MY DAD, THE LEGEND, PART II

When Ed Anacker Made Cyclists Eat His Dust

By John Anacker, Guest Writer, 2-08-07

John Anacker and his brothers grew up in the shadow of an outdoor legend when their town was a different place and the West a different kind of region.  As the sons of Bozeman’s legendary athletic hedonist Ed Anacker, now a spry octogenarian, they remember slogs with their patriarch who defined himself by acts of extreme physical endurance — this in an age well before the word “ultra” and lucrative sponsorship deals ever entered the vocabulary of American recreation.  As the longtime head of the chemistry department at Montana State University, Ed Anacker in his free time put men one third his age to shame, including when he designed the brutal course of the notorious Ed Anacker Bridger Ridge Run held every summer in Bozeman.  In writer John Anacker’s first essay about his father, he chronicle a climb to the pinnacle of Montana’s highest summit, Granite Peak. With this sweet second piece, he tells the tale of what happened when his dad raced a beater bike against the fashion and techno mavens of modern cycling.  —Todd Wilkinson

Essay by John Anacker

My father has absolutely no fashion sense.

My older brother who witnessed my dad’s first bicycle race in the summer of 1973 can attest to this fact.  He would ask you to picture in your mind a crowd of eager cyclists filling up Bozeman’s Main Street, pushing and shouldering their way to the starting line.  Ahead of them is a 40-mile course that travels west out of town, into the country, up and down hills and then back to where it began.

Most of the racers are young studs decked out in bright silk jerseys, tight black bicycle shorts, leather shoes with pedal clips and those smarmy tiny visor hats that the French bicyclists always wear.  Many have state-of-the-art 10 speeds with narrow tires, slender frames, leather seats and fancy European brand names.  Mixed in with them is my dad: he’s wearing a plain white T-shirt, a little old and frayed—you wouldn’t want to get a nice new one all sweaty—and a pair of chlorine bleached aquamarine swim trunks.

On his feet are gum soled, blue canvas boat shoes and, worst of all, brown dress socks.  He is sitting on a prehistoric one-speed bike, with a rusty steel frame, handles that sweep wide like the horns of a Texas steer, balloon tires, a cushioned seat with heavy springs and a single, barely functioning brake.  This mechanical beast is so huge and heavy, that the only way my dad can get it started, or go up a hill, is to stand up on the pedals and thrust down with all his weight. 

My father also does not look like a bicyclist.  He is a big barrel-chested brute, more a wrestler than anything else.  With his thinning, graying hair and broad, slightly stooped shoulders he just doesn’t fit in amongst the long limbed, chiseled chinned young bucks surrounding him.
A murmur ripples through the crowd as the owner of a local sports shop wheels out the first place prize, a brand new Peugeot, alloy-frame, 10 speed.  Veteran bicyclists and first time racers eye the trophy with greedy eyes.  The most confident among them next size up their competition.  They think: “Who will give me the most trouble, Joch on his 12 speed ‘La’Goatcheese XL’?  Or maybe Carlos over there in the puce wind shirt?” They snigger when their jaundiced eyes fall upon my dad.  Most believe, “He’s the one who will drop out first; he’s old, he’ll never make 40 miles, certain not on that bike!”

The thing that these bon-vivants do not know is that my father has been doing endurance events since before most of them were born.  He has been climbing to the top of mountains, hiking to distant alpine lakes and skiing deep into the wilderness for years and years.  Stamina, whether the result of genetics or just a lifetime of arduous physical challenges, was and is my father’s athletic forte.  Many people, fellow athletes, coaches, competitors, have told me, that my dad can, whether on a hike, marathon or bike tour, literally go forever and never become tired.  When I was a kid I used to marvel at his legs; they looked like carved marble.

Once introduced to it, my father was immediately hooked on bicycling.  If there was a bike race within a hundred miles he would go to it.  Soon he was traveling across country to participate in National bike races put on by the United State Cycling Federation.  He did well in his age group, often winning second or third but, unfortunately, never first.  The races were just a mere 25 miles, never long enough for his true gift to kick in.  If the races had been 200 miles, he would have never lost.

