Southern California bicyclist August Bissiri marked his 85th birthday last month, but thought a mile for each year of his life was too few for an apt birthday celebration.
So he rode 100 miles - a century - the kind of ride usually reserved for folks far younger.
Though he discovered cycling well after retiring from his counseling post at Los Angeles City College in 1989, Bissiri was a wholehearted convert to the sport, friends said.
He was in the midst of a weeklong bicycle tour of Sonoma County with 54 other cyclists from around the country when he was struck and killed Thursday afternoon on Highway 1 near Bodega Bay.
"He was doing what he loved," close friend Marylou Tibbs said Friday from Bissiri's home in Laguna Woods Village, a retirement community inland from Laguna Beach. "He loved biking and skiing and tennis, and very, very active - about 20 years younger than his age."
Bissiri, a member of the Bicycle Club of Irvine as well as the Laguna Woods Village Bicycle Club, arrived in Sonoma County on Sunday with several dozen people from the Irvine club. They met up in Santa Rosa with cyclists from across the United States for an annual fund-raising tour to raise money for charities in Guatemala, Irvine cyclist Bill Sellin said.
"Everybody comes up here to tour because it's such wonderful riding," he said.
The group, backed by support vans, started with day trips in Calistoga and Yountville - taking the same route down Silverado Trail where a Napa cyclist was struck and killed May 17, Sellin said. They rode from Santa Rosa to Healdsburg on Monday, then to Guerneville on Tuesday and rode along the Russian River for two days.
On Thursday, the trip from Guerneville to Bodega Bay took them down Highway 1, where some of the group took a side trip to Bodega Head, Spud Point Marina and stopped for lunch - "some great chowder" - before heading back through "a nasty onshore wind" to the Bodega Bay Lodge for the night, Sellin said.
Bissiri rode near the head of the group and must have overshot the hotel by a couple of miles - or that's what his companions speculate now.
The rest had arrived at the lodge when a cyclist from another group rushed into the lobby and said one of their riders was down, south of town.
Sellin's group thought everyone was already at the hotel until they saw the colored flags on Bissiri's helmet and bike, marking him as one of theirs.
He was struck by a Ford Focus driven by David Chaote Tryon, 64, of Berkeley, the CHP said.
Tryon told CHP investigators he was heading north on Highway 1 north of Bay Hill Road when he rounded a hairpin curve and saw Bissiri up ahead.
The cyclist appeared to be traveling northbound in the southbound lane of the highway, then veered into the northbound lane in front of his car, Tryon told the CHP.
Tryon took evasive action and veered off the right side of the road into a hillside, causing his car to overturn and land on its roof. He suffered minor injuries.
But he could not avoid hitting Bissiri, who went down and suffered what appeared to be multiple traumatic injuries.
A passerby attempted CPR, but Bissiri died at the scene, emergency officials said.
Sellin, however, said he and the other cyclists believe Bissiri pulled into a turnout and was crossing the highway or attempting a U-turn so he could return northward and meet up with his group at the hotel.
"When we first heard reports he was riding the wrong direction, that's ridiculous," Sellin said. "None of us would do that, and he certainly wouldn't."
Skid marks show that Bissiri was in the center of the northbound lane when the crash occurred, CHP Officer Jon Sloat said. There also are brake marks from the Ford Focus as it came out of the blind curve, he said.
Bissiri, who lived with his wife of about 15 years, Bineke Bissiri, had previously been widowed and had three children and two step-children, Tibbs said.
He called his wife Thursday sometime before the crash to tell her what a good time he was having and "how beautiful it was along the Russian River," she said.
The cycling group was to ride from Bodega Bay to Santa Rosa on Friday morning before departing their separate ways at midday, Sellin said.
The route took them past the crash site, and "that was tough going," he said.
"Many of us opted to get off our bikes and hop in the vans, and drive to Santa Rosa today," Sellin said. "We weren't up to getting on our bikes today. We didn't feel like riding."
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: