On Robin Williams, Bicyclist

On Robin Williams, Bicyclist

A super elite Masi: Robin Williams had perfect taste in bicycles.

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The death of Robin Williams was especially hard for bicyclists to digest. As details about his private life became public in the aftermath, I heard about his passion for bicycles. I looked into it. The reports didn’t exaggerate. He really did own over one hundred bikes—or, as he told a reporter in happier times, “too many to count.” He loved them. So he bought them, about ten a year, top-shelf racing frames, handcrafted, graced with the best gruppos. And he rode them too! He didn’t merely amass elite rigs in the manner of a collector-investor. No, Robin Williams covered long distances on his Cinelli, Serotta, Pegoretti, and dozens of other boutique brands. He rode far, fast, and well. To pose, to play parts, defined his career as an actor and comedian; in his avocation as a wheelman, however, he played himself. One need not be a pro to be all in, as Robin was with bicycles. Strip him of wealth and fame, and he was one of us, a fellow rider, and suddenly—gone forever.

This is why the discrepancy between Robin’s suicidal depression and the joy he found in bicycles is difficult for us cyclists to fathom. His misery must have been great indeed if bicycles couldn’t  assuage it. It was hard enough for millions of movie fans to accept the fact that the inner life of Robin Williams differed so much from the lives of the endearing, usually comic, characters he played on screen. It was yet harder for cyclists to realize that in the eleventh hour Robin’s bicycles and what they represented (freedom, speed, discovery, health) didn’t give him one last reason to live.

We all have lousy days, terrible days, heart-breaking days. We lose loved ones to accident and divorce. We read gruesome headlines, see bloody videos on CNN. Daily our faith is tested, and daily we struggle with demons both inside and out. To manage our suffering, we look for relief. Some of us look in the wrong places, take useless meds, seek risky fixes. Others jump on a bicycle, incorporating it into their everyday lives. In time, they can’t go a day without riding, whether as racers, commuters, messengers, tourists, or life-stylists. Bikes keep them centered, grounded, most at peace when spinning down the road.

Yes, depression can be allayed, at least temporarily, by riding a bike. But as Robin's suicide shows, the fulfillment found in cycling is no match for clinical depression. Neither is owning a warehouse full of fabulous frames. The quantity and quality don’t matter.

Naturally, the bike industry preaches otherwise. In “Robin Williams: I’m Lucky to Have Bikes in My Life” (Bicycling, 2003), Dan Koeppel—my source for the “ten a year” statistic above—writes, “Be jealous [of Robin Williams]. That’s okay. But imagine yourself rich, famous and velocified. Would you do it differently?”

It’s a dumb question, first because it shows Koeppel, mouthpiece for an industry, holding a superficial view of happiness, the more ironic since his example of bike-owning bliss is none other than a wealthy, not to mention universally beloved, celebrity whose huge assortment of the best bikes on the planet counted for nothing against the man’s depression. It’s also dumb because it assumes that readers of Bicycling magazine would, if financially able, acquire a Peter Weigle, then a René Herse, next a Merlin, a Moots, and—well, what’s your dream bike? Now add ninety-five more.

Koeppel assumes that jealousy is the default emotion for someone who doesn’t own, say, sixty or seventy bikes. But what about riders content with two or three? That would be me. On the basis of number of bikes owned, I’m jealous of no one. It takes months of regular use to dial in just one bike. So how could a person dial in ten of them a year? Think of the backlog! And imagine if this person wanted to mount a Brooks saddle on his new bikes. He’d never break one in, never know the comfort of a weathered B-17....

Far from making me jealous, Robin Williams’s velo-collection made me think of Leo Tolstoy’s story “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (1886). Very little, it turns out.

I neither question anyone’s right to buy as many bikes as he or she likes nor think less of Robin Williams for indulging his passion as he did. Yet his passing gave me occasion to reflect, as I’ve done here, on my own values as a cyclist in a consumer society. I spend 70% of my riding time on one bicycle, 30% on two others. That’s plenty. I wish had more time to ride, not more bikes to ride.

Roadysseus

10.23.14