Deke Edwards; Tandem Cyclist

His love of cycling had given me one very good stoker, over twenty years ago.

We weren’t old buddies, I actually felt quite guilty that I didn’t ride with him more than I did. There was not any good reason keeping me from riding with him more than I did. He was quite an interesting person to talk to; upbeat, concise and not without humor. It worked out the way it did because it took a bit of pre-scheduling to ride with Deke Edwards, as he was totally blind and needed to be dropped off at the places where a ride might start. I wasn’t much of a scheduler. As I said, no good reason.

Deke loved to cycle and was quite powerful and good at it, minus the steering. A mutual friend of ours, Ken DeBeer, had acquainted us since I had a tandem bicycle that I was quite fond of. My Cannondale “long bike” was always looking for someone to occupy its back seat. Oftentimes, this place setting was filled by my seventy-something year old mom. She rarely said no.

The first time I rode with Deke, his wife dropped him off in Alton, Illinois for our ride up the ‘River Road’ to Pere Marquette Park, lunch at the old Lodge, then back.

The only time you had any clues as to his vision abilities was when he was not in contact with something. Once he checked out my tandem bicycle, he quickly got out his tools, removed the flat pedals from the stoker position and replaced them with the cliples kind that matched his shoes. Off we went on our 40 mile ride.

Pere Marquette Lodge, besides being one of those old CC type structures with tall ceilings of round timbers, had now been turned into a giant event facility. The one and only time I’ve ever felt any need to go looking for Deke was when he hadn’t returned from the restroom for a while. I found him in the middle of the giant, empty space. He had lost contact. I am quite sure that he would have remedied the situation on his own, given a bit more time. Upon asking him if he ever uses one of those white cains with a red tip, he said, “ Sometimes they come in handy, especially in the men’s room. I’ve found that bumping up against the back of someone at the urinal, without a cain, can be a bit of a hassle.” I thought to myself, ‘Yah, that’s a rough problem that I hadn’t even considered’.

There are some unwritten rules when competitive male cyclists ride together, one of them being, Code: 63757XG: Any and all signs on the road stating “town city limits, or the like, shall constitute a finish line, and shall hither to be fiercely battled over”. On one particular ride with Deke on the back, I saw the town sign about the same time as another cycling friend who was with us. There was no time to explain. I just started hammering while yelling, “We gotta go! We gotta go!” Deke didn’t require any explanation either. We, all three of us, were making a Mark Cavendish sprint for the line. I’m not sure if we won or lost; funny thing was, I don’t remember us talking about that. If it were me, I would’ve been asking, ‘what the hell just happened?’

He always wanted to know how far we went. I never cared enough to have a bike computer. After his wife dropped him off one time, he lickety split installed a computer on my tandem while I stood there and watched.

On one occasion, Deke and I were riding out in Missouri wine country, what I also call, hill country. This area has some beautiful steep, winding roads that are so lightly traveled and narrow that they don’t even warrant, or rather, have room for, a painted line down the middle. These are like candy to me. While careening down a particularly fast descent, following behind fellow diehard rider Eric Buckley, it had become apparent that we were about to overcook the upcoming turn. Eric slammed on the brakes while letting out a yell. I also hit the brakes as hard as possible, then let them back off as I leaned the tandem hard into the turn. The few seconds of exhilaration quickly became uneventful and Deke and I went back to our regularly scheduled conversation. I would’ve been absolutely compelled to ask, “Did I almost die?!” But Deke seemed plenty happy to just let sleeping dogs lie.