Our last track is a skull. — “Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry,” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison
The letter was returned, marked “Deceased.”
This is how my friend Michael Schenk stumbled across Bill Baughman’s final footprint in our lives, when one of his annual Schenk-family newsletters, sent via snail mail, bounced back from Bill’s last known address in Bibleburg.
Michael emailed me on Wednesday: “Bill Baughman passed away! Have you heard about this?”
No, I had not. And I immediately set out to learn the details.
Which … were not forthcoming.
No obituary in the Gazette. No other trail that I could backtrack via Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing. Michael’s call to Bill’s former employer yielded only a vague reference to “health problems.”
Well, yeah. Sorta goes without saying, eh?
Bill was not always easy to catch, especially on the bicycle. But if true, this would be a breakaway unprecedented. We had always been able to find him again, somewhere. A bagel shop. A Mexican restaurant. At home, gaming, in his air-conditioned computer closet.
Herself and I last caught up with Bill in 2022, in Manitou Springs, during a celebration of life for another old velo-bro, John O’Neill. John, Bill, and his longtime friend Bill Simmons were among the O.D.s (Original Dogs) who joined me when I left Rainbow Racing to form Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs at Large Velo.
In those early days we trained a ton, barking Liggettisms at each other — suitcases of courage were opened, pedals danced upon or turned in anger, elastic snapped — on the Highway 115 rollers to Penrose and back; up Highway 24 through Manitou to Woodland Park and beyond; down to the racetrack south of Fountain, occasionally adding the dreaded Hanover Loop; or around the 1986 world-championships course at the Air Force Academy.
On race weekends we’d bunk three and four to a room in skeevy motels at Pagosa Springs, Durango, Crested Butte, and elsewhere. I was a popular roomie because I always packed my Krups espresso machine on road trips. The Bills proved extra popular with me after I broke a collarbone at Rage in the Sage; Simmons abandoned his own race to take charge of my bike, and Baughman drove me, my bike, and my truck back to B-burg.
Some three decades later, during our conversation at O’Neill’s sendoff, Bill seemed subdued, maybe even a wee bit sad, not at all his usual rollicking self.
His mother, ex-wife, and a son had all passed. He and Simmons had been out of touch. And he had been been hit by a car while riding his road bike, which snatched a knot in his fearlessness; he was avoiding both road and trail, and when he cycled at all he stuck to a few local bike paths. He drank only at home.
It seemed a stunning retreat by a renowned battler who, sweating tequila from a margarita marathon as the peloton thundered along, would turn a baleful eye on anyone who groused about the pace and growl, “Shut up and ride.”
Still, Bill looked good, as though he’d put on a few pounds. He’d always been thin as a frame pump. Holding his wheel during a group ride as he executed his famous “Marksheffel Plan” — an attack near the bottom of the long climb up the east-side road of that name — was like trying to draft a shark’s fin.
We talked about getting together again, the way people do when they reconnect, however briefly, to send some other old friend west. And after Herself and I got back to ’Burque I emailed him. He never replied.
How can someone just drop off the face of the earth with only the U.S. Postal Service taking the slightest bit of notice? I mean, sure, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” But you’d think Google might have the jump on them these days, especially since Jan. 20.
Facebook, the Pony Express of the AARP, was basically useless. The number I had for Bill Simmons was no longer in service. Cindy O’Neill, John’s widow, hadn’t heard the news until Herself passed it along.
And then I remembered: Amber Shaffer, who catered O’Neill’s farewell gathering, was not just a part of his Colorado Running Club crew — she was once a neighbor of Bill’s on the east side of B-burg, not far from the ancestral home of the O’Gradys on South Loring Circle. Ours really is a small world at times.
Late Friday afternoon I called Amber at Roman Villa Pizza; she said that yes, she had learned via text of Bill’s passing late last year, and … and that was all she knew. Fridays are busy in the restaurant racket, so I thanked her, promised to drop in for a meal next trip through town, and said goodbye.
Looks like Bill has dropped us all again, dancing on the pedals, the elastic snapped for good. I hope there was a frosty pitcher of margaritas waiting for him at the finish.
Let’s sing him off. This one goes out to all my friends who’ve died.
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