Friday, July 25, 2008
Roanoke city attorney is 60 years strong
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Bill Hackworth crosses the bridge over the Roanoke River on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Explore Park.
The candles were still smoldering on Bill Hackworth's 50th birthday cake when he started planning for No. 60.
And it wasn't that he figured he better start socking away cash to pay for a fancy cruise or trip to an exotic overseas locale.
He just wanted to ride his bike.
He starts today, with plans to cover the entire Blue Ridge Parkway over the next eight days.
"I've literally been thinking about this trip for 10 years," said Hackworth, Roanoke's city attorney.
The trip is actually a sequel to a ride Hackworth took when he turned 50.
"That was the best vacation of my life," Hackworth recalled. "I had so much fun the last time that when I got to Afton I didn't want to stop."
The first time Hackworth rode with three friends. This time he's riding solo.
His mission is also about more than just enjoying the scenery and getting through the 469 miles.
A member of the board of the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Hackworth hopes to spread the word about the group's efforts to improve the Parkway.
"You end up talking to a lot of people," said Hackworth, whose birthday is Tuesday. "I'll be carrying pamphlets and membership applications, and have some signs on my Jeep."
Piloting the jeep will be Hackworth's one-person support crew -- his wife.
Ann Hackworth will keep her husband supplied with Gatorade, bananas, fig newtons and the other types of fuel that can keep a rider going for 60 mountainous miles a day.
This is something of a birthday vacation for her, too. She turns 48 a few days after her husband's birthday. She said she is happy to be making the trip.
"He's talked about this as long as I've known him and I know this means a lot to him," said Hackworth, who is a page designer at The Roanoke Times. "My present is we won't be camping."
To Bill Hackworth's good friend and fellow cyclist Bert Spetzler, the trip sounds like a perfect vacation.
"I think it's a great idea," said Spetzler, a 58-year-old physician who lives in Roanoke County. "You get out in the open with the fresh air. You get to exercise part of the day then have fun the rest of the day."
The exercise part won't be too easy.
With its tens of thousands of feet of climbing, the Blue Ridge Parkway is hardly the spot for a leisurely ride. Throw in unfriendly July weather, with potentially huge variables in temperatures and constant threats of thunderstorms, and the ride becomes even tougher.
During the last ride, Hackworth remembers having to huddle in a bathroom with his fellow riders to try to stay warm on a chilly damp day.
"We got hypothermic," he said. "Then two days later we were in the Roanoke Valley and it was 100 degrees."
To prepare for this ride Hackworth has been on his bike as much as possible.
"But I haven't trained nearly as much as I did the last time," he admitted.
In 1998 Hackworth estimates he put in between 3,000 and 4,000 miles as he readied for the ride. But there was a big difference in those miles.
At the time Hackworth, who has two grown children living in Richmond, was living in Yorktown.
"We had one little hill," he said. "It was pretty steep, but it was less than a block long."
He rode laps around town so he could do the hill over and over.
Despite the flatland training he felt fairly confident heading north out of Cherokee, N.C., on that first day, which, with about 5,000 feet of overall elevation gain, is among the toughest sections of the south-to-north route.
"I tried to attack the mountain," Hackworth said. "I rode about halfway up and I pooped out."
He sat by the side of the road and waited for his friends, and took a more conservative approach to the rest of the ride.
Training for the mountains got easier for Hackworth in 1999 when he was hired as the city attorney for Roanoke, where he had been an assistant city attorney from 1978 to 1988.
His first mountainous training rides that first summer back in Roanoke were tough. At first he couldn't make it up Mill Mountain without stopping a couple of times.
Along the way Hackworth has had setbacks in his training, including persistent sinus problems that have kept him off the bike. He also had to deal with the shock, grief and stress of the unexpected death of his first wife, Judy, from a brain aneurism in 2000.
Still he continued to ride with an eye toward his 2008 Parkway trip.
Tuesday evening Hackworth pedaled his 21-speed Trek up the Mill Mountain spur road with relative ease, although he wasn't thrilled about the 90-degree temperatures.
"It's usually kind of cool in here," he said on a shaded section halfway up the mountain. "But not tonight."
Hackworth is usually among the 40 or so cyclists who gather Tuesdays for what's known as the Beer Ride because riders get together afterward at a pub in downtown Roanoke.
He usually starts before most riders, but often sees plenty as they pass him along the 20-mile route. Tuesday he was perplexed as he reached the Blue Ridge Parkway and only two other riders had gone by.
"I wonder where everybody is?" he said. "Usually a bunch of guys pass me right about here.
"We've become pretty good friends."
Tuesday night's turnout ended up being pretty good, meaning Hackworth is probably getting in better shape than he thinks.
Spetzler doesn't expect his friend to have any trouble.
"Sixty miles a day is not too taxing for somebody who is in shape," said Spetzler, who is trying to talk Hackworth into riding across the country with him two years from now. "These endurance sports are all about attitude. He's got the right attitude."
Hackworth knows the trip won't be without its surprises. And he's OK with that.
"I'm looking forward to the adventures," he said. "You're always having adventures on a trip like this."
