The Man Who Rode to the Moon (and back) (twice)
By Sean Coffey
Photography by Michael Darter
(I read the story of Freddie Hoffman in the July 2001 issue of Bicycling magazine. I recently did a search on the web to try to find more information about him, and found that he has been an inspiration to many cyclists and others around the world. Many people seem to be looking for this article, so I have reproduced it here without permission. I hope the folks at Bicycling are good sports and don't sue me. If they make the article available on their web site, I would be glad to replace this page with a link to their article.)
Freddie Hoffman is a geek. His ride, a battered Schwinn Voyager, is clad with a chrome steel cruiser bar, fenders, front and rear racks, eight taillights, six front flashers and a generator light. His handlebar is cluttered with a bar-mounted compass, cable-driven odometer, Avocet cyclometer, a squeeze-style horn and an electric air horn, and a small towel for nose-wiping. The bike easily outweighs many downhill bikes, and Hoffman doesn't look much better--he has a noticable spare tire around his midsection and rides in the same faded blue sweatpants, stained T-shirt and grubby gray hooded sweatshirt he wore the day before.
Freddie Hoffman is one of the most accomplished cyclists in the world. He could kick your ass.
The 43-year-old New Jersey native wiggles his no-name running shoes into toe clips. His lifetime odometer stands at an astonishing 1,202,625 miles. His top tube reads "To the Moon and Back, Twice."
He pushes off and turns an easy gear at a buttery-smooth 80 rpm, then begins clicking through the gears, which shift as swiftly as those on a pro racer's bike. He automatically maintains the 80-rpm cadence through each increase in resistance, until he reaches a cruising speed of 18 mph.
Hoffman rides completely upright, only rising from the saddle to absorb a particularly rough section of road. He dives into corners with the confidence of a seasoned criterium racer. In traffic he's comfortable but wary, using his hand-squeeze horn to blat gentle warnings to motorists, and resorting to the alarming blast of his high-powered compressed air horn for drivers who could turn into his path. Three towns from his home, somewhere in southern New York, a motorist shouts a greeting to him by name, to which Hoffman casually waves. He doesn't recognize the driver, but it happens all the time--everyone within a one-day riding range knows who he is.
Forty miles pass beneath his worn, 700x40c hybrid tires in just over 2 hours, and Hoffman's no slower or more physically worn than he was upon first swinging his leg over the bike.
This is just his first ride for the day. He'll churn out another 20-40 miles before he turns in for his customary 6 hours of sleep, which he says is enough for him to recover from all but the hardest rides. On a typical day, he goes for two or three rides for a total of anywhere from 50 to 120 miles, and during the summer, he does up to 200 miles a day, often for days on end.
Freddie Hoffman's life is an incarnation of the fantasy we've all rolled through our heads after a particularly wonderful day of cycling--"What if all I had to do was ride?" he lives at home with his 84-year old father and works a modest job as a nighttime church custodian. He has no wife, no kids, and he hasn't ridden with someone else in a decade.
"My life socially is like the surface of Mars--barren, lifeless so to speak. Unchanged and monotonous," he say. "How many 40-year-olds do you know who've never had a date, never driven a car and have no desire to do so?
"I'm happy, but I'm abnormal."
He was born oxygen-deprived and suffered slight brain damage. It's not apparent until you hear him speak, when a slight stutter and cartoon-like drawl undercut his heavy New Jersey accent. His motor skills, writing and information processing were also affected. It's not the sort of thing that keeps him from tying his shoes, but it distinguishes him from what he calls "normal people" enough that he claims to be incapable of functioning like everyone else. "In school, I couldn't work in a class with 30 other kids and finish a project within a specified time frame. I was slower, and there was nothing I could do about that."
Childhood was hard on Hoffman, and he doesn't have many good memories that don't involve cycling. His disability made him a social outcast, so he didn't enjoy baseball games, summer camp and sleepovers like most kids. His bicycle helped him ride away from his problems. When he rode, he says, he felt normal.
"Cycling was something I could do on my own, and I needed something I could do to nurture myself. I could go ff on my own little journeys in my own little world, and do what I want, when I want, wherever. I built a world for myself around my bike riding. My bike served as my playmat, my brother and my counselor. Anytime I was riding, I was happy."
On a lazy summer afternoon in 1969, Freddie Hoffman sat alone on the floor of his parents' house, watching a black-and-white television as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Lots of kids wanted to be astronauts after that, but Freddie's desire to go to the moon was more desperate and emotional. He won't express the idea this explicitly, but you can imagine him envying the astronauts' ability to leave this world behind, go into their own private space capsule and ride to a place where they'd emerge into glory and admiration.
Freddie and his fully loaded bike, Ruth E. (named after his mother).
That day, the child vowed to ride to his own unreachable place--the 500,000-mile mark, the distance to the moon and back.
