This story was originally published by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Imagine riding a minibike ... over cobblestones ... with three broken ribs.
Ace Rickard, 69, banked that painful experience in Peru last month during a 1,000-kilometer (approximately 600-mile) trek through the Andes Mountains.
Ace and his son, Dave Rickard, were part of the 28-person September event that was one of multiple worldwide “Monkey Runs,” endurance tests staged by an English tour company called the Adventurists.
The Peru event is an multiday journey from the highlands of northern Peru to a spot near Machu Picchu, an ancient Incan city. All the participants ride on 7-horsepower minibikes made in China that result in a bone-jarring, cliff defying journey through some of the South American country’s less-populated regions from the mountains to the Amazon rain forest.
The Rickard father-son team completed the journey but not without some peril along the way. The two military veterans called themselves the Zoomy (Dave, Air Force) and Grunt (Ace, Army) team, as a nod to their respective military branches.
Dave said when his father started talking about participating in the event in South America last year, he wasn’t sure he was serious.
“Then, about the fourth or fifth time he brought it up, I figured it was time to plan,” Dave said. “I decided if he had made up his mind to do it, he was going to do it.”
For his part, Ace, a retired businessman, had trained for a year at the Sports Barn to make sure he was in peak physical condition for the adventure. He also was comforted by having his son along in case of emergency.
Still, two days into the eight-day trip, while steering his minibike through a rain storm, Ace hit a pothole the size of a kitchen table, took a tumble and broke three ribs. When his son circled back to help, it seemed possible that would be the end of the line.
“Are you going to be able to do this?” Dave asked his dad, while helping him up.
“I didn’t come here to (expletive) quit,” Ace replied. “Help me get this (expletive) thing back on the road.”
Thanks to an Ace bandage (no pun intended) and a bottle of Advil, the elder Rickard got back in the saddle and completed the run.
The run turned out to be a grueling but exhilarating experience, the men said. Bike breakdowns were common, accommodations were modest (mostly communal inns with no hot water) and the food was barely edible. (Chicken feet soup and guinea pig, anyone?)
On about the fifth day of the run, Ace was motoring up a 14,000-foot mountain pass in the rain and cold when he started craving a cup of coffee. Suddenly, he saw a wooden sign on the side of the road that said “Coffee,” and he thought it was a mirage.
He parked his bike and went inside where he realized he had indeed stumbled into a Peruvian coffee shop brewing piping hot cups of java and playing Frank Sinatra recordings. Such was the trip, that relief seemed to come at the most opportune moments.
At the end of the journey, it was confirmed that Ace was the oldest person ever to complete the Peru Monkey Run.
Sitting on the side of his bed in a hotel, Ace said to himself, “You old SOB, you did it.”
“At that point, everything hurt,” he added.
The night he got back to Chattanooga, he was getting ready to take a shower when his wife said, “What on earth happened to you?”
Ace realized most of body was black and blue.
Later he heard his wife tell a friend, “You know, that’s my North Carolina redneck husband, and I’m proud of him.”
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
Credit: Chattanooga Times Free Press
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