Richard Ballantine

The title was pure Ballantine. At once audacious but with a child-like simplicity: Richard’s Bicycle Book appeared as a new, larger-than-usual “trade” paperback picturing the lean-mean author tuning a crackling-new machine on the cover. Yet it was not only Richard’s research and writing, but his timing, which proved superb. The civilized world was reeling from the first oil shortage since WW II; cheaper, lighter, faster bicycles were just coming into production, Ballantine Books already lead the field in ecology books but this how-to encyclopedic omnibus bristled with a fearless eloquence placing its reader squarely on the brink of a self-powered revolution. Nor was Richard’s rebellious spirit shy in announcing itself. Though an animal-lover you’d never guess it when RB advised how to take on a ferocious dog. Nor would his reader even begin to tolerate a polite, hat-in-hand deference towards the far larger, vast majority of motorists as Ballantine became the first to declare war on roads full of smoke-spewing behemoths sure to kill you if you let them.

Richard’s Bicycle Book went through innumerable editions, incarnations and sequels, including an updated edition for the new century; its author would eventually create several award-winning bicycle magazines, his hands-on approach making him a favorite at bike shows, races, on committees and as advisor for new designs. Teaming up with Richard Grant (and making spectacular use of an apostrophe) Richards’ Ultimate Bicycle Book is easily the most handsome of the brood.

But back at the very beginnings of fame, and providing most necessary ballast in maintaining it, love struck hard. I was accustomed to meeting a stream of interesting women attached to Richard. The newest, Sherry Rubin, seemed to step from the pages of one the family’s famous Tolkien novels. Sherry was otherworldly to say the least. I might have made a comment something to this effect, when Richard turned and in that king-like manner pronounced very simply: “She’s the one.” And that, as they say…was that.

Circa ‘74 Richard and Sherry married and moved to London, beginning a new line, consecutively titled, Danielle, Katharyn, and Shawn. Richard’s true education to begin. He became quite the puddle-jumper, writing, editing, and creating book series on both sides of the Atlantic. His full-on style enlisting a literate, highly adventurous readership willing to follow him from bicycling to rock-climbing, to sailing, snorkling and scuba, from aviation and space travel to actually living with wolves. Among his many publishing achievements Richard assisted his father with an 18 volume illustrated history of Vietnam and a 36 volume Air & Space series for Bantam Books, yet his greatest success and interest remained: the fervent promotion of self-propulsion. Having imported the first mountain bike’s to the UK and creating a hugely popular fat-tyre race, RB maintained his “Godfather” status in the bicycle movement, writing columns for The Guardian, among many periodicals, while chairing the first Human Power Vehicle (HVP) Club in the 1980’s; the sanest of these alternative contraptions being the “recumbent” pictured above. Richard earlier helped start the London Cycling Campaign a bicyclist charity and advocacy group of 11,000 members. And, as proof of the pudding, neither he nor any of his English-based family have owned an automobile for well over a decade.

A later profound interest in T’ai Chi (assisting Richard greatly in “the inside job” of living with cancer) contributed to making his last years what he described as “the happiest of my life.” An extraordinary marriage, a particularly tight-knit relationship with his children, a lengthy, old-fashioned handwritten correspondence with his mother back in Woodstock, all tended to shift the adventure inwards. In a rare visit to London last spring, I found a great calm had settled over the warrior-hero of my youth, while the ponderous speeches Ballantine males seemed compelled to provide the world with had all but disappeared. There were silences in our conversations now, glowing with a meditative warmth.

As I write Richards’ body is being conveyed by cycle-pulled hearse among a cortage of motorlessly-moved-mourners to a memorial at the Golders Green chapel in London …an epic farewell party thereafter to commence. To this stellar send-off I can’t help but compare Richard’s Great-Aunt Emma’s death which came to her exiled and disillusioned in 1940, the year of his birth; “The Revolution” as she’d envisioned it having succumbed to virulent corruption; her assessment of her own life, a near total waste. While the Human Powered Revolution her great-nephew inspired is growing pedal, spoke-’n-chain stronger by the minute, surging into a deceptively mature and powerful force. Nor may I resist noting that structures Richard Ballantine once sought to topple must soon fall of their own unsustainable weight, while the Glory-Day of the life-sustaining conveyances his name will forever be associated with is a growing, living, breathing reality, right here; right now.

Richard is survived by his wife Sherry, their children Danielle, Katharyn and Shawn, grandchildren Alexander and Norah, his mother, Betty, cousin Lucy, and by a world of grateful cyclists. Richard! Ride on!