By Peggy Shinn
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
In the cycling world, Andy Bishop has been where most of us only dream of going. In a 17-year cycling career that began in Tucson, Arizona, he has raced on five continents and in the Tour de France four times, finishing three. He has raced alongside men with the names of LeMond, Rooks, and Theunise and up the 21 turns of the legendary Alpe d'Huez in France with more than a half-million rabid cycling fans screaming in his ears. When he switched to mountain biking in 1996, he took to the woods, racing single-track loops that many of us have only read about in magazines.
Bishop retired from pro racing in 2000, but not from riding his bike. Now 42 and living with his wife and two kids in Williston, he still pedals through the Vermont countryside on road and trail. Not to keep his racing torch burning but because his bike is so much a part of his life that it's almost an extension of his body, like an extra set of legs.
"What I love most about cycling is the freedom, the exercise, and the thrill of going fast," he says. "It's a lot less abusive than running and a lot more fluid. There's a connection between rider and machine.
"And you can coast," he adds, although it's difficult imagining that he ever does.
Those of us captivated by the sport understand this love. It's pure passion that gets us up at 5 a.m. to join group rides, and that makes us want to ride alongside high snowbanks at the first breath of spring. It's that same passion that helps us toil up hills so steep that we can barely keep the pedals turning and that keeps us pedaling through pain that would send normal people to the ER. For cyclists, bicycling isn't a hobby. It's not what we do; it's who we are.
