“Well, I evaded the Syrian Ballet Company as they attempted to export me to their Arabic Kingdom to star in performances of GOAT LAKE.”
“At any rate, I am having time (I’ll leave you to attach valence to my time) learning very little (longest word in English language: approximately – floccynoccynihilipilification) and generally making a drunken ass of myself.”
“I live with an Italian family, and we speak only Italian in the homestead which has produced conversations like, “How was your day, John?” ”Oh fine. I went to find a large elephant, but ended up getting massaged with a chunk of steak.”
(Excerpts from John’s letters to me years ago — which were a continual reminder of my own limited vocabulary)
Justice is the only worship. Love is the only Priest. Ignorance is the only slavery. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. –Ingersoll
If you read my very first blog, The Genesis of PELOTON, you read about John (pictured above), my cycling/writing/witty friend with the gregarious and sharp sense of humor and how he died far too early in life. An inherent part of life is facing the loss of those we love. It happens and it hurts and no cliched response takes that pain away, it just flares less painfully over time and we search to attach meaning to it all. There is an essential or archetypal circle of life that intertwines life and death. When I heard the fateful words about John, I was on my very first day of the obstetrics rotation in my third year of med school. On my first day on the labor and delivery deck as an intern, my very first case was a young woman who I had to tell in Spanish that she was having abdominal pain because the term baby in her belly had died.. and then she almost bled to death as we rushed her for an emergency c–section. Years later, as the chief resident, I had an evening phone call that my grandfather had just passed away and was then called to deliver my friend’s baby just minutes later… the circle of life for you Lion King fans. I hope the film does justice to how we honor those people by living our life more fully.
Note the photos of John above and below, on the day he won a race that promoted him to a Cat 1 rider (an elite racer)…. full of life as we always remember him with that unforgettable smile. And if anyone is laughing at my efforts on this film project, my sweating over the whole thing, it’s John. I can see him starting to break into a grin with some hilariously wicked barb to throw out at me that will break all of us into belly-aching laughter. He would have poked fun at me relentlessly for obsessing about filming a movie that involves guys with shaved legs in tight shorts. He would have been the first in line to be filmed up close, making sure his film credit read: Best looking Cyclist. He would have invented better dialogue for the script and would have pushed me to keep rewriting better scenes. He also would have supported me late into the night when I was broken with frustration, buoying my spirits with humor, but also just present to talk in the deep, simple, honest ways that only close friends can manage. He brought many of us together in that way, close friends from the various aspects of his life who had heard about each other from someone who who was so genuinely close with each of us and knew us so well.
So the genesis of peloton might have come from an accident that took John’s life, but the inspiration was how John lived. The Ingersoll quotation above is the same one that I wrote below the same framed photo because he made so many people happy with his words and wit. I have been blessed with a host of friends who inspire me on a regular basis in how they choose to live (I’ll get to them later) and producing this film now, this is me living the life I want.
And finally there is Luca (see below), my own little boy, a year and half old, he shares John’s middle name and loves bikes. Before he was born, while he was floating in utero in his spacesuit, I was struck by the absolute knowledge that I needed to change my life, make the films I had always wanted to make, because the only way to teach him to live fully, would be to live the life I wanted, to set that example, not to tell him to do one thing and not be living up to the same standard and expectations in my life, however frightening those steps might be… so the film is being made to make John laugh at me (as if he needed fodder), to inspire and teach Luca, to hopefully make them both proud and after the months of filming and editing and not sleeping, to have a movie that makes people happy.
