getting a sense that each bear had a unique character, at a time when there was not a lot of discussion among wildlife ecologists about animal personality.
Her interest in bears was reinforced when she was asked to join a research project in Yellowstone National Park, during which she spent a summer tracking bears and measuring what they were eating. She got to see firsthand how resilient and adaptable wild animals could be, as they survived in an area characterized by frequent interactions with park visitors.
“The bears could switch from day-active to nocturnal, and mediate those risks between encountering humans in the park,” she said. “They could exist by doing all these different strategies. Some bears ate elk calves, some bears didn’t. Some bears hung out at streams, some bears hung out at high elevations. The variety really got me.”
Erlenbach went on to earn her master’s degree, with a focus on the nutritional ecology of bears — what they eat and why — as well as some study into behavior. Not considering herself to be a “standard academic type,” she thought her university career had reached its conclusion. When the opportunity to apply for a Ph.D. program in Alaska arose in 2014, her initial response was to say no.
At the same time, she recalled photographs of Alaska that a graduate student had shared with her when she was an undergrad, and she also knew she wanted to keep working with bears.
“Just seeing the pictures, I fell in love with the scenery and had in the back of my mind this idea that I wanted to go to Alaska,” Erlenbach said. “The Ph.D. project was really amazing, and I talked to a lot of people and they sort of convinced me that I just had to do this.”
The project involved spending four years in Katmai National Park studying the link between coastal bears and the marine environment — more specifically, what consequences oil spills, climate change, ocean acidification, warming water and other factors might have on the animals.
The project also brought Erlenbach one step closer to Kodiak. During her research, she would spend a month camping along the coast while conducting bear observations, and then head back to civilization to shower and restock food before returning to the coast for another month.
“I had spent four years over in Katmai staring at Kodiak,” she said. “Kodiak was one of our ways that we reported weather. If we could see Kodiak, that meant it’s a good day because there weren’t that many rain clouds between us and Kodiak. So I stared at Kodiak for years and always went, ‘Gosh, I wonder what’s over there.’”
After the Katmai project was completed, Erlenbach returned to Washington. She was preparing to defend her Ph.D. when some friends told her they had seen a job posting for a bear biologist at Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge that seemed perfect for her.
She looked at the posting, agreed that it was an ideal fit for her experience and interests, and promptly applied. She was in the middle of a trip to Thailand — a pre-graduation present to herself — when she was notified that she was going to have an interview for the job, which she ultimately landed.
“It was all pretty crazy,” she said. “I knew there was a history of a lot of really great bear research here (in Kodiak), and so to be able to come into a position where I knew there was a history of good research and an opportunity for good future research was pretty appealing.”
Erlenbach arrived in Kodiak on March 1 to take up her position as the refuge’s new bear biologist, and promptly sprained her ankle on her third day here. The injury prevented her from immediately making it out into the field, but gave her plenty of time to start digging into the data that has been collected over the years about the island’s bears.
“The first thing I’m doing is taking stock of what all the past surveys are saying, and … making sure we really understand where we’re at with populations, and whether there’s any reason for concern going forward or if we think everything is fine,” she said. “Kodiak bears are so iconic and it’s so well known for its hunting. I think the main issue is just making sure that we continue to keep the bear population thriving.”
Erlenbach said there’s a fair amount of evidence showing that changes in salmon populations are occurring around the world, so it was important to look at salmon abundance in the areas where refuge bears are consuming them, how changes in salmon abundance might be affecting the bears, and what can be done about it.
“Everything is connected, right? So it’s hard for me to point a finger at any one thing, especially at this point with being pretty new to the area,” she said. “But I think food supply is really high up there on my list of concerns. If animals are being affected by a dwindling food supply, then things like hunting can become more of a pressure than they were in the past. We just need to make sure that we don’t trend that way.”
As for Kodiak itself, Erlenbach said she has been “pleasantly surprised” by the town and the island.
“Never having been here, I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it’s beautiful,” she said. “The people I’ve met have been really warm and welcoming.”
With her ankle sprain healing, she has also been able to get out and enjoy some of the local hikes, including Termination Point, Pyramid Mountain, Sharatin Mountain and Cope Mountain. But what she’s most anticipating is exploring more remote areas of the island away from the road system.
