For much of Lorne Garrettson’s 82 years, cycling has been an integral part of his life. He biked to school every day as a kid growing up in Whittier, Calif. In high school, he got up at 4:40 every morning and rode his bike to deliver 250 pounds worth of the Los Angeles Times. The job earned him a scholarship to Pomona College. During and after college, the bike was Garrettson’s go-to mode of transportation.
“I’ve had my fingers on the cycling pot for a long time,” he said.
But Garrettson, a retired pediatrician from Sandy Spring, Md., also has made sure to share his love for bicycling with some of the most beloved people in his life. In fact, his biking legacy extends across three generations.
Over the years, he has made a 50-mile ride with each of his three daughters, and more recently, with each of his grandchildren.
On Wednesday, he capped this decades-old family tradition by going on a 50-mile ride with his youngest grandchild, Greta Garrettson-Taylor, 9. It was Garrettson’s last 50-mile ride, and Greta’s first.
They rode along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, heading north from Harpers Ferry for 25 miles before turning back for the homeward journey. Other family members joined the grandpa-granddaughter duo on the expedition.
“It was a very good ride. A beautiful day. Greta did very, very well. We did 52 miles,” Garrettson said shortly after finishing the ride.
“It was amazing. My family was so supportive,” Greta said as she savored a well-earned treat of rainbow sherbet and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
She loves “going really fast” and the “exhilarating” feeling of the wind in her face while biking, but admitted that she had been “a little bit nervous” before the ride. Being an avid soccer player and going on training rides with her uncle, dad, cousin and grandpa, however, had prepared her well.
At one point, she dropped the bike’s handlebars on her toe when she tried to pick up her bike. “That hurt like crazy, and I wanted to stop biking,” she said. But her family urged her on, and as she cruised the final two miles, she belted out camp songs with her mum.
“I’m exhausted and I want to just sit down and relax,” Greta said. But she’s also already looking ahead to the next biking expedition.
“I’m going to go a little bit longer every time. Next time, I might go up to maybe 60 to 70 [miles]. My goal is to go up to 180 miles in one bike ride,” she said.
Garrettson, too, originally had a certain degree of apprehension about whether he would make it. He is a prostate cancer survivor and isn’t as fit as he once was.
He was able to complete the ride — most of it, anyway. He ended completing 40 miles while Greta did the full 52.
“I will continue riding my bicycle for fun,” Garrettson said. “I don’t expect to do a 50-mile ride again, but doing a 10-, 15-, 20-mile ride isn’t out of the question.”
The family tradition started in 1974, when Garrettson came up with the idea of riding from the family’s home in Richmond, where he was working at Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical school, to Williamsburg. The first to do the ride was Garrettson’s eldest daughter, Brooke, who was 9 at the time.
“We didn’t make a big celebration of it. It was just a fun thing for dad and the girls to do,” Garrettson said.
Fast forward a few decades, and what started as a low-key family day out has become a big family event.
In the fall of 2004, Garrettson’s eldest grandchild became the first to continue the tradition into the third generation. The ride took Garrettson, his daughter Linda, and her daughter Sage, from Lock 7 on the C&O Canal, located about eight miles from Georgetown, to Harpers Ferry.
“We made an event of it. . . . We went up a real big notch in the festivity of it,” Garrettson said.
Three years later, Garrettson did another 50-mile ride, this time with his grandson Terran Minnig, along the Delmarva Peninsula. The following summer, he did the ride with his third grandchild, in Cape Cod, Mass. Most recently, in the summer of 2011, he rode with his fourth grandchild along the C&O Canal to Harpers Ferry.
“This is a great coming-of-age kind of thing,” Garrettson said. “When we talk about it to people, people say, oh my goodness. . . . it seems to people like a big event.”
But to Garrettson, it’s really about giving the children a small mission and seeing them accomplish it.
“Giving them the challenge and watching them do it has just been fun,” he said.
“It’s been a wonderful thing to watch.”
