Dan Casey

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We were somewhere around mile 85. Despite having logged eight mostly rainy hours in the saddle, John Kuka wasn't giving up. Only 15 more miles and the Durham, N.C., bicyclist would complete his first "century" bike ride. We came to a hill on a rural road in Rockbridge County. Two people watched from the front porch of a home.

"Only half a mile to go, then you've got a nice long downhill stretch," one of the onlookers shouted.

Kuka, 30, gripped the handlebars of his café racer, downshifted and slowly pushed his body and bike up the rise. It was one of a almost countless number of such battles with gravity that day. His yellow jersey was streaked with grime. A bit of chain grease decorated his face. He ground his way up to the top.

A short time later, Kuka and his pal Fred Bower, 33, rolled into the Buchanan fairgrounds, where their wives Katie and Ronnie (and 15-month-old Jack Kuka, ) greeted them with hugs. They were the last of 110 riders in the 2005 Artie Levin Century, sponsored by The Blue Ridge Bicycle Club.

And Artie Levin, God rest his soul, would have been proud.

About Artie

I never met Artie Levin, who was the founder of the Blue Ridge Bicycle Club. But he was such a legendary Roanoke character that there's plenty of information about him out there. By the time he died, in 1996, at age 82, the Atlantic City transplant was a bonafide Western Virginia personality.

Artie came to Roanoke during World War II, and worked as a flight instructor at Woodrum Field (now Roanoke Regional Airport). He made his true mark on the city starting in 1961 when he began an exercise show, "Mr. Fitness," on WDBJ-TV (Channel 7), and later on WSLS-TV (Channel 10). It was small town, often corny, and viewers loved every minute.

Artie also wrote a daily exercise column for The Roanoke Times whose plainly stated purposed was to "help men, women and children to enjoy life to its most exciting potential instead of settling for mere existence."

"The medical profession can't find a cure for everything," Levin said in a 1979 interview. "But a lot of things can be prevented. ...You don't want to play Russian roulette with your health."

Artie's reign as the local Jack La Lanne lasted until 1988, and by then he was one of the most recognizable figures in Roanoke.

"Artie was the friendliest man in the world," said John Harkrader, former general manager of WDBJ, told a Roanoke Times reporter after Artie's death in 1996. "There just wasn't anything aloof about him."

Exercise was a serious business for Artie, and he was much more than a guy who merely liked to ride. He lifted weights in the Roanoke YMCA until the day he died. Well into his 70s, his weekly routine included 150 miles of cycling, 15 miles running and 5 miles swimming. He competed in, and won, his age group in triathlons decades after most adults have given up for good on the strenuous stuff.

The photos in the The Roanoke Times' morgue show various points in his career. In one, he displays his gigantic biceps. In another, shot when he was probably in his 50s, he's performing what dancers call "a Russian" -- a mid-air split in which his fingers touch his toes.

Many long-time BRBC members consider Artie the heart and soul of the early Blue Ridge Bicycle Club. Within months of his death, the club organized the fundraising ride in his name, which has continued on a mostly annual basis.

The ride

The Artie Levin Century is usually held the last Sunday of each September, and there are three distances riders can choose. The 45-mile option is rolling, with no big climbs but plenty of shorter ones.

The 70-mile course has one decent climb (I reckon it's about a mile) and the 100-miler passes up and over Goshen Pass, which is 1.6 miles of strenuous grinding on top of the aforementioned climb on the 70-miler. The good part is, after Goshen Pass the next 18 or so miles are mostly downhill. All the hard work is definitely worth it.

A total of 110 riders rode the Artie Levin Century in 2005, when it was misty in the morning and rained for much (60 miles) of the day. In the 2004 Artie the turnout was 150 riders.

Doug Clary and I have been the 100-mile "sweepers" for the past two Arties. Our job, if you want to call it that, is to deliberately hang back and help ensure everyone makes it in. And that's how we happened upon John Kuka and Fred Bower.

Their own cheerleaders

It was back in March when Kuka, assistant dean for communications at the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism hatched a plan of riding his bike 100 miles in a single day.

By April, he'd laid out a training plan and enlisted his pal Bower, a software developer for IBM, in the endeavor. Three or four days a week they'd do short rides alone. Each weekend they'd get together for a longer spin.

Kuka's wife Katie, who's a triathlete, made some plans as well.

A colleague of hers at work found online details of the Artie Levin Century. It was billed as relatively easy, a judgment many would say is subjective in the extreme. Kuka and Bower chose to do it, while Katie conspired with Ronnie, Fred's wife, to celebrate their mates' accomplishment.

On Sept. 24, the two couples packed their cars and headed to a motel off Interstate 81 near Buchanan. Kuka and Katie brought along their son Jack, who's the spitting image of his dad.

Before the trip, Katie and Ronnie created T-shirt decals with their husbands' names and funky, multicolored bikes. They donned the shirts and scoured the bike route in a car, with Jack in tow. At each rest stop they were waiting, with a camera and cheers, as they urged the cyclists on.

At the ride's end, Bower cracked a beer and got a big hug from Ronnie. "I'm pretty smelly," he protested. Right after the post-ride meal, they were driving back to Durham.

"I know," Ronnie replied. "And I'm going to love that smell all the way home."