“I’ve been able to get out, and the hiking is awesome,” she said. “But I can’t wait to see the refuge because I hear it’s also pretty fantastic.”
Kodiak backyard hikes: Mission Beach gallery
Mission Beach is only about 1.5 miles from our apartment. Getting there involves walking through quiet neighborhoods rather than trail hiking. The beach is usually calm and quiet. People sometimes come to exercise their dogs, collect seaweed for fertilizer, or launch sea kayaks. We come to walk on the stones and the rippled black-and-tan sand, looking down in search of sea glass, looking up to breathe deeply and take in the ocean and the wide sky. On some days, silver-gray water melds with silver-gray clouds on the infinite horizon; on others, the blue waves shimmer with unimpeded sunlight. We’ve seen sea otters swimming and bald eagles searching the shoreline for food. We’ve skipped rocks, and we’ve simply sat watching the sunrise or the fishing boats coming to and from the harbor.
Kodiak Spotlight: Dedicated voter Margaret Hall passes away at 101
On October 28, I conducted a phone interview with 101-year-old Kodiak resident Margaret Hall about her lifelong commitment to voting, and how she considered participating in elections to be an “obligation” and a “duty.” She was friendly and sharp-witted, and at the end of the interview she thanked me for calling and listening to her opinions.
Two days later, she passed away. But her wise words resonate, particularly on this contentious Election Day, and are worthy of noting down for posterity.
Margaret was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1919 – one year before the enactment of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Having gained this hard-won freedom in her lifetime, Margaret’s mother made sure her daughters grew up understanding its importance.
“I first voted in 1940 at age 21,” Margaret said. “It was very exciting because my mother had taken us three girls to the polls with her every single year, all the time, and she was always an advocate for women to vote.”
And so began Margaret’s lifelong commitment to voting, which she saw as the foundation of a democracy “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Like her mother, she also sought to pass her enthusiasm down to her own four daughters and two sons.
“The Constitution doesn’t say ‘we the president’ or ‘we the senators’ or ‘we the Supreme Court.’ It was written so it says, ‘We the People,’” she said.
The only presidential elections she missed were those in 1952 and 1956, following her move to the then-territory of Alaska in 1948. She said she found the inability to vote during that time “very frustrating.”
“For the first election (in 1952), I had just recently become a resident of Alaska,” Margaret said. “I could have still voted absentee in Minnesota had I not done that, but I had become a resident of Alaska so I couldn’t.”
When Alaska achieved statehood in 1959, she was finally able to start participating again in 1960.
“Probably the most memorable election would have been the first time I was able to vote in Alaska (in 1960) after I had not been able to vote for two elections because we were still a territory,” she said.
Margaret made her way to the polling station in every election thereafter, even as she saw a disappointing drop in interest in politics among her fellow citizens.
“I think voting has changed over the years. I don’t think people think it’s an obligation or a duty or a privilege anymore,” she said. “They just don’t feel it. They think ‘I can vote or not vote. I don’t need to vote. Nobody cares if I vote. I don’t know who to vote for.’ They have every excuse in the world for not voting.”
She also noticed a “definite” decline in civility among politicians — a shift that she said is readily apparent when older political speeches are compared with those offered up by some of today’s candidates.
“It’s changed. Well, the only word I can really think of is ‘uncouth,’” she said. “When one candidate gets up there and says he’s going to kick someone’s butt, I don’t care for that kind of language. I don’t use it and those things can be expressed in many other ways … I’m afraid it’s changed forever. I don’t think we’re going to go back to the same kind of polite, sensitive conversations we used to have.”
Margaret was also less than thrilled by the increase in over-the-phone polling in the days leading up to elections.
“I do not like people calling and asking me for my opinion on an issue,” she said. “I’m firmly convinced that the secrecy of the ballot is important.”
The deterioration of respectful political rhetoric aside, Margaret continued to believe in the integrity of the electoral process. She also had a message for those who have grown jaded about U.S. politics or who don’t think voting is worthwhile.
“Two things I would say: You need to wake up and realize that an organized minority can overrule an unorganized majority of the people of the country,” Margaret said. “And you also need to realize that you, as ‘the People,’ have an obligation and a privilege to vote that many people in many countries do not have.”
Ghost Dog Gone?
