Publication Date: Wednesday May 10, 2000

People: Phil Dettmer: never a down moment

He is gearing up to take part in a bike ride that will start in Seattle on June 19 and end 48 days later in Washington D.C.

Even in one of his rare down moments, this one after an afternoon of bike riding, Dettmer talked of "hammerdogs"--the term for fast riders--and mulled over all the training that's still to come before he takes off on the 3,250-mile "Big Ride 2000." He's doing 100 miles a week right now, but plans to get that up to 80 to 90 mile a day rides by this month.

"I just have to keep going," he said. "You have to live life to the fullest and take big bites out of life's cookie."

But riding across the U.S. isn't just about Dettmer's appetite for challenges. His normally upbeat tone is noticeably subdued as he listed the reasons he decided to join in on the ride set up by the American Lung Association.

"The most important is that I watched my mother die slowly in an oxygen tent for 10 days from smoking," he said.

"Then the wife of a good friend, a ballet dancer, now carries around an oxygen bottle, a high school friend died from smoking and it killed my sister-in-law."

But it is not only the illness of others that keeps Dettmer pedalling. At the age of 19, he spent eight months in a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients, where other patients around him died from lung disease.

"I survived, and I want to pay something back. For all the other people that were there too, well I'm riding for them too," he said.

Lounging in a plaid shirt and khakis, his white hair combed back away from his lively eyes, the retired mining engineer consultant recounted adventures in country after country, an eclectic mix of travel and activity. There was three years in Japan after being sent there to do intelligence-gathering as a first lieutenant under Gen. George MacArthur during World War II. Then there was the job he took 12,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andes where he hiked several peaks and also the research plant he built near the Arctic Circle in more than minus 40-degree weather.

But Dettmer's favorite story is learning to ski when he went back at UC Berkeley to get his master’s in industrial engineering and extracting metal.

"In those days, the university had a lodge up near Tahoe. It was a co-op arrangement--you had to sign up to clean the bathroom, sweep, something like that. I signed up to serve breakfast and there was this charming gal-- Lucy--also serving," he narrated.

"She invited me to go skiing that day after work with some others and it was the first time I had ever skied, but I was being this kind of macho male. Well, we get up to the top of the hill, and I can't turn and I can’t stop. All I could do was fall. But by the end of the day, they were doing little jumps and I was doing them too. It was crazy."

Maybe so, but it worked. He and Lucy spent that night polka dancing in their ski boots and have been together for the 58 years since--in the jungles of Mexico, the heat of Africa, South America, Germany, Turkey, and sunny California. After Dettmer had a mild stroke in 1979, the two started running 10K courses and by 1982 he had completed a marathon. The next summer, the couple decided to take a 41-day bike trip from Palm Springs to Washington D.C.

"We've done a lot of crazy, dumb things," he said with a smirk.

"I had been all around with all my jobs and I didn't know my own country. We thought the best way to do it was from the seat of a bicycle."

So with both of them at the age of 62, they got their gear together and set off, carrying camping equipment on their bikes and spending the nights in a tent. Well, at least some of the nights.

"At the end of the day, we'd stop at a fast food place for an ice cream bar or soda and the person behind us in line would here us talk about what we were doing and tell us to put our tent in their back yard instead of in a park," he said.

"We'd get to the place and the wife would come out and say that we weren't staying in the back yard. She'd tell us to come in and take a shower and she'd put clean linen on the bed. Or then I'd ask Lucy if she was ready for dinner, and they would tell us that we weren't going to walk and give us the keys to their car. We'd be driving around in a nice, new Cadillac.

And this happened more than just once.

"I learned very quickly to always say yes when anyone offered you anything," Dettmer said, laughing.

While he will have to sleep on the ground during "Big Ride 2000," he's quick to point out that there will also be a few other differences to expect. The approximate 250 riders will be fed breakfast and dinner.

"And I've heard they're going to have hot showers," he whispered.

Dettmer said all that will be nothing compared to the task of raising $7,000--what all participants must do before they can be eligible for the ride. And while he did just recently reach that money mark, he's already thinking about what he'll do when the trip is done. That's when he'll accompany Lucy, now also 79, to eight national tennis tournaments where she'll compete in both the 75 to 79 and the 80 to 85 year old age groups.

As for what will come after that, Dettmer said he hasn't thought about it all that much.

"Something crazy. Maybe back to New Zealand to ski," he said.

"I did say that when I turn 80, I'd do a free-fall parachute jump. I still want to do that. They'll be something."

Dettmer has enough other activities to keep him busy while he decides, the favorite of which is the yearly ski trip he takes with his three kids, Randy, Peggy, and Scott, and his six grandchildren.

Since 1991, he's been active in senior track and field competitions, winning the U.S. National Master Track and Field pentathlon, six medals in the California State Track and Field Championships, and a bronze medal in the International Masters Track and Field pentathlon.

And he's also started volunteering for the Executive Service Corporation of the Bay Area and doing food pick-ups five days a week with Lucy for the Mountain View Community Center.

"When I was in the corporate race, I always had a to-do list and I never completed it. What I didn't do one day, I would just move to the next. It's the same now, except that when I don't get things done I can sometimes end up moving them for two to three weeks," he said chuckling.

"But we do have one hell of a good time."

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