When Arthur Plummer retired at 65, he bought a secondhand bicycle. His sister was a member of a cycling club for seniors in the Canadian city of Waterloo, Ontario, where they lived, and Plummer joined, too, becoming one of the club’s youngest members. Now he is 92 and its oldest member – but he still cycles thousands of kilometres every year. His odometer for this year so far reads 4,270km (2,650 miles). After our conversation, he intends to cycle another 40km.
“I love cycling,” he says. “Wherever I go, even if I ride on the same roads, there’s something new happening. When I get on my bike, I feel great. I come home at about 3pm and I feel exhausted. However, it’s the nicest feeling. It’s exhilarating, and it’s resulted in me being extremely healthy.”
Even when, in his late 80s, Plummer developed polymyalgia rheumatica (an inflammatory condition that causes pain, stiffness and inflammation in the shoulders, neck and hips) and was unable to walk, cycling helped him to move again. “I was in a wheelchair and I would sit outside in my driveway and people would go by and I felt trapped,” he says. “I can’t walk,” he thought, “but if I can get on my bike, I bet I could ride.” So that’s what he did.
Although his legs are strong, walking is still uncomfortable; he has a shortened stride and sometimes struggles to keep up with his wife and friends on holiday. Cycling, on the other hand, brings freedom. Plummer has cycled “on every street you can go on” within 100 sq miles (260 sq km) of where he lives. He often takes his bike on the bus so that he can explore farther afield. “I’m looking for new vistas,” he says.
Plummer wasn’t into sports when he was growing up. His parents, he says, “were not well off”. His father worked in a rubber factory, his mother looked after the home and worked as a waiter, and as a sales assistant in a clothes shop. “There were few luxuries. It was a tough life, but it was a good life.
“In 1934, when I was born, it was the norm to not have money.” His classmates were either rich or poor. “And we stayed apart. It was an advantage to be poor, because you had more friends.”
There wasn’t time to cycle in younger adulthood. After college, Plummer worked as an estimator or quantity surveyor, initially on hydro projects in northern Quebec, before returning to Ontario. Along the way, he became a single parent to three daughters, then aged nine, 11 and 13 – “a wonderful experience”, he says.
Later, he partnered with four others in a company that oversaw construction and renovation projects in schools. But he found the job very stressful and when a colleague had a heart attack, he decided he needed to change jobs. At 50, he became a municipal building inspector, a job he did until retirement. Sometimes, he would drive past a colleague who commuted by bike, even pedalling through a winter snow squall. “You know how you remember some things for ever in your life? I thought: ‘Wow, he’s an avid cyclist.’”
When he took up cycling himself, Plummer rode at a maximum sustained speed of 25kph. Now that’s dropped to between 15 and 20kph, and he has reduced his distance target to 5,000km a year. He is mindful of risks – he stopped skiing at 90 for fear of breaking a limb – but he has gone over his handlebars six times, and a few years ago he collided with a car that ran a red light. Mercifully, he escaped with cuts and bruises.
“I apparently went head first on to the road, broke my helmet and passed out. People tell me that when I woke, I ran straight to my bike,” he says. “There is a kind of a connection between the rider and the bike.”
A couple of years ago, Plummer moved into a high-rise apartment, “living the urban lifestyle downtown”, and now keeps his carbon-fibre Cannondale bike on a rack next to his bed. “My bike is my best friend,” he says. “We are a team.” If Plummer wakes in the night, he acknowledges his bike “with a greeting: ‘Hey there, buddy’”.
Cycling brings its own momentum. “I am so full of energy, I can’t believe it myself sometimes. I want to get out and use that energy to cycle,” Plummer says. “I hope my last day is on my bike. I have a saying: I’m cycling to eternity and it’s further than I thought.”
Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?