When I called Todd LeRoy about an opportunity to sit down and chat with him about his biking experience he was on the road, a sunny afternoon, just leaving Springville and heading towards Provo. He answered my call from his mobile phone without hesitation, or sounds of strained breathing from pushing the pedals, and told me he would be at the Provo Recreation Center playing pool later that evening. This is exactly where I found him at 8:00 PM on Friday, playing the game he enjoys six days a week with friends and drop-ins of the green felt tables. We went outside to take a photo of his “Chubby’s Bikes, Micargi Mustang Chopper Cruiser,” towing an empty black-box trailer, and that he had shipped “new in the box” from L.A. in 2012.
That same day Todd had already covered close to 6 miles on some narrow rural roads, roads that don’t safely allow for two way auto traffic and bicycles of any kind, and wider city streets, busy with cars and trucks but where he feels much more comfortable two-wheeling within bike lanes. Beginning his daily trek from just west of the Flying J Travel Center in Springville Todd turns north onto N Kuhni Road, crowded and tight with trees along both sides in many places and the railroad property hugging the pavement at others; he then crosses over on E 1910 S to access S Industrial Parkway, heading north again past the wastewater treatment plant and through the warehouse district. Most times going home late at night these streets are quiet areas that have less traffic, and even in the afternoon Todd prefers them to the busier main surface streets. From Industrial Parkway he maneuvers his bike between more warehouses and then “cuts through the UTA Frontrunner Train Station, [I] go down to 300W and go north to the Recreation Center.” Around 10:00 PM he would be traveling that route back home, it takes him over an hour because he says he likes to stop and “take a break once in a while.”
Todd LeRoy has been biking from Springville to Provo for 37 years after he found a job early in life at Taylor’s Bike Shop, where he worked up until 2015. I “was looking for work, going around to bike shops,” he tells me. Since 1998 he had been biking to work six days a week, an even longer distance than to the Rec Center, and today he continues “biking all over Utah County” to pick up groceries and do errands. One thing Todd would really like to see, “bike trails along Kuhni Road, I wish they would do it.” Asking him if he’s had any unusual experiences, “quiet and peaceful most of the time” and nothing else comes to mind is all I can procure. “Some days are tiring riding home, but I really like riding,” he leaves me with in parting.