Most of Fort Wayne’s numerous haunted places are said to be frequented by spirits that are decidedly humanoid in aspect: the ghost of one Lt. Philip Ostrander roams the city’s namesake Old Fort; a mysterious woman wearing a white, flowing gown is sometimes seen crossing Main Street Bridge west of Van Buren Street; the restless phantom of a maintenance man prowls the dark backstage of the Embassy Theatre. The list goes on.
A notable exception is Wells Street Bridge, which legend says is troubled not by a spectral biped but rather by a devil-dog with glowing eyes that barks at – and sometimes chases – cyclists who ride across the span late on dark, cold nights. The general advice for those who encounter this creepy canine is to forget the “Dog Halt!” spray and instead put the mettle to the pedals, and get out of there as quickly as your legs can spin.
Wells Street Bridge is a landmark of downtown Fort Wayne. The 180-foot-long structure across St. Marys River was built in 1884, closed to motor vehicles in 1982, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. It’s one of only a handful of 19th century iron truss bridges built in U.S. urban areas that have survived the inexorable march of progress.
For decades the bridge was a fairly quiet, isolated place, but it now anchors the west end of Promenade Park, a 4-acre riverfront development project opened in August 2019 that includes such amenities as an amphitheater, a craft been café, a floating kayak launch, a tree canopy trail, and a children’s playground. The $20 million project took two years to complete.
Now, this promenade is obviously a nice little addition to Fort Wayne’s growing list of attractions, but my worry – in the midst of all the breathless hoopla surrounding the park’s grand opening – is that the months of noisy, intensive construction might have displaced the legendary ghost dog from its home on Wells Street Bridge.
In recent weeks, as the nights have grown longer, darker, and colder, I’ve climbed aboard my bicycle and indulged in a series of nocturnal “test rides” across the venerable old bridge in an effort to coax the devil-dog into appearing. So far, no luck – but I like to think that the mystery still lurks there, biding its time until the nights are even longer, darker, and colder before it once again harries brave or foolhardy cyclists who dare to cross the river in the wee hours.
Fort Wayne bike shop serves homeless community
Early in his adult life, Michael Brown worked as a city planning consultant in Chicago. Eventually, he came to believe that rewriting zoning ordinances and establishing great landscaping designs were not the real solutions to community problems; the real issue, he said, was “the condition of our soul.” The realization prompted his shift to a new career as pastor for a suburban Chicago church.
In 2003, Brown moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to serve as co-pastor at Mission Church on Cass Street. Five years ago he established Heart of the City Bicycles at the church, a bike shop for the homeless community and those who use their bikes as a main source of transportation. Open Fridays from 9am to noon, the shop averages 15 to 20 repairs a week, as well as 125 to 150 earn-a-bikes a year.
How did you get the idea to start Heart of the City Bicycles?
When I was a pastor in Chicago, our church had a very large group of cyclists. I was trying to find a way to really give back to the community instead of focusing on, “Hey, we’re doing all these really great rides.” So we started volunteering down at the Men’s Rescue Mission. We’d go in quarterly and fix up bikes. Then I became a co-pastor at Mission Church in Fort Wayne. We acquired our current building six years ago, and for five years we’ve had Heart of the City Bicycles.
What services does the shop provide?
We provide repair services on a weekly basis. We do an earn-a-bike program for those who would like to make strides toward getting their own bicycle, so they do community-related projects like cleaning up the Fort Wayne River Greenway and cleaning up the Wells Street Corridor. We also teach bike-repair lessons. We have an apron program. It’s like martial-arts belts – you can go Yellow Apron, Red Apron, Green Apron, Black Apron. The teaching is done by our four main volunteers. We’ll just kind of mentor somebody. The Yellow Apron takes about four weeks.
How does the program benefit the community?
We’ve recognized that poverty is not a financial issue. It manifests itself in all different areas, so we build relationships with these folks and help them learn life skills. We created a shop here that is relatively clean and organized, because many of these folks have a lot of chaos in their lives. From a very simple level, we think that a person having adequate transportation is a great start. Some of these folks don’t have the ability to acquire a driver’s license. Cars are expensive, and bicycles are a very effective form of transportation, as most of the rest of the world knows. We have a great infrastructure for bike paths in Fort Wayne, and we want to take advantage of that. If we can give folks the ability to get around to job interviews, jobs, healthcare appointments, and so forth, we think that helps with their quality of life.
