Cross-country bike ride at 12 helped forge athlete
Life’s burdens are easier to beat when you’ve ridden a bicycle more than 4,500 miles, huffing and puffing across the country before ascending the coast from Virginia to Maine.
When you’ve ridden through high winds, burning heat, thunderstorms and endless climbs through mountain passes, the training regimen of a college athlete doesn’t seem quite so daunting.
Paul Fox, an All-America wrestler at Stanford, has weathered such an ordeal. But here’s the kicker: He did it when he was 12.
That is, he started the trip when he was 12. He was 13 by the time he finished it, four months and 20 days later. He and his family — led by a dad
who could rival the father of the fictional Swiss family Robinson for resourcefulness — made the trip in 2008.
“It was definitely a once-ina-lifetime experience,” Paul Fox said. “I don’t know if I’d do it again. It was very long and difficult at times. But it was breathtaking to see the country on a bicycle rather than flying across it or driving through it.
“It taught me how to work hard and never give up. Every day, we rode at least 50 miles, which is a lot for someone that young. Some days, we rode over 100 miles.”
His father, Bill, a physical education teacher in Gilroy, cooked up the trip for Paul and his six siblings out of the memory of a bike trip he had taken through Europe many years earlier. His oldest daughter, Becky, then 18, was taking time off from college. Adriana, 17, had just graduated from high school. The other kids were either home-schooled by their mother, Gloria, or were allowed to take time off from school. Bill quit his teaching job.
“I thought the family was going to be going its own way,” Bill said. “I thought this was a golden opportunity.” In other words, it was now or never.
Gloria was against it from the start, thinking it was too dangerous and difficult for the kids, especially Sarah, 6; John, 8, and Vickie, 10. But Bill’s passion held sway.
They started in Castroville and got as far as Sacramento when the parents agreed they needed to scale back the undertaking. They returned to Gilroy for the family van, which served as a support vehicle the rest of the trip. Gloria and the three youngest mainly rode in the van, while Paul, brother Willie, 15, and the two oldest girls pedaled with Dad.
Some of the entries in the blog Bill kept (available with copious photos on ninefoxfamily.blogspot.com) made it clear that this wasn’t a Sunday cruise in the park. Consider this entry from July 17 of that year:
“For the first 3-4 hours we had a parasol of cloud cover shielding us from Utah’s burning summer rays. But as the morning wore on, the cloud cover began to fray and give way to the sun which wilted us under its powerful rays, with magnifying glass intensity. The heat was beating us down, sweat was dripping from every pore and stinging our eyes; the only relief was the occasional breeze which turned the sweat to coolant allowing us to survive. Finally, we hit a couple of steep downhill rides which cooled us off and allowed us to break our downhill speed (record) twice — 51 and then 52 mph.”
They brought a tent and sleeping bags but didn’t do any advance planning on accommodations.
“To me, that was part of the fun,” Bill said. “I liked it that we didn’t really know where we were going to stay. I thought it was more adventurous. Sometimes, it was campgrounds. Sometimes, it would be a field. Sometimes, people invited us into their houses. That happened a lot. We met a lot of very nice people.”
The trip taught the children about national geography and topography, but the big takeaway, he said, was a lesson on raw perseverance.
“Learning that no obstacle or challenge is too hard,” he said. “You just kind of take bite-size pieces of it and chip away. Next thing you know, you’ve accomplished it.”
Going through Kansas, they hit thunderstorms. “It would come out of nowhere, so we had to ride through it to the next town, where we would set up camp,” Paul said. “There were definitely times when I wanted to be doing something else. I wanted to finish. I wanted to accomplish this amazing feat. I didn’t want to stop halfway.” They finally reached the Atlantic Ocean at Yorktown, Va., but they weren’t done. They pedaled up the Eastern seaboard, taking a day in Washington, D.C., before finishing in Portland, Maine. Then they packed the bikes in a rental trailer for an eight-day ride back home. They stopped in Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, among many spots, on the way.
Stanford wrestling coach Jason Borrelli said he can see the impact the trip had on Paul Fox in his athletic career.
“He doesn’t let adverse situations set him back,” he said. “He makes himself get better because of it.”
After redshirting as a freshman, Fox had a season-ending knee injury midway through the 2015-16 season. Coming off surgery, he had a slow start last season and entered the NCAA tournament unseeded. He beat four seeded wrestlers, however, and made All-America with a seventh-place finish. This year, after missing a month with a partially torn MCL, he is 15-5 and ranked No. 20 at 157 pounds.
“He’s as hard-working as anyone I’ve ever been around in the sport,” Borrelli said. “He has an incredibly positive attitude. He’s always in a good mood, never complains about anything.”