5/12/23 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

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Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

This past weekend I took my first 10+ mile bike ride since January. No earth shattering, moment that should be captured on Tik Tok or live streamed on Facebook. It was a nice Saturday morning after a week of pretty lousy weather. I am sure that in Columbus alone, hundreds of people took their first bike ride after a long hiatus.

But for me, who has ridden 42,000 + miles in the last ten years it was a very big deal.

If you know me, you know that bicycling is my passion. My office and home are full of bike related pictures and stuff. Although I have ridden all my life, in these last ten years I have ridden on five continents, and two dozen states. I have had thirty or forty flat tires in these many places as well as other mechanical failures large and small. Three years ago, right at the beginning of the great COVID shutdown, I was hit by a blue van which never stopped to see how I was. The bike seemingly survived but my collarbone was shattered, and two ribs were broken.

I was back on the bike less than six weeks after that accident. Months later I discovered a crack in the frame, probably begun by the accident. I had to say goodbye to my twenty-year-old Airborne Titanium and because everything during Covid seemed to be tied up in the black hole of “supply chains” I couldn’t get another titanium, my frame of choice, for three or four months. That didn’t stop me. Mr. Thornton lent me one of his bicycles and I continued to ride.

All this past summer and fall I rode a 17-mile daily route in the early morning before starting work at school. That meant riding in the dark at 5 in the morning. I loved it. On Halloween night, driving down 161 towards home at 70 miles an hour, a six-point buck totaled my car. My body ached for days but I only missed one day of riding because of it.

And then on January 7 of this year I ended up in the hospital for five days. I was in no shape to ride the rest of that month or in February. By March I began feeling better. We got to spring break and I looked forward to getting back into my routine.

But spring break turned out to be a week of actual breaking as a misstep on, or should I say, off my deck at home resulted in four broken bones. Until last weekend my bicycle stared at me in my office like a neglected puppy waiting for attention.

Although my ribs and wrist healed nicely, my pinky finger, that little appendage that seems unimportant when all ten fingers are working fine, was complicating my life. I had surgery on it. They put tiny pins in my finger, and, even when the pins were removed, my finger ached and, with a mind of its own, refused my brain’s command to let it wiggle or straighten out.

I have done a few small test rides but last Saturday I went on one of my usual routes, leaving Our Lady of Peace and returning. It was indeed a big deal, and it did wonders for body, mind, and soul!



I am never anxious on my bike, even when riding on Columbus streets, but my family gets very nervous when I ride (these days even when I walk!).

My old titanium bike model was called Carpe Diem which is “seize the day” in Latin. There will come a day, one day, hopefully not soon but inevitably, where I will take my last bike ride. I may also have other periods in my life when I am sidelined by health, by weather or by circumstance. So, for every ride I take, for however many more miles and places I can pedal, I will thank my Lord for the opportunity. May I feel this way about everything I do.

Jim Silcott