At 84, Vestal cyclist still bikes 3 times a week

Show Caption Hide Caption Video: Cycling group spans 48 years Augie Mueller is a charter member of the Southern Tier Bicycle Club.

For 36 years, Augie Mueller enjoyed his commute to work every day.

He hopped on his road bicycle in the morning at the home in Vestal he shared with his wife, Joan, and their two children, and pushed off at what he calls "the perfect pace" only a bicycle affords. Not so fast you miss what's happening around you and not so slow you get bored.

Driving along the busy morning highways and streets, the thrum of a motor may drown a motorists' thoughts and "your work stays with you," Mueller says.

But on the bike, he hears only the birds chirp. While the world whizzes by and a driver sees only the next traffic light, Mueller sees rolling hillsides, neighborhoods and people.

"You can take it all in," he says now, sitting in his home decades after retiring in the late '90s. "It's just about the right speed."

Mueller caught the biking bug young, riding around his hometown in Minnesota on a single-speed beach cruiser with coaster brake as a paper boy. Mueller's father owned a service station, and he's been repairing bicycles since he was a teenager.

It took off from there; the 84-year-old rode his bike through high school, college, career and retirement.

He's a charter member of the Southern Tier Bicycle Club — founded in 1969 — refurbishes dozens of bicycles for donation each year and helped create the Great Finger Lakes Bike Tour, an annual event now in its 37th year — Mueller has only missed it once.

He's logged hundreds of thousands of miles on two wheels and still cycles three times a week.

Experience and love for the sport have prompted fellow club members to look to Mueller as an exceptional advocate for cycling in the Southern Tier.

A way of life

Behind where Mueller sits in his Vestal living room, three decorative wrought-iron bicycles line the sill of a large bay window, near a Sierra Club award recognizing Mueller for bicycling advocacy and an exemplary citizen award from the George F. Johnson Dream Center for community empowerment.

A photo book on a side table, opened to a black-and-white photograph, shows Mueller and his then-12-year-old daughter on a tandem bicycle. They rode 600 miles to Maine in the middle of Hurricane Agnes in 1972 — "She was determined," he says.

Today Mueller may be retired, but he is nonetheless a man of routine.

He aims to ride one of the six bicycles he keeps in his garage at least three times a week.

On Sundays, you'll find the Southern Tier Bicycle Club charter member with some of his fellow bike enthusiasts at the Park Diner in Binghamton. They share breakfast in their cycling gear before heading out for a ride to Corbettsville.

That's a short ride for Mueller — around a dozen miles one way. Long trips, like the upcoming Great Finger Lakes Bicycle Tour Mueller helped found, are a different story.

"I always thought in terms of 100 miles a day," he says.

When Mueller rode the FANY Ride, a 500-mile course from Niagara Falls to Saratoga Springs, he decided to begin his ride from Vestal, making it a 900-mile course.

"I cycle to cycle," he says with a shrug. "The word that comes to mind is freedom."

Mueller's been known to take on long distance rides and break them up with a two-hour stint at a public library to cool down and get ready to get back in the seat.

The distance doesn't pose a hurdle, he says and nor do hills, adding he's never seen one he couldn't make, even if that means hopping off the bike and walking a bit.

"It does take a certain mindset," he says.

Sharing the adventure

You can credit Mueller's mindset for the adopted term "Mueller Miles."

It's a euphemism employed by fellow club members, Joan explains, in reference to her husband's frequent underestimation of a trip's distance. They've learned not to be fooled if Mueller says they're riding 30 miles, because it's probably longer.

On the right sleeve of all club members' yellow jerseys in bright blue letters reads, "We Ride Mueller Miles!"

"It's always been a lively group and a lot of fun," Mueller says with a smile.

Now with around 400 members, the Southern Tier Bicycle Club splits its activity between bringing cyclists together and enabling others to enjoy the adventure.

Step inside Augie Mueller's garage today and you'll find the same six bicycles he always keeps there. But a few weeks prior, this space was filled with bikes, 50 of them.