Indiana’s poet laureate writes his truths
Adrian Matejka discovered his vocation as a poet in a roundabout way. His first love was not literature, but rap music, a creative calling that he soon determined was not meant to be.
“I was a terrible emcee, so I gave it up and decided to be a stockbroker,” he said. But during his second year in college, he heard American poet Yusef Komunyakaa reading in a coffee shop and felt compelled to try his hand at writing verse.
Despite abandoning his early dreams of musical stardom, Matejka (pronounced Mah-TEE-kuh) still finds inspiration in rap, which he describes as “the most popular example of poetry we have.”
“Rappers use the same language devices – rhyme, simile, metaphor, allusion – as poets. The big difference … is the goal of the language. Rappers are trying to team up with music in order to evoke emotion, tell stories or get the party going. Poets are teaming up with the reader’s imagination to do those same things.”
Musical and other pop culture references are among the means by which Matejka provides readers a non-intimidating entry into his work, with the goal of creating poems that “offer up stories and circumstances that I hope will be both familiar and surprising to the reader.”
The accessibility of Matejka’s work was perhaps one of the contributing factors to his appointment as the new poet laureate of Indiana by the Indiana Arts Commission. He began his two-year tenure on January 1, and will continue serving through December 31, 2019.
His published poetry collections include The Devil’s Garden (2003), Mixology (2009) and The Big Smoke (2013), the latter of which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and 2014 Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book, Map to the Stars (2017), explores growing up in Indianapolis in the 1980s.
Matejka was born into an American military family in Germany, but settled in Indianapolis in 1980. After graduating from Indiana University Bloomington, he left the state for nearly 20 years to live in Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis and elsewhere before returning to Bloomington in 2012 to take up his current position as poet-in-residence at Indiana University.
“I rarely wrote poems that were influenced by geography before Map to the Stars. When I came back to Indiana [in 2012], I was struck by how little the place has changed cosmetically but how completely different the climate and culture is now,” he said. “So growing up in Indianapolis didn’t influence writing the poems as much as coming back did. I was able to think about my experiences here in the 1980s a little differently after being gone so long.”
Matejka’s other preoccupations as a poet include race, economics, family and masculinity.
“The racial conflicts in our country have been exacerbated by the current politics of ignorance and bluster, but all of this bigotry was here before. It just has a bigger megaphone in 2018,” he said, adding that while poetry “can’t change legislation, reduce gun violence or right electoral maleficence,” it can offer a way to speak out against oppression like sexism and racism.
“Poetry is a great enabler of voices,” he said. “The art has empowered many people who were previously disenfranchised, silenced or otherwise ignored in the larger public discourse. Poetry has the power to amplify the natural voice of protest, which I hope is happening in some of my work.”
He said one of his obligations as poet laureate is to remind people that poetry is vital and that anyone is “welcome to join us, as creators or listeners of poems in whatever way they would like.”
“Poetry can sometimes be intimidating because it has its own agenda for music and creativity, and it can feel like a party we’ve crashed without an invitation. At the same time, poetry often uses traditional English building blocks – words, syntax, allusions, even punctuation – that are familiar to many of us.”
Matejka also hopes to emphasize poetry as one of the oldest forms of communication, a means by which people remembered history, entertained and shared political ideas long before there were novels, radios or movies.
“[Poetry] is our most essential public art and there is room in it for everyone. It’s cheap to create and easily available. Once people accept that there is no right or wrong in poetry and there are no secret handshakes or initiation rituals necessary to writing poetry, creation naturally follows,” he said. “If you write your truths, you can learn the rest as you go along.”
Read Adrian Matejka’s poetry here:
Portrait Photo: Stephen Sproll
Interview in brief: Al Stoller, Fort Wayne’s thrill-seeking wing-walker
For as long as he can remember, Al Stoller has been a thrill seeker. Growing up in Paulding County, Ohio, he was a member of the high school rocket club. After graduating from college and moving to Fort Wayne, he got into drag-racing cars – “legal and illegal” – before taking up skydiving, a pursuit that lasted until he broke his ankle. Next came aerobatic flying, and in 2013 Stoller attended an academy in Seattle, Washington, to learn how to wing-walk. Since then he’s been up more than 15 times, including performances at air shows. Last year, at age 71, he was featured in a Japanese documentary about seniors with unusual hobbies.
