Biker’s Diary: The Best of Ten Years
One woman’s adventures in life, both on and off her bicycle.
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BIKER’S DIARY: The Best of Ten Years One woman’s adventures in life, both on and off her bicycle 21 October 2009 Ten years goes by very quickly When someone asks why I write this column, I have had no ready answer. Thinking about that seems timely right now, because this week marks an important anniversary: the first “Biker’s Diary” column appeared in what was then the River Valley Reader on October 25, 1999. It has already been ten years of weekly columns! At one time when I was on a panel of community columnists for a different newspaper, one of the other writers responded very quickly to the “Why write” question: “I write to make sense of the world around me.” I tried that on, but it didn’t fit me. I finally concluded that I write for many reasons, and in looking over ten years’ worth of columns, that still holds true: I write to learn, laugh, and feel. And if anyone reads it, hopefully they will do the same. At first, I wrote a lot about the joy of being out on a bike, and the marvels of the available trails both here when our place was still a weekend spot, and in Lincoln NE where we were living at the time. Often things that happened on the bike or on the trails would remind me of other stuff that would then become fodder for my next column. Sometimes I write to remember people and how they were important to others, as I did when I wrote about Charlie Pick-up, whom I believe was Minnesota’s first environmentalist. In the 1940’s and early ‘50’s he wandered along the roads near my hometown picking up trash, sorting it as useable and not- into various gunnysacks he carried along. Another time I wrote about one of my earliest Lanesboro friends, Kathy Brewster, and how I missed her presence in town after her untimely death. I have written to commemorate important events. After 9/11/01, when I was stuck in Denver for four days enroute to Bangkok, Thailand, I wrote about that experience, and in fact, wrote about it for three weeks in a row! And I’ve been able to sometimes give some needed publicity to deserving organizations seeking help from the public, my favorite being the recent Honor Flights. A lot of lesser events have also been topics for my column over the years, such as when the raccoons got into the food I had left out of doors in what I called my ‘refrigerator annex.’ I’ve written about birthdays and anniversaries, about the dog, Mugs, at the then-local gas station, and about the neighbor’s dog and the other neighbor’s cattle. Travel has been a frequent topic, both domestic and international trips. I’ve written about cultural differences, and going to weddings and funerals in Southeast Asia. Sometimes writing has been a way to cope with stress. Never was that more true than after I had been diagnosed with a particularly virulent form of blood cancer, Acute Myeloid Leukemia. From the day of the diagnosis, my Biker’s Diary was my constant companion. I became the “queen of sheen” with my bald head, and writing about those experiences was for me an excellent way of dealing with them. It’s been a great ride over the past ten years. Now, because of looking over my notebooks filled with the columns, I have made two decisions. Some readers have asked if I was ever going to put these in a book. I am, and will be finishing up the details of getting Biker’s Diary: The Best of Ten Years published, maybe soon. Interested readers can watch this column for information on how to get a copy. Second, I decided I like a lot of what I wrote, right from the start, and a good place to end this week’s page is at the beginning. (So, on this date in the newspaper version, I reprinted the very first page of my Biker’s Diary! In this ten-year anniversary collection, just read on: it is next!)
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About the Book
Biker’s Diary started in 1999 as a weekly column in a local newspaper then known as the River Valley Reader, now the Bluff Country Reader. Located in a very popular tourist area, the publisher’s plan was a newspaper that emphasized local arts, culture, and recreation. Dr. Jan applauded that effort, and had spent a year as a community columnist for another paper, so she submitted some sample columns and proposed this column, written by a biker. Ten successful years later, she was asked by a faithful reader is she intended to publish the columns in a book. That started her thinking, and she asked her publisher for permission to do so, which was granted. At the beginning, Dr. Jan was living in Lincoln, and commuting to her and Spouse Roger’s country place near Lanesboro MN. Upon retirement, they chose that country place as their primary residence. Those locations – and the people along the way – provided fodder for the mill of writing, as have the many places around the world to which they have both traveled and/or at which Dr. Jan has worked. The column started out as a way to capture the ambling and sometimes philosophical thoughts and experiences triggered by almost-daily time spent on a bike. When a serious illness got in the way of biking, the habit of writing about life became almost a tension reliever as she wrote about that experience. In the years since it started, the column has evolved into writing about anything and everything she and others experience in life. This book captures some of the best of those first ten years.
About the Author
Dr. Jan Meyer started riding a bike at an early age. And like most of us, dropped the bike as a form of either transportation or fun as soon as she could drive. Many years later, the bike trails of Southeast Minnesota and then Lincoln, Ne, called to her. And her bike again became both a way to go to and from places and, with enough bungee cords, a way to tote and haul anything; good exercise is an added bonus. And then she discovered it was also a good perch for philosophizing about life. Meyer holds a Ph. D. from the University of Minnesota, worked for United Airlines for many years, and was faculty at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota. She spent many years as a management development consultant for companies in the U.S. and Canada, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. She specialized in crisis management: preparation, prevention, and response for companies vulnerable to highly visible crises such as airlines and oil companies, among others. In “retirement”, she does more of the same along with volunteer work and continuing a long-time love of writing.