COLUMN: Memories Are Made of Troubles

By Tobin Barnes
Everybody’s got their own idea of fun. My fun probably isn’t your fun.

Amen and maybe thank goodness.

Yeah, diversity is a good thing. If we all thought sitting through nine innings of a major league baseball game was fun, you couldn’t get into the place. Some people have to be collecting stamps instead. We’ve got to spread out the joy for there to be any joy at all.

Take me, for instance.

I like to ride my bicycle--that is, in a casual sort of way. Bike paths, streets, that sort of thing. It can be fun, believe it or not. Maybe not for you, but for me.

However, if I start heating up, huffing and puffing, doing some serious pedaling, the fun pretty much stops. Then it becomes a job. Never much been into jobs while I’m trying to have fun.

That’s why I’ve never been able to understand endurance-type fun. You know, where you’re working your butt off, kind of almost suffering, and people call it fun.

I got to see this kind of fun a few weeks ago: Bicycling fun that’s not my idea of fun.

My brother-in-law and two of his brothers and one of his brothers’ friends came out to the hills to do some bicycling, like 70 to 100 miles-a-day bicycling. Uh huh, I bicycle one of their days in about a year.

They did four days of this. It’s an annual thing for them. They smile thinking about past trips. They’ve ridden across Ohio and Wisconsin and Minnesota. They’ve ridden along Lake Superior on the U.P. of Michigan. They think this is fun, for crying out loud.

Matter of fact, the more trouble they have on a trip--pedaling along anything not downhill would be trouble in my book--the more they enjoy it. Makes it memorable, they say. I say it’s masochistic self-delusion. But I guess that proves my point: Everybody’s got their own idea. Besides, they’re slim and trim while I’ve got a tire other than on my bike.

Anyway, if they like trouble, they should have been happy on this trip. Had all kinds of it. Two of them brought their wives along, one of whom is my wife’s sister. But that’s not the trouble I’m talking about.

Started when we dropped them off about seven miles west of Alladin, WY, in the Bear Lodge Mountains. We, ourselves, drove on to Devil’s Tower so the wives could walk around the base of the monument. It started raining not long after. We thought it might be kind of tough on the guys. But not to worry. They said before they started they don’t mind rain--makes trips more memorable. Uh huh.

On our drive back home, we passed them riding in a pretty good rain, having fun, making memories.

Later that day, they discovered that riding in mountains can be a little mountainous with big ups and downs you don’t find in Ohio or Wisconsin. But, no big deal, they knew that coming in, so it was still fun by the time they got to Sundance, WY, where they spent the first night.

Next day they made more memories. At Newcastle, midway on their trip from Sundance to Edgemont, SD, they turned onto a gravel Forest Service road they thought was supposed to be paved, anyway according to their interpretation of the map. Going this way would save them 20-30 miles, they figured. But the travel was hellish--ultra-thin-wheeled road bikes do not do well on gravel. They would have multiple blow-outs on multiple bikes on this stretch, plus other mechanical problems.

Someone they met about ten miles down that torture track--one of only two or three passersby the rest of the day--told them they’d soon run onto a paved road.

Momentarily, there was peace in the valley.

But turned out that guy was either a liar or an idiot. Someone they met a short distance further on told them, “Nope, gravel all the way to Edgemont.” In other words, 50 miles of a butt-wrenching grind from Newcastle to Edgemont.

So notified of the task ahead, they knew they weren’t too far from Dewey, about halfway down that stretch of gravel road, so they decided to continue rather than heading back out to the highway. Or so they thought. Soon they came to a road sign that pointed to Dewey in three different directions, as though backwoods Dewey were so big there might be a North, East, and South Dewey with several exits along the way.

Undaunted, our funsters eventually found their way and limped into Edgemont late that night, chocked brimful with new memories. It’s the trouble, after all. After getting re-supplied with more inner tubes and other necessary parts, they followed the Mickelson Trail back to Spearfish Canyon over the next two days.

Meanwhile, the wives were taking casual bike rides, short little invigorating hikes, and brisk shopping sprees amidst leisurely lunches and wine-inspired gab sessions, building memories in more subtle ways.

To each his own.

But “You don’t have to be Norman Einstein,” as football commentator Joe Theisman once said, to know that the women had a much better grasp of fun.