When my father was not competing he was training, taking long rides from one end of the Gallatin Valley to the other.  Back in the 70s’ there was little traffic around Bozeman and the surrounding farmlands had not been disfigured yet by urban sprawl.  There were plenty of country lanes down which you could pedal for hours and not meet more than a couple cars.  Occasionally, I would accompany my father on one of these trips.
There was one road that I particularly liked biking with my father.  It was west of Bozeman near a small farming community named Churchill and it wound its way over low rolling hills and along a creek bottom.

The nearby farms had big two story barns and small neat homes surrounded by groves of willow and evergreen trees.  In the meadows were herds of black and white dairy cows lounging on their chest or methodically cropping grass.  The fields were green with new wheat, the fallow strips black with moist earth and the distant mountains covered by a heavy mantle of snow, brilliant white in the clear, cool late spring air.  The quiet was magnificent; broken only by the rhythmic rattle of the bike chain and hum of the tires.  You could hear meadowlarks in the fields, chickadees in the trees, the trilling croak of red winged blackbirds along the stream and the wind whispering through the grass growing in the borrow pits.  I biked this road three times; my father transversed it a hundred.

When he was feeling more adventurous he had another “little” tour he liked to take.  From home he would travel up over the Bozeman pass to Livingston, a grueling trek of 25 miles.  From there, he would travel down the Paradise Valley to the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park – add on 75 miles – and then through the park via Madison Junction – another 50 miles.  After an ice cream cone (or two) in West Yellowstone, he would return to Bozeman via the Gallatin Canyon—tack on another hundred miles.  Total distance: 250 miles, all in one day, sun rise to sun set.  Not bad for a sixty or so year old man.

In order to accomplish this feat my father had to be in incredible shape.  You just don’t train a few months to ride 250 miles in a day; it requires a life time of strenuous activity and an iron constitution. 

Once, while in college at Montana State University in the early 1940s, he impulsively bet a fellow student that he could climb Mt. Baldy in the time between breakfast and dinner.  He didn’t start at the trail head five miles out of town, but from their shared rental house in the middle of Bozeman. This condition doubled the round trip up the mountain to roughly twenty miles.  I image my father standing up from the breakfast table, throwing down his napkin and walking out the door and on his way. 

He lost the bet, by just a few minutes, and it was not because he became worn out.  He tried to take a shortcut and ended up wading through chest deep snow, an obstacle that would have probably killed anyone else, it just made him late.

Now those slick young punks on their tricked out bikes didn’t know what they were facing when they saddled up to my father at the starting line back in 1973.  Sure, when the gun sounded and everyone sprinted away, they left my poor father behind, gamely pumping his jalopy up to speed. 
During the first few minutes of the race, the course was choked with one big crowd of cyclists, everyone jockeying for position.  But, as the miles past, an elite group separated itself from pack.  This set of racers grimly zipped along, wheels whirring, drafting each other in a long line, hunched over their 10 speeds like so many Euro trash playboys in their gaudy jerseys.  Soon the best of the best were by themselves, the milling mob of amateurs, pretenders, unworthies and athletically ungifted completely out of eyesight.

The tail of the lead group must have heard it first: my father’s distant huffing as he crept up behind them.  Perhaps this raised an eyebrow or two among the serious contenders, but little concern.  The old man was just making his move and would soon tire and drop out.  But then, as time past, annoyance transmuted into disbelief and then into incredulous horror as this bumpkin superman on his rusty dino-bike did not fall away but instead inched closer, and closer and closer.

My father’s monster bike had one virtue: the enormous size difference between the drive sprocket and the rear wheel gear.  For every rotation of the former the later spun around exponentially more times.  With my father’s granite legs for an engine the bike-o-saurus built up speed like a locomotive; until it became an unstoppable, inexorable, elemental force hurtling along at warp speed.  The racket was tremendous as the chain whipsawed around the gears, the balloon tires seared into the asphalt and the entire frame groaned with structural stress.

As the finish line approached, my dad gleefully worked himself up next to the other riders.  They shot him quick, hate-filled glances and cursed him through gritted teeth.  Then slowly, but surely, he passed them by, one after another.  As my father rocketed over the finish line there was a huge goofy smile plastered across his face.  As well there should be, for he had won.  He beat them all (in spite of his fashion faux pas) and took home the brand new bike.

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