A Time in My Life When Everything Changed by Bill Humphreys
“Selling my car to buy a bicycle in order to keep my driver’s license.”
I was living at the beach in San Diego just doing odd jobs with no plans, or goals in life, when the moving violation tickets I was accumulating with my red Austin Healey became a threat to losing my precious California driving license.
I say “precious” because it was a solid piece of identification that had my picture and a local address which proved that I “belonged” and was not just a transient passing through.
I had to go before the judge, who admonished me for my failure to appear for previous violations and he took my driver’s license for two weeks, with a stern promise that I would lose it for good if I got another ticket in the next year.
I sold the Healey the next day and bought myself a $110 Raleigh 10-speed bicycle. This would ensure that I would not get another ticket, but at the same time, I had no idea how this simple act would change my life.
My bike commuting to work, along with weekend rides up the coast, became an exhilarating escape for me, and then I showed up for a San Diego Bike Club time trial race and I got hooked on bike racing. I had great results in my first 3 Novice races and was moved up a class and could not finish a race, so I gave it up but still loved riding my bike.
It was an inauspicious beginning to a career that would completely surpass any previous visions I may have had as a high school or college miler on the track team.
I still wanted to make a statement on the bike and in the summer of 1972, I rode my bike from San Diego to Quebec City, then down through Vermont to my hometown of East Hartford, Connecticut.
I didn’t know where the bike could really take me over the next 20 years, but this trip set my cycling career in motion beyond my wildest dreams. This would be just the beginning of my 50-year odyssey with the bike as my instrument of personal growth and education.
I would end up getting haircuts, shaving my beard and legs, while riding more expensive bikes and competing internationally for the USA. Then I became a USA Team coach and travelled with teams to Europe and South America, before transitioning into race promotion and ending up as a special events manager for Bicycling Magazine.
I am 79 years old now and rode my bike 6000 miles this past year, so that simple act of selling my car to save my driver’s license continues to be the time in my life when everything changed.