How would you describe the sensation of wing-walking?
The academy [in Seattle] teaches you all the specifics – the three points of contact, the propeller blast, where you can put your feet so you don’t step through the fabric wing. When you first climb out of the cockpit, you’re so overwhelmed, four of your five senses are on total overload. You’ve got adrenaline flowing through your body like you wouldn’t believe. It’s really, really hard to think because you’ve got so much going on that’s never happened before in your life. So you’ve got to develop muscle memory so you don’t even have to think about where to put your hands or where to grab onto.
What happens once you’re up in the air?
You climb up to 3,000 feet. It’s an open-cockpit biplane with a 450-horsepower rotary engine. I’m in the front cockpit; the pilot always flies in the back. You climb onto the top wing, and you’ve got to maneuver your way through some wires and then strap a belt on because there’s nothing to hold onto. You’re just standing there. Then you do loops and rolls. Then the pilot levels out. You get back down in the cockpit, and then climb out between the two wings and do the same aerobatics over again. I’ve got the point where I just stand up and the air pressure, the wind, holds me against the two cables. That way I can give thumbs up and wave to the crowd. The whole flight takes about 30 minutes, and the actual wing-walking is about 15 or 20 minutes.
Do you ever feel scared when you’re up there?
Your senses and instincts tell you to be afraid, but the thrill seeker inside of you says, “Nah, go for it.” I would say 75 percent of the people that do go up, if they hadn’t committed so much money and time, they would never climb out of the cockpit. The 25 percent of the thrill seekers just can’t wait to do it, but their senses still tell them, “You shouldn’t be doing this, you should be afraid,” but you just throw that aside and go for it.
Photo: Patrick Downs
Burmese refugees build community in Fort Wayne
Listen to the personal histories of refugees and asylum seekers from Burma who have settled in Fort Wayne, and you will hear a litany of travails unimaginable to most Americans: Teenagers thrown in jail for expressing admiration for democratic principles; ethnic and religious minorities whose hometowns were obliterated by their own country’s army; adults who have spent most of their lives in refugee camps and, as a result, retain few first-hand memories of their native land or culture.
Among them is Ven Kuthala, who arrived in the United States in 2002 on a religious visa and later attained asylum status. He now serves as senior monk at the Burmese Buddhist Temple on Tillman Road in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
As a college student in Burma’s main city of Yangon, Ven Kuthala was arrested in 1988 for participating in demonstrations aimed at transforming the country’s brutal dictatorship into a democracy. While an estimated 3,000 activists were gunned down in the streets by the army, Ven Kuthala described himself as “very lucky” to serve only 18 days in jail. Upon his release he rejoined the protests, but with the government crackdown intensifying, he was soon forced to flee to neighboring Thailand, where he became a Buddhist monk.
“I was not a legal migrant in Thailand, so I had to move from temple to temple every three or four months,” he said. “I didn’t want to spend my life like that, so I got a religious visa to settle in the United States and later applied for asylum.”
Ven Kuthala became a resident at the Burmese Buddhist Temple, taking over leadership in 2005 after the previous senior monk moved to California. In addition to his religious duties, much of his time is now dedicated to helping refugees from Burma adjust to life in Fort Wayne.
“Most refugees are displaced persons,” he said. “From 1988, the military junta launched military offensives along the border. Some villages completely disappeared, and the people moved into refugee camps in Thailand. Some lived in the camps for 10, 15, 20 years.”
He said that once refugees arrive in the United States, their main challenge is overcoming the language barrier. But they also need to find jobs quickly and deal with other aspects of daily life that most Americans take for granted.
“I help people with everything they need: applying for social security cards, doing their taxes,” Ven Kuthala said. “Other things are social: family matters, enrolling kids in school. They need advice. Some people tell me about phone calls requesting money or saying they are from the IRS. I explain that these are called scammers.”
Many refugees who live in Fort Wayne – from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union – arrive under a resettlement program run by the Catholic Charities Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, funded by federal grants under a cooperative agreement with the State Department.
According to Catholic Charities, about 200,000 Burmese refugees have resettled in the United States since 1990, with Fort Wayne hosting some 6,000 of those. While many early refugees fled political persecution, more recent arrivals have included Muslims and Christians escaping persecution in the Buddhist-majority Burma.
