Roy Wallack R.I.P.

One more day!  

That's what remains, after today, of 2020.  For many of us, this year can't end quickly enough.  In addition to the pandemic, natural disasters and all of the other awful events of the world, it seems that so many people (at least of the ones I know) have suffered some tragedies, disasters or setbacks of one kind or another. Or we had plain and simple bad luck:  After nearly half of century of cycling with no serious accidents (a wrecked bike and a few minor injuries), I was--in little more than three months' time--face-planted  and doored.

The face-plant left me with head trauma that, fortunately, didn't result in permanent damage.  I wish I could say the same for Arielle, the bike that started my Mercian obsession.  The dooring didn't do much harm to Negrosa, my vintage Mercian Olympic, but left me with a whole bunch of stitches, a strained muscle and sprained knee.  I'm just starting to get my energy back.

Roy Wallack (right) with Gordon Wright during the 2008 TransRockies Run.

Things could have been worse, though.  On Saturday the 19th, Roy Wallack rode his mountain bike down a steep trail near Malibu, California. He took a fall--no one is sure of how or why, but friends who were riding with him say that it might have been caused by a medical issue.  Whatever the circumstance, the fall resulted in Roy's head hitting a large rock.  

His friends, an EMT and cardiologists who happened upon the scene performed CPR on him until a helicopter arrived.  The rescuers' attempts to save him were for naught.

A terrible irony of that crash is that Wallack hired a personal trainer for his father who "has no disabilities and comes from a long line of centenarians" but whose "problem" was "obvious":  the Easy Boy chair he "hadn't left.. in 30 years (except for Costco and cleaning up in the yard after the dogs)."  The trainer called Wallach's 90-year-old father to urge him onto the treadmill as he's been housebound by COVID-19.

Roy, who intended to ride, run, swim and participate in other outdoor adventures on his way to becoming the latest in his family's line of centenarians, only made it to 64 years old.  But his time was certainly a journey:  While he didn't have the archetypal body of a cyclist or runner, he pedaled Paris-Brest-Paris and many other rides, ran marathons and participated in all manner of outdoor sports, sometimes competitively but more often for the adventure. 

That is what made his writing--for publications such as Bicycling, Runners' World, Bicycle Guide and Outside; and in his books and the Los Angeles Times' Outdoor section--so engaging.  He wrote the way he approached cycling, running and other outdoor activities:  as an adventurer and enthusiast rather than as a "jock." He rarely wore lycra; in the baggy shorts he usually wore, wannabe racers might have seen him as a "Fred."  To me, though, he embodied and expressed the essence of what makes cycling, running, hiking and other outdoor sports lifetime activities rather than games that can be experienced only as a spectator after one reaches a certain age.