His obsession is chronicled in a pile of handmade and meticulously maintained mileage logs he started keeping in 9165, at the age of 7. He's estimated his mileage going back to age 5, when his riding consisted of 1/2-mile laps around the block on a tricycle, sometimes adding up to 15 miles in a day. His totals piled up quickly. "I did my first centry on a Schwinn Sting-Ray, with just one gear, and rode 19 centuries in a year at age 10. That's a lot for a little kid." Riding was so important to him that his mother's most severe punishment (usually administered for riding too far from home) was to not allow him to ride. Even then, Hoffman would sneak out in the middle of the night to ride. When he hit half a million miles, he says, he was neither satisfied nor tired of riding, so he simply decided to go for a million miles--about two trips to the moon and back.
In what he calls "The Roaring Eighties," a decade of mild winters, he rode 506,900 miles--a little more than 50,000 miles per year. His mileage log is peppered with 200-mile-plus days. In 1983, he rode 200 miles or more on all but 8 days in August, and even those shorter days ranged from 120-195 miles. In 1988, he averaged 142 miles a day for the entire year, about 1,100 a week.
[...]
His mother died of leukemia in 1986, and in addition to naming his bike, Ruth E., after her, he now uses his superhuman mileage to raise money for leukemia research. He spends his summers doing two- and three-month fund-raising voyages from New Jersey into the Colorado Rockies and beyond, totally alone and self-supported, not unlike a space mission, though he does stay in hotels for the showers, beds, and air conditioning.
Hoffman has crossed the country 20 times, and he has photo albums stuffed with pictures of everything from scenery to befriended locals. And he can recall anecdotes to go with each one--like the time he watched a photographer corss "Do Not Cross" fences to get a good picture and drop an expensive camera and tripod into the Royal Gorge, or the day he watched another cyclist ride off a cliff in Colorado, presumably to his death, or the Parade of Bicycles that happens on July 4 in Shelby, Ohio.
He spends three months before these adventures riding 500 miles a week to canvas up to 5,000 sponsors, for anything from a fraction of a penny to a nickel a mile. He doesn't take any of the donations to supplement his meager income or help foot the bill for equipment and travel expenses. "I have a separate sponsor that helps with my expenses when I'm on the road," he says. His single-handed fund-raising effort of nearly $500,000 has earned him a high ranking on the Northern New Jersey Leukemia Society's list of major fund-raisers--right between the mammoth contributions from corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Turner Broadcasting.
On his kitchen counter sits a handmade toteboard with paper numbers flipped to $38,308, the amount of money he's raised this year so far. As he sits at the table guzzling a gallon of orange juice after a ride, he's ringed by six framed letters and plaques hanging on the walls among family photos and decorations.
There are also hand-signed letters of appreciation from George Bush, Bill Clinton, the U.S. Congress and high-ranking state officials. He's shaken hands with 22 governors and received the key to the city of Quincy, Illinois.
By Sean Coffey
Photography by Michael Darter
(I read the story of Freddie Hoffman in the July 2001 issue of Bicycling magazine. I recently did a search on the web to try to find more information about him, and found that he has been an inspiration to many cyclists and others around the world. Many people seem to be looking for this article, so I have reproduced it here without permission. I hope the folks at Bicycling are good sports and don't sue me. If they make the article available on their web site, I would be glad to replace this page with a link to their article.)
Freddie Hoffman is a geek. His ride, a battered Schwinn Voyager, is clad with a chrome steel cruiser bar, fenders, front and rear racks, eight taillights, six front flashers and a generator light. His handlebar is cluttered with a bar-mounted compass, cable-driven odometer, Avocet cyclometer, a squeeze-style horn and an electric air horn, and a small towel for nose-wiping. The bike easily outweighs many downhill bikes, and Hoffman doesn't look much better--he has a noticable spare tire around his midsection and rides in the same faded blue sweatpants, stained T-shirt and grubby gray hooded sweatshirt he wore the day before.
Freddie Hoffman is one of the most accomplished cyclists in the world. He could kick your ass.
The 43-year-old New Jersey native wiggles his no-name running shoes into toe clips. His lifetime odometer stands at an astonishing 1,202,625 miles. His top tube reads "To the Moon and Back, Twice."
He pushes off and turns an easy gear at a buttery-smooth 80 rpm, then begins clicking through the gears, which shift as swiftly as those on a pro racer's bike. He automatically maintains the 80-rpm cadence through each increase in resistance, until he reaches a cruising speed of 18 mph.
Hoffman rides completely upright, only rising from the saddle to absorb a particularly rough section of road. He dives into corners with the confidence of a seasoned criterium racer. In traffic he's comfortable but wary, using his hand-squeeze horn to blat gentle warnings to motorists, and resorting to the alarming blast of his high-powered compressed air horn for drivers who could turn into his path. Three towns from his home, somewhere in southern New York, a motorist shouts a greeting to him by name, to which Hoffman casually waves. He doesn't recognize the driver, but it happens all the time--everyone within a one-day riding range knows who he is.
Forty miles pass beneath his worn, 700x40c hybrid tires in just over 2 hours, and Hoffman's no slower or more physically worn than he was upon first swinging his leg over the bike.
This is just his first ride for the day. He'll churn out another 20-40 miles before he turns in for his customary 6 hours of sleep, which he says is enough for him to recover from all but the hardest rides. On a typical day, he goes for two or three rides for a total of anywhere from 50 to 120 miles, and during the summer, he does up to 200 miles a day, often for days on end.