The program’s resettlement director, Nyein Chan, is himself a political refugee from Burma who was involved in the 1988 uprising against the military dictatorship. He arrived in the U.S. in 1994 and began working with Catholic Charities in 2000.
“The first barrier we experience is the language barrier,” he said. “Some people can pick up some level of English from the refugee camps, especially younger refugees. But some refugees are illiterate even in their own language, so it takes lots of time to learn.”
Nyein Chan said that the second biggest challenge is cultural integration, a process that also takes time and does not always proceed smoothly.
Last October, Fort Wayne City Councilmen Glynn Hines (6th District) hosted a community forum on Burmese resettlement. Several people aired complaints at the meeting about the behavior of some of their Burmese neighbors, including cooking outside, littering, neglecting their lawns, and painting their houses “circus colors.”
“Some people see this behavior among refugees and think, ‘Oh, it’s Burmese culture,’” Nyein Chan said. “But the reality is that refugee camp culture is divorced from the Burmese culture. Even though they’re called Burmese refugees, they don’t even know what Burma looks like. We don’t experience orange houses in Burma, believe me. This is a culture where they grow up in very crowded refugee camps – 45,000 people in a very small space. Sometimes it takes time to let go of that lifestyle.”
In the face of these challenges, Catholic Charities does its best with 11 staff members to facilitate rapid integration, including arranging housing, helping with job placement, and offering an initial five-day cultural orientation program about the basics of life in the U.S., such as law enforcement and how devices like fire alarms and thermostats work. The program continues for 90 days, with a mid-term orientation within 45 days of their arrival.
“We ask how they feel after two months in the United States. They say they love very much living here, but refugees always compare it with how they recently lived,” Nyein Chan said. “One thing they’re not happy with is the food. Even if they get food from the Asian grocery store, they say it tastes different. And when people arrive in wintertime, the weather is very challenging. Other than that, they always say, ‘Thank you so much. We are very happy.’ After three months, they even look different: complexion glowing, they put on a little bit of weight.”
After orientation, Catholic Charities refers the new arrivals to its job development program, where they spend six weeks learning how to dress for an interview, the importance of eye contact, the American work ethic, and workplace behavior. Employment services are offered up to five years from their arrival date. The Fort Wayne program boasts a highly successful job placement rate, with more than 89 percent employed within four to six months of their arrival.
Other services offered by Catholic Charities include medical transportation, language interpretation, and after-school programs for the children who need help with their homework.
The City of Fort Wayne also does its part to welcome refugees to the area. Palermo Galindo, the community liaison with the mayor’s office, works citywide to help immigrants understand processes like applying for building permits, starting businesses, or finding information about jobs. He also fosters good relationships with all immigrant communities.
“I always ask people who call with specific complaints [about immigrants], ‘Have you talked to your neighbor about what’s going on with the trash or with the lawn?’ And they say, ‘No, I haven’t,’” Mr. Galindo said. “I think that’s the first step. If they say, ‘I don’t know if they’ll understand’ – well, you’ve got to try it first. A very small percentage of people are maybe not following the rules or the city ordnance. Just like any group.”
He stressed that immigrant communities also play a key role in facilitating the acculturation process.
“We started good relationships with [immigrant communities]. Now a lot of people know me. That relationship has to continue to grow and provide opportunities to establish a dialogue within the community. I see that as a win-win for everyone,” he said. “If they become isolated as a community, there are so many things happening with the city that they might not know about, and that could affect them not growing with the same pace as the city.”
He added that from his own experience as an immigrant from Mexico, he has seen first-hand the benefits of living in a city that is open and welcoming to newcomers. “I do my very best to represent the city to the community, and pay that as a way to show how thankful I am that I have been provided with an opportunity,” he said.
Despite the challenges of language and acculturation, the dedication of people like Mr. Galindo, Nyein Chan, and Ven Kuthala has helped many refugees not only settle but also prosper in Fort Wayne.
Javier Mondragon, pastor of Many Nations Church and head of the Bridge of Grace nonprofit organization, said he has had only good experiences working with the Burmese community, and has seen many success stories.
