By Glenn Henderson for LVSportsBiz.com
I was leaving work one day when I spotted a bicyclist riding along the side of the busy highway. Turns out it was Alan Snel, my old friend and former co-worker, decked out in his usual, professional-bike-riding gear and maybe a little sweaty (this is Florida, after all), but still bursting with typical energy. I waved him down and asked what the heck he was doing – after all, my workplace is a full county away from his house.
Working, he said. He figured he’d ride down to the baseball stadium to do some reporting on a freelance story he was writing, and he was on his way back home. Later, I calculated the distance of his route.
Twenty-five miles. One way.
To him, this was a ride around the block. To him, a 50-mile bike ride is what you do after lunch. Never have I met the likes of Alan Snel, a two-wheeling human steam-engine who’s ridden across the country – twice. His lifetime-bicycle-odometer must have run out of digits long ago.
I earlier worked with Alan at a daily newspaper when journalism was still going strong in Florida and around the country. He attacked reporting in the same way he does bike rides — head-long and sometimes, head-strong. Whether it was about government bodies violating federal laws, politicians who said and did the silliest things or, yes, even baseball-team mascots who drew the most laughs, Alan didn’t brake until he had every morsel of detail.
Still, bicycle riding was his life. And on one dark day, it was almost his death.
That’s when a sick, elderly man who should not have been driving slammed into his bike from behind, sending Alan into the windshield and sprawling onto the side of the road. His helmet took the brunt of the impact, fortunately sparing him life-threatening injuries. Alan’s body was bruised and his anger stoked, especially after the driver was not even cited for a traffic violation. To this day, I’m sad and embarrassed that my friend, one of Florida’s leading bicycle-safety advocates, almost died in my home county due to a driver’s negligence that somehow did not warrant even a slap on the wrist.
Did the human steam engine shift to a lower gear? For a while but soon enough, Alan was back at it, in the much-safer state of Nevada, pounding the pavement, pedaling the metal – and all the while gathering inspiration to put his Life of Journeys onto paper.
His first book, Long Road Back to Las Vegas, centered on his near-death experience, some of which I found disturbing to read with its throwback to the trauma of his crash and painful recovery. But now comes Bicycle Man, a fun, breathless ride-along with Alan and his lifetime of bicycle-based adventures, packed with encounters with some of the most interesting people that only Alan could find and befriend.
Knowing Alan as I do, he’s stopping his bike somewhere right now, just long enough to take a picture and jot down some notes to help him memorialize the next stage of his life on two wheels. And just like that, he’s off again.
Buy this book by emailing Alan Snel at asnel@LVSportsBiz.com.
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