Mountain Biking

Sent in by Ken Starkovich

I have been checking the blog frequently over the past year, but I have not been able to bring myself to post anything. I have a picture on the wall in my hallway that was taken on the day of my wedding. This picture is of all the male wedding party standing outside the church, I look at that picture every morning and when I see Adam I remind myself to live this day to the fullest b/c I know if there will not be another day like this one again.
I was in my garage the other day and I saw my mountain bike hanging from the ceiling, I realized that my bike is a something that will always remind me of Adam. When Adam and I were sophomores in college we became roommates and one day we decided to try out mountain bike riding. We had heard of an off road course somewhere in Baton Rouge and after many miles of driving around we discovered the Hooper road mountain bike course. Since both of us were poor college students we did not want to spend any money on a sport that we didn’t know we would enjoy, so we bought (or might I say rented) the cheapest “mountain bikes” that Wal-Mart had to offer. We had so much fun at Hooper that we both spent well over $500 buying good mountain bikes so we could actually go out there and have a good time. Adam and I spent many Saturdays and/or Sundays out at Hooper riding bikes and coming close to breaking many bones. I was always at a disadvantage when riding with Adam since he was always much more athletic than me, but I would try my hardest to keep up with him.

Adam was (is) my first cousin by relation, but I always viewed him as a brother. In the last couple of years before he died we would sometimes go a couple of months without talking b/c of our busy lives, but when we would get together is was like we had seen each other yesterday. The last time I saw him we met for lunch at hooters. We had not talked in a couple of weeks and I wanted to hear about his new job at Business First Bank. We caught up on everything in our lives and agreed that since we worked close to each other we would be eating lunch together frequently. Unfortunately, that was the one and only time we got together. I miss you greatly bro and I just hope you saved me a seat on the ride.

Ken