Bi•opic - Flagstaff Biking

Volume #1, Issue #5
Bi•opic : A semi-regular publication of Flagstaff Biking Organization
Page 15
Coe’s Law: The Gospel of John
In the beginning there were always bikes. Kids
bikes, newspaper bikes, BMX bikes.
As kids, my friends and I, we
lived on our bikes.
But, there was a moment. And in that moment I
changed. It was, to borrow an evangelical term, a
moment of conversion. I don’t really know what it was.
And I don’t even know how it began. Not exactly.
This. This must be where it begins: Late one autumn
afternoon, probably sometime in the early part of 1985,
I took a drive, with the windows down and well above
the speed limit, through Papago Park between Tempe
and Phoenix along on the Galvin Parkway. Back then it
was just a lonely, twisty paved road to almost nowhere:
the zoo, Legend City, a couple seedy go-cart tracks,
and the wax museum. As a seventeen-year-old kid I
drove out that way a lot just to get out and drive.
On this particular afternoon I distinctly remember
noticing something moving along the base of the
buttes. It wasn’t a hiker, or a climber, or a horseback
rider. It was a guy on a bike. A long, tall, dark-blue
bike with fat, cruiser wheels and big silver handlebars.
He was riding, standing up off the saddle, along the
horseback riding trail that still-to-this-day encircles
those small mountains, in and out of the many little
arroyos that run off the rocks.
How powerfully the image of that anonymous guy
riding that anonymous bike hit me. I can recall that
I knew, in that instant I knew that that, that whole
riding-on-dirt-between-cactus-and-rocks-on-a-bigfat-tired-bike-with-wide-silver-handlebars-thing
was
for me. It clicked in my head almost audibly. It made
sense, got me excited, made me desire an experience
like that of my own. And so I pursued it.
And ever since, it has always been the easy, natural,
pure passion for riding that has attracted me to those
with whom I ridden regularly over the years. And it is
their influence that continues to reveal itself in how
and where I ride, and what I have to say about bikes,
to this day. I am a product of their influence.
I was not drawn to riding mountain bikes, nor was
I taught how to ride mountain bikes, because I was
shown the evils of the automobile, though those same
sins are abundantly clear to me now. I was attracted
John Coe
You can often find the author
spending time with his daughter,
riding a bike or watching television.
He’s lived in Flagstaff since 1991
and occasionally writes about
cycling for newspapers and
magazines, most notably Bike.
to bikes, and quickly grew to crave riding, because of
the way my cycling friends lived, and rode, and spoke
to me about their passion. It is my hope to pass on my
own passion in much the same way.
Many of the best evangelists I know are cyclists.
We each, we true believers, bear this burden as an
obligation. But it is an uncommonly light burden,
considering its import. Indeed, because we so love
what we do, we tend to welcome its weight on our
shoulders.
So, we must remember: we do not tell others about
the inherent goodness of the bike by telling them, so
much as we do by living and riding what we believe
in front of them, easily, naturally, and with that pure
passion that drives us out the door and into the woods
because it simply a good time to go ride.
Contact: john.coe@gmail.com