“I’ve seen Burmese families buying properties that were vacant or blighted in the community, and they fixed them. And so that’s good for the community,” he said, adding that while some grievances he has received about immigrants are related to city code enforcement, other complaints, like house color, are less consequential. “A color, being different, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. We try to tell them, ‘Have you talked to them?’ I think the first step is just going to them and talk as friends and neighbors.”
Ye Win Latt from the Burmese Muslim Education and Community Center said he has also seen increasing numbers of Burmese buying houses, which is “a positive contribution to the locals and the homeowners as well.”
“Most of the Burmese spend their time in refugee camps, and this is the first time they are living free and becoming homeowners. Of course that’s not an excuse to be not complying with all the codes and regulations in place, but at the same time we are part of the community, and if there is any issue, we like to be part of the solution too,” he said.
Nyein Chan said Catholic Charities and other organizations do as much as they can with limited resources, but successful integration into American society requires effort from everyone.
“Sometimes you have a big heart for helping people, but without additional resources you can’t go very far,” he said. “When we’re talking about integration, it concerns people who live here and people who come in. If we are going to put aside the title of ‘refugee’ in an immigrant country like the United States, it concerns people who arrived a long time ago, those coming recently, and those who are still coming. We have to learn from each other.”
A grueling start to the cycling season
On Sunday, April 15, I participated in my first organized cycling event of 2018: the Rollfast 8×8 Challenge in Brown County State Park in southern Indiana. Getting to the start line required a 2:30am wake-up call and a three-hour drive from Fort Wayne through darkness and rain. Dawn broke as I entered the park, and the rain continued falling while I prepped my bike and pulled on multiple layers of clothing: cycling cap under my helmet; thin base layer, long-sleeved jersey, short-sleeved jersey and rain jacket on my torso; tights over cycling shorts covering the legs; wool socks and shoe covers protecting my feet; and long-fingered gloves on my hands.
At the start line, it was apparent that the inclement weather had kept more than half of the 100 pre-registrants home for the day: I counted fewer than 40 cyclists shivering along with me in the cold rain as the ride announcements were made by the organizer, who remained sheltered in a tent while he issued warnings about the dangerous descents along the 11.7-mile loop. He then put down the microphone, stepped out of the tent and proclaimed the commencement of our 8-lap, 94-mile odyssey.
Lap 1: My grand plan to start the ride super-easy was tossed out the window by the need to warm my body. The climbing started immediately, and I shifted into my lowest gear (34×28) and kept a high cadence to the top of the first step of the climb. A group of four or five riders blazed up the hill, and someone near me said, “There they go already.” I reached the top with the second group, and stayed with them during the next, shallower step of the climb, but dropped back on the third, steeper section. I rode alone across the plateau with one cyclist within reach ahead of me, but no desire on my part to put the hammer down and get onto his wheel. I kept it steady through the rollers, then took it easy the first time down the descent: sweeping right, very sharp left, a couple of ups and downs, then a steep drop into a valley with two narrow gravel patches spanning the road at the bottom. I was starting to warm up, except for my arms, which were covered by only a thin jersey and rain jacket. After a mile or so of flat terrain, I hit the second climb, consisting of a steep section, a triple set of short but steep bumps, and then a very steep section to the top. I tried to balance standing and sitting to keep my legs fresh. At this point I was caught by three riders from behind, and rode with them down the fast, fun, brake-free decline to the start/finish line. Lap time: 41:5
Lap 2: Rain continued falling. This was the only lap that I rode most of the way with other cyclists. After that, I was on my own to the finish. I tried settling into a manageable rhythm on the climbs, and my 28 cog still seemed adequate. I sat behind the other three riders across the plateau, drafting off to one side to avoid the rooster-tail of grime flying off the tire in front of me, and then took the lead on the rollers leading to the descent. I kept my momentum and my cadence high on the small upgrades, then flew down the hill faster than on the first lap. We were still together on the second climb and descent, and crossed the finish line as a small, if loosely allied, group. Lap time: 41:50
