Article originally published on the 2017 #TDFBBT Original Rider Guide and Program. Click on the image below to download a PDF of the article and enjoy a first-person account of the origins of the world's largest charitable bike ride.

I’ve been acquainted with Steve Bauman, the father of the TD Five Boro Bike Tour, since my days with Bike New York, which began nearly a decade ago, but I’ve never really known him: I was in communications, and Steve’s forte was logistics, so he and I rarely had occasion to interact until I found myself in the command center at Fort Wadsworth at the end of that year’s Tour. Steve would invariably be seated next to longtime Tour stalwart Fred Jones, aka the Voice of God, whose jovial baritone worked like a warm breeze to ease the tension in...

The following was written for Beth Heyde in 2020 Death illuminates the path for the living: it invites us to look at our lives differently, to consider how we might be better stewards of however much time we have left. So every eulogy, in a sense, is the story of the living—those whose presence bears witness to the absence. And that’s the extent of what I hope to do here—to simply bear witness. I could never do justice to the story of Beth’s life, but by providing a glimpse into our friendship I hope that I might give a sense...