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One of
the things I love about randonneuring is that it compresses and intensifies
physical sensations and emotional responses.
One can experience the lowest of lows and the highest of highs on the
same ride. Sometimes, only a few
kilometers or a control stop separate these swings in feeling and mood.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this aspect of randonneuring
in relation to the death of Mitsuaki “Micky” Inagaki this spring.
Micky was killed by a truck driver while he was riding on
Twizel Road in the Tiki Tour in New Zealand on March 15, 2017. At the time of his death, Micky was 61 years
old, and was the president of Audax Japan.
He had previously been in charge of inviting and recruiting foreign
riders to participate in the Hokkaido 1200 and other events in Japan.
Micky began his international randonneuring career by
completing PBP in 2011. Over the next
five years, he completed 16 grandes
randonnées, in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, and he finished PBP again in
2015. In 2016 alone, he completed the
Okayama 1200 and Hokkaido 1200 in Japan, the 1001 Miglia in Italy, and the
Cracker Swamp 1200 in the U.S.
But neither Micky’s biography nor his record of accomplishments adequately conveys who he was.
As sad as his death was, it was wonderful to learn how many people had
been touched by Micky. In the days and weeks
after his death, Facebook was full of tributes to Micky, together with tales of
memorable experiences and kind gestures and words Micky had bestowed on others.
And there were lots of pictures. Micky loved to take pictures of himself and
others, and he was the frequent target of other people’s cameras.
Micky’s earliest randonneuring experiences were also among
my earliest. I didn’t see him at PBP in
2011, although we finished a mere 26 minutes apart. I was aware of Micky at the Cascades 1200 in
2012, and at London Edinburgh London in 2013, but I did not talk to him at
either event.
I really got to know Micky on the Super Brevet Scandinavia
in August of 2013. We were both riding
at the back, I at my natural, plodding pace, and Micky leapfrogging me, as he
dealt with knee pain. We generally
didn’t ride side-by-side, but very often Micky would surge past me, laughing,
waving and taking pictures, only to stop a bit up the road to rest his knee.
Micky was a presence.
If you were around him, you knew it.
The photographic record shows that he was sometimes close-cropped and
clean shaven, but the Micky I knew was long-haired, exuberant and a bit wild in
his appearance. He was invariably
cheerful, even when he was suffering from knee pain. And everyone knew Micky by his smile.
One of the beautiful things about SBS is that it involves
six ferry rides, with five in Denmark and one in Norway, ranging from about 20
minutes to nearly two hours in length. It
was on those ferry rides that I got to know Micky.
My Japanese is non-existent, and Micky’s English is
limited. But Micky had a Ph.D. in
nonverbal communication, and our conversations involved lots of gesticulation
and repetition.
I learned a lot about Micky on those ferry rides. I knew that he had training in medicine, but
had retired. I knew that he had a house
in the mountains in Japan, and that he was devoted skiing as well as
cycling. And I also learned that he
wanted me to do to the Hokkaido 1200.
With Micky’s encouragement, I made plans to do the Hokkaido
1200 in 2014. Because of some
complications in my schedule, though, I bailed out of that ride, and instead
did a newly established 1200K around Bordeaux, France. I used to think it lucky that I had changed
my plans because that the Hokkaido 1200 that year was stopped mid-ride by a
dangerous thphoon. Now I regret the
decision, because I lost forever the chance to ride again with Micky.
My most memorable experience with Micky came as we were
riding in Sweden. Late at night, in the
darkest and most remote corner of Sweden, my headlight quit working. At that point, I had been on the road for
over three weeks, having begun my journey with LEL. I had a new light, the Luxos U, which turned
out not to be as watertight as one might wish.
My Luxos U quit working suddenly and irredeemably.
I had also lost my backup light during a protracted
roadside repair session on LEL. I had acquired
a handle-mounted flashlight in Germany, but it was too feeble to navigate by.
I survived that night through the kindness of Wolfgang Nitsche,
a German rider who stuck with me so that I could see my way forward. But when I woke up the next morning, I did
not know how I would get through the last night of the ride. I didn’t think that I could ask anyone to
ride with me at my slow pace.
When Micky heard of my plight, at the last control in
Sweden before we entered Norway, he unstrapped his own back-up light from the
fork of his bike, handed to me, and gestured to me that I should strap it on my
helmet. I gestured back to him in a way
that said, “What about you?”
Then Micky said, “It is important for me to finish, but it
is also important to you to finish.”
I often had trouble understanding Micky, but this time I
understood both the literal meaning and the significance of what he had said. He did not have to repeat himself. And I will never forget those words.
With the help of Micky’s light, I navigated the steep hills
of Norway. We finished together in
Kristiansand, Norway in the last hour of SBS, badly beat up but gleeful. For me, the finish was all the sweeter
because I finished with Micky and with his help.
I loved Micky. I only
knew him for a few days, but our experiences were intense, and they are still
vivid to me. We rode together the roller coaster of emotions that define a
1200K, and we survived. I would have
loved him even if he had not helped me.
But the fact that helped me was of a piece with everything I know about
him. He was a generous soul.
Sometimes I think that the purpose of randonneuring is to
create opportunities for generosity. We
put ourselves in difficult, challenging situations, and, while we are not
reckless, we know that we take risks and make ourselves vulnerable. Very often, we need the help of others to
succeed.
I am, by nature, a forgetful person, and so I often need
the generosity of others. More than
once, someone has handed me a fistful of cash on a ride when I have forgotten
or lost my wallet. One time, I arrived
at a 200K in Ohio, only to discover that I had forgotten my trunk bag,
containing most of my tools and my spare inner tubes. When the riders around me learned of my
plight, they started giving me what they could spare—one offered a tire lever,
another an inner tube, and another an inflator.
When I started the ride, the back pockets of my jersey were full. And so was my heart.
For me, any one act of generosity has value and meaning
beyond that event. Generous acts help us
to believe that this is a benevolent world, populated by good people who wish
us well. That hill might be brutal, or
riding that stretch against a headwind and without enough water might be
daunting, but there are people at the next control or along the road who will
help us, and who will make it better. A
bit of kindness makes hardship manageable.
Randonneuring is a sport that is unusually preoccupied with
awards, medals and accomplishments. I
don’t object to that; I have a drawer full of medals myself, and I am proud of
what I have accomplished. At the end of
the day, though, we will be remembered for the good that we do for others, and
not for the number of Super Randonneur series we have completed.
Sometimes, the thought of Micky’s death is nearly
unbearable. That tragic crash on Twizel
Road in New Zealand forces us to ponder all of the imponderable questions of
death. How can this person who was so
vibrant and vital suddenly be gone? He
was doing what I do; what does his death mean for my future? And, for those on the ride, perhaps the most
difficult of all: Why him and not me?
While we do not have satisfactory for any of these
questions, we can find comfort and solace in Micky’s goodness. I will remember the light he lent me, and the
words he spoke to me. Others have
similar stories to tell of Micky’s generosity. Mark Thomas, who was also on
that fateful ride in New Zealand, says it well: “Micky was generous with his
joy.”
We
remember Micky through the good he has done and through the joy that he has
given us. At the end of the day, isn’t
this the best that any of us can hope for?