Lap 3: More rain. One of the riders in our group dropped back a bit on the climb, and the other two stopped at a car at the top of the first section, leaving me on my own. Still pedaling, I pulled off my gloves to grab my second Gu packet out my back pocket but dropped it onto the road. As I circled back to pick it up, the two guys who had stopped at the car rode by – one asked if I was okay – and I never saw them again. I picked up my gel and ate it on the move before I hit the next uphill section, then settled back into my rhythm. I think it was also at this point that I really started thinking about what I had gotten myself into, wondering whether I could make it up the hills five more times. The lap-by-lap countdown began. Lap time: 45:3
Lap 4: A bit of respite from precipitation, but the roads were still wet and wormy, and the sky remained threatening. Another climb, another gel, another descent, another climb. Already, fatigue was starting to creep into my legs as I began struggling with the 28 on the steeper grades, but I was happy to reach the halfway milestone at the end of the lap. I made my first stop at the aid station to top-up my water bottles and eat a few fig bars. The people manning the station did all the work of refilling and handing out food, but one guy questioned my decision to carry two bottles, which of course added weight to the bike. Lap time: 50:41
Lap 5: And then came the storm. The rain returned with a vengeance, falling harder than before and accompanied by high, gusty winds that made even the flat sections of the course difficult to ride. The brim of my cycling cap helped keep the lashing rain out of my eyes, except on the descents where the cold drops stung any exposed skin. It was also around this point that, due to numbness in my fingers, I had to reach across my handlebars with my right hand whenever I wanted to shift my front derailleur into the big chainring. I skipped the aid station in favor of another gel; at one point on this lap or the next, I inadvertently dropped an empty gel packet onto the ground while trying to put it into my back pocket. Not wanting to be an ungrateful guest in the park, I circled back around to pick my litter off the ground before continuing on. Lap time: 49:30.
Lap 6: Wind and rain continued, and it was around this time that I really started suffering on the steepest climbs. I remained standing until my legs started burning, then sat down and churned my way to the top, sometimes at a cadence in the low 40s. Once I sat down, there was no standing up again. This was when that lazy, pesky demon in my head who prefers comfy sofas and Doritos started asking whether it was really worth finishing, but deep down I never doubted my ability to ride 8 laps. I also figured that I would finish in about 6 hours, which was the same amount of time I would spend driving to and from the race. I wanted to make the trip worthwhile, along with earning the burger and fries I planned to eat on the way home. I made my second aid station stop at the end of the lap, grabbing a banana and a bottle of energy drink. Lap time: 53:07
Lap 7: The most difficult and slowest lap of the ride, even though the rain finally stopped and the sun started shining through the clouds. As I had during the early laps, I made an effort to admire the scenery of the park as I passed a few of the vista points, turning my head to catch glimpses of the clouds breaking over the hills. But the pretty views didn’t do much to help me negotiate the climbs, the steepest of which I tackled by tacking back and forth across the road to reduce the gradient. Even so, I suffered cramps in the muscles behind both of my knees, but I managed to keep pedaling and worked them out during the descent to the start/finish line, where I made my last aid station stop for a few fig bars before heading out on the last lap. Lap time: 55:32
Lap 8: With (very slightly) renewed energy, and with my clothes drying out and my body warming in the intermittent sun, I ticked off each climb as I topped it for last time. I took it easy on the flats and on the descents (the idea of a blowout on my front tire, which I had recently swapped from the rear wheel after having used it for weeks on the indoor trainer, had been haunting me since around Lap 6), trying to save everything for the last climb, which loomed dark and unavoidable on the horizon. I feared the return of my leg cramps, but they remained at bay during the lesser climbs. I made the last of the day’s four or five toilet stops at the outhouse at the base of the final climb, then braced myself and started up, tacking across the road as I had the lap before. No one passed me on the way up, as a few had on previous laps, spinning by on their 32s or 34s while I struggled in my 28. Up I went the first section half-standing and half-seated, then standing up the triple slopes of the second section, then standing as long as I could up the last steep obstacle until I had to sit and churn my way ever closer to the top. Just when I thought I was safe, the lurking cramps suddenly struck again, but by that point I only needed five more pedal strokes to reach the crest. Despite the pain, I forced my legs over until I was able to coast across the top. I stood and stretched my protesting muscles, and then I was free to enjoy the descent on roads that were drying out after a day of relentless rain, finally crossing the line as one of only 15 riders to complete all 8 laps. Lap time: 52:48. Overall time: 6:23:47. Overall placing: 10th of 35 (5th in the 50-54 age group).
Late for Nowhere 