He must have been a great man to know.
He was.
My father and I used to talk about sightings of "that old man on the green bike with a radio and bunch of flowers on his handlebars."
I was about 12 then. I never knew who he was and neither Jack or I had ever heard of AUK. This was about 1986.
I joined the CTC at 14 and started doing the reliability rides and club runs.
Jack never rode club runs but he did used to do the reliability rides in the slowest time, because he didn't like to rush and just went for the fun of it. Jack was a regular at the clubroom but I was never allowed to go, because it was midweek when I was at school.
He never really knew about AUK, but began riding Audax with the CTC National 400s and always rode to and from those events, usualy overnight. It was about at that time when my father died, I'd just left school and I was going to the clubroom and hearing some of his tales, which were very often "embellished." He was always one for telling a good story and adding in a few extras.
As a young and keen cyclist with a taste for long distances, I was told about AUK at the end of 1991 and joined straight away, then got stuck ito Audaxing.
Jack got wind of the rides I was doing and asked me about AUK, so I told him how to join and he joined in 1993 and the rest I suppose is history. He ditched the flowers and very soon the radio for Audax rides, though he did get a pocket radio with headphones in the late 90s. His original radio had a small speaker on his handlebars.
We rode a lot of miles togther and have shared many bus shelters where he often had a puff on his pipe, especially 1993 to 1998 until I moved to Milton Keynes. He never puffed his pipe while he cycled.
The last time I saw him was January 2007 or thereabouts on a Willesden 200k Audax. He was a lifelong cyclist since he was in the RAF in WW2, though if what he told me is true, he never did any active service because the war ended soon after he was stationed.
Don't be sad.
Everyone has to go, and when I go I want to have kept going for as long as Jack did.
Jack would have said the same. If I'm right (Salvatore will know) he was 88 when he died. He wouldn't have wanted to have been in a bad way from dementia.