The Ghost of Bicycle Larry

 For today, the Day of the Dead, there’s nothing like a good, spooky mystery.

While Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and others have written many spine-tingling tales, there is no shortage of real-life accounts of the scary and unexplainable (or yet-to—be-explained.)

Take Lawrence Farrell, a.K.a., Bicycle Larry—as an example. Fittingly enough, he lived—and perhaps died—in Maine, King’s home state.

Locals remember him as a friendly, if eccentric, presence. When people last remember seeing him, he was living with someone more menacing—Norris Perry, a.k.a. Lonesome Loon—in a trailer at the top of the Narrow Gauge Trail, near Windsor. 

As the name implies, the trail was a railroad route. It led to a Veterans’ Administration hospital and some locals say they hear the mournful cries of long-lost pass, especially at night during this time of year.

Anyway, Bicycle Larry was last seen in late October 2004. He didn’t collect his Social Security check the following month, or any time thereafter. Before taking his own life that Dece, Lonesome Loon left his sister a voicemail in which he confessed to killing Larry and disposing of his body by a brook behind the trailer.

Given the rugged terrain and long, harsh Maine winter, authorities couldn’t search in earnest until Spring. Neither Larry nor his bike have been found.

During the intervening twenty-one years, some have reported seeing a “spectral presence” of Bicycle Larry riding along the Narrow Gauge Trail—especially at this time of year.

Mid-Life Cycling Mysteries

I've been cycling for a long time.  Well, at least, I've been riding for longer than most people, though the current shape of my body might belie that. Still, even after more than three decades of riding even when I had no logical reason for doing so, there are still some things I can't explain.


Here's one of them:  In spite of my advancing age and declining strength, my past few rides--whether commutes or pleasure rides--have been faster and smoother than I expected them to be.  Now, what I am saying is completely unscientific: I am saying them mainly on the basis of having finished the rides I took in less time than I anticipated, or than I would normally take to do them.  And this has happened without any effort on my part to make to make "better" (i.e., faster) time.


What's more, I have noticed this on riding three of my four bikes:  Arielle, Tosca and Vera.  I guess if I want to make a really valid claim, I have to take Helene out, too. (It's been a month or so since I've ridden her.  I can rationalize it this way:  For the rides on which I would have taken Helene, I rode Vera in order to fine-tune her.)  But if I were to ride her with the intention of testing this hypothesis, it would sort of invalidate what I'm saying, wouldn't  it?


On the other hand, there have been times in my life when I was in much better shape than I'm in now, yet the rides were slower and more arduous than the past few have been.  


Have you, dear readers, experienced anything like what I've described?  If so, can you account for it in some way?