Freddie Hoffman's life is an incarnation of the fantasy we've all rolled through our heads after a particularly wonderful day of cycling--"What if all I had to do was ride?" he lives at home with his 84-year old father and works a modest job as a nighttime church custodian. He has no wife, no kids, and he hasn't ridden with someone else in a decade.
"My life socially is like the surface of Mars--barren, lifeless so to speak. Unchanged and monotonous," he say. "How many 40-year-olds do you know who've never had a date, never driven a car and have no desire to do so?
"I'm happy, but I'm abnormal."
He was born oxygen-deprived and suffered slight brain damage. It's not apparent until you hear him speak, when a slight stutter and cartoon-like drawl undercut his heavy New Jersey accent. His motor skills, writing and information processing were also affected. It's not the sort of thing that keeps him from tying his shoes, but it distinguishes him from what he calls "normal people" enough that he claims to be incapable of functioning like everyone else. "In school, I couldn't work in a class with 30 other kids and finish a project within a specified time frame. I was slower, and there was nothing I could do about that."
Childhood was hard on Hoffman, and he doesn't have many good memories that don't involve cycling. His disability made him a social outcast, so he didn't enjoy baseball games, summer camp and sleepovers like most kids. His bicycle helped him ride away from his problems. When he rode, he says, he felt normal.
"Cycling was something I could do on my own, and I needed something I could do to nurture myself. I could go ff on my own little journeys in my own little world, and do what I want, when I want, wherever. I built a world for myself around my bike riding. My bike served as my playmat, my brother and my counselor. Anytime I was riding, I was happy."
On a lazy summer afternoon in 1969, Freddie Hoffman sat alone on the floor of his parents' house, watching a black-and-white television as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Lots of kids wanted to be astronauts after that, but Freddie's desire to go to the moon was more desperate and emotional. He won't express the idea this explicitly, but you can imagine him envying the astronauts' ability to leave this world behind, go into their own private space capsule and ride to a place where they'd emerge into glory and admiration.
Freddie and his fully loaded bike, Ruth E. (named after his mother).
That day, the child vowed to ride to his own unreachable place--the 500,000-mile mark, the distance to the moon and back.
His obsession is chronicled in a pile of handmade and meticulously maintained mileage logs he started keeping in 9165, at the age of 7. He's estimated his mileage going back to age 5, when his riding consisted of 1/2-mile laps around the block on a tricycle, sometimes adding up to 15 miles in a day. His totals piled up quickly. "I did my first centry on a Schwinn Sting-Ray, with just one gear, and rode 19 centuries in a year at age 10. That's a lot for a little kid." Riding was so important to him that his mother's most severe punishment (usually administered for riding too far from home) was to not allow him to ride. Even then, Hoffman would sneak out in the middle of the night to ride. When he hit half a million miles, he says, he was neither satisfied nor tired of riding, so he simply decided to go for a million miles--about two trips to the moon and back.
In what he calls "The Roaring Eighties," a decade of mild winters, he rode 506,900 miles--a little more than 50,000 miles per year. His mileage log is peppered with 200-mile-plus days. In 1983, he rode 200 miles or more on all but 8 days in August, and even those shorter days ranged from 120-195 miles. In 1988, he averaged 142 miles a day for the entire year, about 1,100 a week.
[...]
His mother died of leukemia in 1986, and in addition to naming his bike, Ruth E., after her, he now uses his superhuman mileage to raise money for leukemia research. He spends his summers doing two- and three-month fund-raising voyages from New Jersey into the Colorado Rockies and beyond, totally alone and self-supported, not unlike a space mission, though he does stay in hotels for the showers, beds, and air conditioning.
Hoffman has crossed the country 20 times, and he has photo albums stuffed with pictures of everything from scenery to befriended locals. And he can recall anecdotes to go with each one--like the time he watched a photographer corss "Do Not Cross" fences to get a good picture and drop an expensive camera and tripod into the Royal Gorge, or the day he watched another cyclist ride off a cliff in Colorado, presumably to his death, or the Parade of Bicycles that happens on July 4 in Shelby, Ohio.
He spends three months before these adventures riding 500 miles a week to canvas up to 5,000 sponsors, for anything from a fraction of a penny to a nickel a mile. He doesn't take any of the donations to supplement his meager income or help foot the bill for equipment and travel expenses. "I have a separate sponsor that helps with my expenses when I'm on the road," he says. His single-handed fund-raising effort of nearly $500,000 has earned him a high ranking on the Northern New Jersey Leukemia Society's list of major fund-raisers--right between the mammoth contributions from corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Turner Broadcasting.
On his kitchen counter sits a handmade toteboard with paper numbers flipped to $38,308, the amount of money he's raised this year so far. As he sits at the table guzzling a gallon of orange juice after a ride, he's ringed by six framed letters and plaques hanging on the walls among family photos and decorations.
There are also hand-signed letters of appreciation from George Bush, Bill Clinton, the U.S. Congress and high-ranking state officials. He's shaken hands with 22 governors and received the key to the city of Quincy, Illinois.
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