Off the Front: Bobby Mac
How does one find the words to eulogize a true hero: a dear friend, a tireless mentor, a great benefactor, and a true inspiration?
When I did my first Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride back in 2001, my coworker Jeremy-who was doing the AIDS Ride-told me about a group training ride starting at Quad Cycles in Arlington. “It’s run by this guy named Bobby Mac… You have to meet him!”
So one weekend I went out and rode with them. Bobby was a charismatic older guy who was the obvious center of the group. He’d bark out endless advice about how to ride, always interjecting a characteristic bit of self-deprecating humor or belting out snippets of songs from the 60s and 70s. He’d shamelessly (but harmlessly) flirt with the ladies, who all adored him. On the road, he always stayed with the slower riders, mentoring them and offering helpful advice for how to both survive and enjoy whatever charity rides they were training for.
Bobby Mac made riding fun.
Like so many other neophyte riders, I started out wearing canvas cargo shorts and a tee shirt, riding a heavy, flat-handlebar “hybrid” bike. Over the course of thirteen years with him, Bobby sculpted me into a spandex-clad veteran roadie who rides 10,000 kilometers a year on his carbon-fiber road bike and has raised over $100,000 for cancer research.
But I am just one person out of hundreds and hundreds of riders whom Bobby has encouraged over the years. Himself an inveterate charity rider, he and his team of “Quaddies” were often top fundraisers and volunteer crewmembers for several of the largest charity rides in the area. If you added up all the good works performed by Bobby Mac and the legions of riders he has encouraged, the sum total would be staggering.
As you can imagine, Bobby Mac was a huge part of the local community. He recorded several PSAs on behalf of charity rides and local cycling advocacy. No matter where we went, we’d always run into people who knew him. Whether you were a cyclist or not, it seemed everyone was friends with Bobby Mac. No matter who you were, he made it very easy to feel like you were his best friend.
We also loved Bobby for his idiosyncrasies. It was a mark of seniority if you could say that you’d seen him ingest anything other than Cytomax sports drink. Back when the ride stopped at Kimball Farm, Bobby proved that his popularity extended even to barnyard animals, as “Buff the Powerbar-Eating Goat” would run up to the fence to greet him and receive a treat.
As he aged, Bobby suffered from macular degeneration which gradually eroded his eyesight. I once watched him nearly ride straight into a sawhorse barrier that a road crew had put up when one of our regular roads was temporarily closed. It was a mark of real trust if Bobby let you lead him through a charity ride on unfamiliar roads he hadn’t already memorized.
Due to his worsening eyesight, we all feared that Bobby would eventually be unable to ride. Knowing that his time was limited, in 2006 we organized the first Tour de Mac, a special ride in his honor, complete with tee shirts, rubber wristbands, and an award presentation for the guest of honor. In 2009 we held another ride to celebrate his 60th birthday, which I recorded with an emotional writeup and video. Everyone loved Bobby, but despite repeated operations to maintain his vision, we all harbored silent fears about how much longer he would be able to ride.
However, Bobby wasn’t destined to live long enough for his eyesight to fail him. Three weeks ago, Bobby went into the hospital, suffering from pancreatic cancer that had metastasized. It was terminal, and last night he passed away in his sleep at home.
When his diagnosis first became public knowledge, the hospital’s staff very quickly learned how special Bobby Mac was. They weren't prepared for the hundreds of his friends who came to visit his bedside. The nurses put up signs, limited the duration of visits, and still more people kept coming, sometimes queueing up in shifts of ten at a time outside his hospital room.
The first time I visited him in the hospital, I had something special I wanted to share with him. When a rider surpasses $100,000 in fundraising, the Pan-Mass Challenge gives them a silver pin with the PMC logo as a lifetime achievement award. I had received mine six weeks before Bobby went into the hospital, after 13 years of riding and raising money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
I wanted Bobby to know about that accomplishment, and how it was due in large part to his inspiration. And that if I was only one of hundreds of riders he’d encouraged, then he’d achieved a whole lot of good in this world. His characteristically self-effacing response was to shrug off his role and emphasize mine, saying that I had long been the most dedicated of his charity riders.
It’s bitter irony to me that the man who was my hero and inspired me to ride the Pan-Mass Challenge was taken from us by the very disease I’ve raised so much money to combat. It goes without saying that this year-my final PMC ride-will be dedicated to the memory of my hero: Bobby Mac. It will be a very emotional ending when I reach the Provincetown finish line for the final time and lift my bike over my head, consciously copying Bobby’s signature victory salute.
With his innate charisma and his natural role as the center of a circle of people, Bobby reminded me a lot of my father, or what he might have been, if my father had been motivated by kindness and generosity. In that way, Bobby has been a role model for me, an inspiring example of what a fatherly male figure could be-and could accomplish-in this jaded, selfish world.
There’s one particular exercise in Buddhist meditation called “Brahmavihara practice”, wherein we use visualization to cultivate our capacity for friendliness, compassion, and joy in others’ happiness. Typically, we start by directing compassion toward someone whom it’s easy to feel affection for, then slowly work our way to people we feel ambivalent about, and then challenge ourselves to work with people we find difficult or hateful. But we start with someone who is often referred to as our “benefactor”.
Years ago, when I started that practice and was asked to identify someone whom I felt unalloyed affection for-someone whom I considered my benefactor-one person’s name immediately jumped to mind: Bobby Mac. Bobby was my exemplar of friendliness, affection, compassion, and generosity. In my opinion, Bobby was the absolute embodiment of the concept of a “benefactor”.
Bobby’s presence and personality made everyone’s world feel much more friendly, much more optimistic. He put a whole lot of love and goodness into the world.
And he took a whole lot of love and goodness with him when he left: both the love of his many friends which was directed toward him in his final years, and also the love and goodness that have gone out of this world with his passing. For everyone who knew Bobby Mac, the world feels a little colder and more lonely without his energetic encouragement and his incorrigible smile.
Here’s to you, my friend, my mentor, my benefactor, my inspiration, and my hero. As you enjoined us at the start of every ride, we will do our best to “ride with love in our hearts and smiles on our faces”, thanks to you, Bobby Mac.
I won’t belabor the ask, but if you wish to make a donation to fight cancer in Bobby’s memory and sponsor my PMC ride, you can do so here.