Nashville to Dickson

March 23, 2009

“You’re doing great, Bill!”

I didn’t feel great. In fact, I felt like a wrecked car on its terminal trip to the salvage yard. The future looked bleak, uncertain. As I strained to see ahead, life looked like a dead end street.

But Dr. Smith was an experienced surgeon. He was also brutally honest, no-nonsense, even gruff. Barely three weeks earlier he had operated on me, removing my colon for ulcerative colitis. At the time of the surgery, he himself—at age seventy—was recuperating from an auto accident. He still wore a large metal brace about his chest. He was a heavy smoker. Nothing seemed to stop him. And he was adamant that I was doing well. “Bill, the day I operated on you, you had one foot in the grave! You wouldn’t be alive now if we hadn’t operated when we did! You just need time to heal,” he insisted, almost angrily.

Maybe he was right. Maybe the end of the road up ahead was really just a ninety degree bend in the road.

In the fall of 1975, barely two months after Marcia and I married, the inflammatory bowel disease that had been smoldering in my body for two years suddenly burst into flame, putting me into St. Thomas Hospital for a ten week tenure of more pain and sickness than I had ever experienced. Drs. Richard Schneider and Roy Elam, excellent physicians both, struggled to no avail to bring me into remission as I wasted away to a skeletal wraith of my former self. Finally, they called in the late Dr. Daugh Smith to perform the life-saving surgery. It was a long recovery.

Those dark, uncertain days were but a distant memory as I stood outside St. Thomas Hospital recently with family and friends to celebrate God’s grace and my health at age fifty-five.

My bike ride across the state of Tennessee ended for the winter last November at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and Broadway in downtown Nashville. Now on this cloudy March Monday morning I was beginning again. The day would prove to be full of uncertainties. Would the rain hold off? Could we make it the five miles to the hospital for our 8:45 am celebration without being stopped by a flat tire (a common problem on major city streets)? Would anyone even be present besides Marcia? A new aspect of this ride was my partner Josh. Living in Ohio, he was not used to pedaling the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. Would we make our ultimate destinations of Montgomery Bell State Park that afternoon and Waverly the next day?

Many of my fears flew the coop as my son and I pedaled up the driveway into the St. Thomas complex about thirty minutes later. There waiting for us were a small group of family and friends, including two hospital representatives, Paul Lindsley and Jerry Kearney. And celebrate we did. The irony was not wasted on any of us. Here I was a senior citizen riding my bicycle across our great state and stopping in to salute the hospital where I lay dying as a young man. What a difference thirty-three years makes! And how gracious is our Lord. Paul snapped photos for the hospital newsletter. He and Jerry commented on the boost to morale their 1800 employees receive in hearing success stories from former patients.

The St. Thomas experience certainly lifted my spirits. But there were still clouds on the horizon—literally (and riding in the rain is no fun). Maybe the rain would hold off. I was becoming concerned, though, by another emerging problem: Josh was slowing down considerably on the steeper hills. I had forgotten about his knee injury from playing football a couple of years ago. Tennessee grades were taking more of a toll on it than flat Ohio roads. Would he and I be able to crest the dreaded Nine Mile Hill? (I was a little out of shape myself after a cold, wet winter.) My Dad had warned me once that it is not all downhill to Memphis. But “Nine Mile Hill”? What was it—nine miles worth of steep upgrade? We were greatly relieved as the nine mile marker came into view at the top of one not-so-daunting hill. The name merely referred to the distance out from town. We had crested the hill and lived to tell about it.

We pedaled out of Nashville, pausing just long enough to take pictures of Belle Meade Plantation. It was turning out to be a good dry day. Hugging the muddy Harpeth River, the highway wound its way through Pegram and past the Narrows of the Harpeth State Natural Area. Josh remembered well the day fifteen years ago that our family hiked around there and saw the tunnel and remains of an old forge run by Montgomery Bell (whose namesake state park would be our shelter that evening). We found a trilobite fossil back then near the old slag pond. Years earlier my high school pal John Claxton and I had camped a couple of nights at the top of a nearby ridge. I enjoyed reliving such memories and sharing them with Josh.

Still about six miles shy of White Bluff, we stopped a few minutes, ostensibly to check our map. A lunch break in that town could provide some needed refreshment. I was becoming increasingly concerned that Josh might have to end his part of the ride that evening, but I so wanted him to make it to Waverly on Tuesday and meet a cousin who lives there. When a grizzled local man of about sixty approached us on the roadside and asked if we needed directions, I confessed to him that the primary purpose of our stop was rest. We took the opportunity to ask him a question we would ask frequently after that: was the road ahead hilly or flat? He told us it was “uphill both ways” to White Bluff. But he assured us that a good Mexican restaurant awaited us there. I hoped so. My only previous recollection of the town was from my high school days when we passed through there on a long trip, pulling a pop-up camper behind our car. We had eaten lunch in a diner only to come out afterward and discover that someone had stolen the spare tire off the back of our camper.

El Monte Restaurante would be a more pleasant experience, however. It certainly lived up to its recommendation. It felt so good after thirty miles of pedaling to sit at the table wolfing down sizzling fajitas and drinking cold tea. We were amused at some of the local good ole boys’ attempts to communicate with the meseros waiting the tables. “Fway-go! Mooey cally-entay!” they exclaimed in mock protest, pointing at their enchiladas. Our delightful Latin dining experience was spoiled, however, as we mounted up and began to pedal off. I heard and felt the sickening bump, bump, bump that signaled a flat tire. Normally a flat is just a minor annoyance, a fifteen-minute fix. This one would prove to be a threat to the rest of my ride however. For try as I might, I could not get the tire properly inflated. It was badly out of round. We limped the few miles left to Montgomery Bell State Park, but I had no idea how to fix the problem.

Meanwhile, we encountered another challenge: the approach to the Inn at the park was a one-mile-long steep upgrade. I knew we could get up it, but I was sure it would be the straw to break the camel’s back for Josh. He had not complained all day, but I doubted he would want to tackle another day of such hills. And then, as if to add insult to injury, the desk clerk at the Inn could not find our reservation. She came up with a room for us anyway. It even had a nice view of the lake. I couldn’t enjoy it much, though, for trying to fix my back tire. So the day that started with uncertainties ended with the same.

But as I suggested to Josh that Marcia could drive out and pick him up the next morning, he asserted resolutely, “I want to try to make it to Waverly.” He had trained for this ride. He didn’t want to let a few hills stop him. Wonderful! If he was willing to try it one more day, I could bump, bump, bump my way into another town and perhaps find a way to fix my tire. Maybe that end of the road ahead was really just a bend in the road. The next morning would tell.