|
|||||||||||||
Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
A life of doing
In 1976, a 24-year-old Chuck Moeser strapped some gear to his bike and pedaled from San Francisco to Sterling, covering 3,000 miles in 30 days. He wasn't sponsored and didn't have a cause or a charity; he just wanted to do it.
In 2008, he wanted to do it again. So he did.
Moeser is no ordinary 56-year-old: A blond mop tops his beaming face while his arms are taut with a perpetual rigidity. Acknowledged by Running Times Magazine as the country's No. 2 distance runner for his age group, he legs out 10 miles as a daily workout.
Moeser and his wife, Linda, delivered their four children at home without medical assistance. They live in a house he built. He has completed 35 marathons, hiked the Grand Canyon in a day, and set a record for scaling Mexico's El Sotano, the world's deepest natural pit -- 1,345 feet in 48 minutes.
"It's actually tasting life instead of reading about it in a book," says the 1970 graduate of Broad Run High School.
A three-year stint in the Army took him to West Point to train cadets in Ranger school, then on to the University of New Hampshire with the GI bill. It was in the White Mountains of the Granite State that the athletic young man found his just-do-it drive.
"I was working as a cross-country ski instructor when I had a boss who changed my life," he says. The boss was Joe McNulty, former Olympic cross-country skier. "He taught me that life is for doing. Every day, running or biking or skiing, every day."
From then on Moeser became a doer, a goer, cultivating a life of endless challenges and persistent strivings.
Then, again
In late July, 32 years ago, Moeser and Linda embarked for the Golden Gate Bridge with a few supplies and a load of ambition. They coursed through the grandeur of the Yosemite Valley, making Las Vegas in eight days before Linda bowed out, unable to maintain the frenetic pace.
Moeser's initial trip was derailed temporarily in Kansas, when a car struck him from behind, sending him 150 feet down the road. He spent two days in the hospital and eight more with a good Samaritan before defying doctors' orders and climbing back on the bike. His journey was written about in the July 29, 1976, issue of the Loudoun Times-Mirror.
In late July of this year, Moeser and his 21-year-old son, Lee, a former track athlete at Potomac Falls High School, traveled to the Golden Gate Bridge for the same journey. Like his mother before him, Lee didn't finish, as a false step during descent into the Grand Canyon sprained his ankle on Day 10.
Lee caught a plane home, but Moeser motored on, following virtually the same trail he'd blazed decades before, navigating the Four Corners into Colorado before picking up U.S. 50 in Kansas and trekking toward home.
His legs incessantly churning after seeing off his son, the nonstop Moeser appropriately got the chance to defy death. A strong Colorado breeze began to push against his face as rain pelted against him. He pumped faster, intending to outrun the squall. The wind turned, pushing with him. The road sped underneath as the sky darkened. Moeser turned his head to check his race with the storm, but saw a wall of air bearing down on him: a tornado.
He lunged for the guardrail and clung to it as the cyclone ripped at everything around him. His bike was flung 100 feet into a pasture, his 30 pounds of gear sucked away irretrievably.
"Thankfully my wallet was still there," Moeser says. His bike was not harmed, and he replenished his gear at the next town.
Moeser clicked more than 120 miles a day, across the flat expanses of the Great Plains and lumbering over the pristine Appalachians of West Virginia.
On Aug. 21, he and his 20-speed Tirreno wheeled into the neighborhood of Broad Run Farms, finally coming to a rest under a Welcome Home banner, 28 days after the Northern California coast.
Father and son
Out west, other than spotty cellphone signal, father and son were beyond civilization, grazing at markets wherever small Western towns passed, stocking up on sugary and salty foods to fuel their 100-mile-per-day average.
The younger Moeser saw plenty of adventure before catching a plane out of Phoenix. The men biked within a hilltop of raging California wildfires, spitting out black ash for miles before elevation lifted them above the smoke. They braved 127-degree heat in Death Valley, downing two liters of water daily. They slept in roadside fields, blanketed by the starriest of skies, serenaded by distant coyotes.
Lee Moeser is in his junior year at George Mason University, studying physical education with intentions on teaching. He is no less an athlete than his father, a few inches taller and 30 pounds stouter. In 2003, Lee won the Herndon 5K while Chuck carried on to win the Herndon 10K.
The elder Moeser weighs the same 150 pounds that he has weighed since high school, still sports the same locks of blond hair. He owns his own construction company and vacations with kayaks, running shoes, skis and bikes. On weekends he, Linda and their four grown children hike a mountain, or bike the length of the W&OD Trail. Daughter Rose was a scholarship runner at GMU, on track to obtaining her doctorate in chiropractic.
"In my family, you've got to stay fit," Moeser deadpans.
Lee, one of the county's top distance runners during his time as a Panther, agrees. "It's a lifestyle. No matter what."
Unstoppable
Moeser plans on crossing the continent on two wheels again, sometime in the future. First, he is focused on the Pike's Peek 10K run in Rockville, Md., next April, determined to break the world record for his age group.
Moeser doesn't have a Web site extolling his adventures, doesn't plan on writing a book. The sights and smells, the feeling of going and doing are available, he says, to whoever decides to go and do. He crossed the United States in 1976 because he wanted to experience it; he crossed it again in 2008 because he wanted his son to experience it.
"Could you bike 140 miles in a day? Then get up and bike another 140 miles?" Moeser asks the world. "I do it because I can."
You must be logged in to post a comment.