Each year, Mueller leads the charge of club members who spend hours refurbishing donated bikes to be given to children of the George F. Johnson Dream Center — housed in Sarah Jane Johnson Memorial United Methodist Church in Johnson City — and adults of the rescue mission.

Two days before the giveaway, Mueller stands in the church's parking lot, supervising — "What I do best," he says — as several dozen volunteers of just about every age pass by toting 340 refurbished bicycles.

But the moment he spots a bike with low tire pressure, he disappears behind a wooden fence and returns with an air pump.

More than half a century spent fixing tubes and repairing bikes has made the sight of a damaged bicycle like an itch Mueller can't scratch. If he sees it, he goes to work on it.

Two days later, the church would fill with people on the now annual Bike Day, to collect these bikes, kids from across the Southern Tier who'll receive like-new bicycles to ride to Dream Center programming and adults in need of transportation, courtesy of Mueller and his team of volunteers from the Southern Tier Bicycle Club, who estimate they've refurbished 2,800 since Mueller first said "yes" a decade ago to fixing up a few bikes for the program.

"Augie has inspired and enabled many to enjoy the benefits of cycling," said Richard Porterfield, Southern Tier Bicycle Club member, "and we owe him a debt of gratitude for all he has done and continues to do."

Taking the tour

To help support the group's efforts and to build the camaraderie of fellow bike enthusiasts outside the club, there's the Great Finger Lakes Bicycle Tour.

In the past 37 years since the event — open to the public — started, Mueller's missed only one and the annual tour has brought back a familiar cast of characters year after year, a united celebration of cycling.

On June 9-11, between 200 and 300 people with every model of two-wheeled vehicles from the "Kmart special" they've had for decades to the most recently released model, are expected to join in 10-mile rides, 100-mile rides and everything in between from their campsite at Hidden Valley Campground, traversing the sloping landscape beyond Watkins Glen State Park.

"It's kind of a biker's paradise," Mueller says.

There will be a campfire Saturday night, breakfast Sunday morning — one of four catered meals — speakers and programming each day, as well as sag wagons available to fix up a tire on the route and maps and cue sheets to keep everyone on the right track, though Mueller says he's never been lost.

"I just didn't know where I was," he says with a grin. "Part of the adventure is getting lost, finding a new way."

It's a spirit of adventure from the sport they all have in common, one Augie has spent his life enjoying and sharing with others.

"The camaraderie with all these fellow bicyclists, the meals, it's affordable, it's just a beautiful setting," Mueller said.

That's in part why this tour, though a Southern Tier Bicycle Club event, is open to everyone. Through the years, this event has become a kind of reunion for all the out-of-town participants the club members don't see regularly.

"This event has brought together cyclists from all over the Northeast for a weekend of cycling and camping in Watkins Glen," Porterfield said.

Proceeds from the event serve two purposes for the club: to keep the Southern Tier Bicycle Club affordable (annual individual membership dues are $5) and to support its outreach programs, including scholarships, donations of bike racks, helmets and bicycles to area trails, the rescue mission and Dream Center.

There may not be a finish line, or a grand prize winner, but the event celebrates something else: the beauty of doing something for its own sake.

It's that freedom Mueller talks about, the feeling of a soft breeze as a bicycle climbs over a soft slope or the precise speed needed to catch a good glimpse of the sun glistening on the water at Seneca Lake, a sight Mueller says it "quite magnificent."

More importantly, this event along with the Bike Giveaway and other projects Mueller has launched with the Southern Tier Bicycle Club inspire and help children, families and individuals to enjoy the sport.

In Stories to Share, reporter Katie Sullivan spends time with the Southern Tier's most fascinating people. She's looking for stories that will make you laugh, cry or be inspired. Know of someone who should be featured? Email her at ksullivan@pressconnects.com, and follow her on Twitter @ByKatieSullivan.

IF YOU GO

What: Great Finger Lakes Bicycle Tour, hosted by the Southern Tier Bicycle Club

Where: Watkins Glen State Park, Hidden Valley 4-H Camp, Watkins Glen

When: June 9-11

Cost: $92

More information: Call Richard Porterfield at 607-323-3236 or visit greatfingerlakesbiketour.com.