Business gifts Santa Rosa 8th grader with road bike for 120-mile ride of honor

A decade ago, Paul Harlin biked 127 miles on a rough, uneven stretch of Highway 12 leading from Santa Rosa to Stockton in the middle of the night to see his girlfriend and future wife, Angelica.

He didn’t have a car and he said he “just couldn’t wait to see her.”

“I opened the door and there he is at 10 o’clock in the morning,” said Angelica Harlin, 44. “He looked so tired and I was like ‘Oh my goodness, come in.’”

Now, their 14-year-old son, Adam Lacey, is training to pay tribute to the romantic gesture alongside his father as part of an eighth grade school assignment.

And his ride has been made possible by a bike donated from Trek Bicycle Santa Rosa.

The assignment is part of an extended project at SunRidge School in Sebastopol to explore and study a subject in-depth and demonstrate mastery at the end of the year. Adam will bike the same distance and repeat parts of the route to visit his grandparents in Lodi, while training and tracking his progress all year.

For Adam, the assignment is both sentimental and practical ― it’s a way to spend time with his father and honor his parents’ love story. It’s also a way to delve into the world of long-distance road biking, a sport he hopes will allow him to gain endurance and develop mental focus as a teenager with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“I’ve always liked the idea of long-distance bike riding,” Adam said. “I feel like I’m a very hyper person and I don’t like being stuck inside. Biking helps me be outside … feel like it would be pretty cool reliving that ride.”

For Paul, 38, the project is a way to bond with his son and get back into the sport he once loved. He also appreciates the mental focus that long-distance biking gives him.

“Road biking becomes almost like a meditation,” he said. “You find a rhythm and it’s like a cadence. It can be almost like an out-of-body experience, especially when you start biking that far.”

Paul, who is an emergency medical technician going to paramedic school, could not afford to buy his son a new road bike for the assignment. So he started calling around to local bike organizations to explain the situation and see if they could do anything to help.

“I figured someone’s gotta have a bike laying round,” Paul said. “I got a lot of closed doors but someone recommended calling Trek because they do a lot of stuff for the community. We ran into Phil and it just connected with him.”

Phil Heydorn, 56, is the service manager at Trek Bicycle Santa Rosa talked with Paul over the phone. He asked them to send him an email with details and Adam’s height.

Adam sent the email himself, providing details about the school assignment, the meaning behind it and his measurements.

“The reason I am interested in this topic is because my father when I was a baby used to do long distance rides,” he wrote. “It has been many years since my father has biked and my teacher gave me permission to work on this project with my ‘now out of shape father’ (his words not mine) … Thank you so much for your time and consideration.”

Heydorn was touched — and impressed by Adam’s letter.

“I just felt like this is something we need to support here in Sonoma County,” he said. “It was just something for me that ticked all the boxes.”

But it also struck a personal note with Heydorn, who fell in love with road biking when he was Adam’s age.

“I had no idea that 40 years later I would still be riding,” he said. “That’s what I hope for Adam. Bikes are very empowering and I think he’s about to learn how much freedom he has when he gets on that bike and starts training for this very long ride.”

On Dec. 15, Adam, his dad and mom, who live in Santa Rosa, went to the Trek bike shop in downtown Santa Rosa, where Heydorn surprised them with an Émonda ALR 5 equipped with a helmet, lights, petals and seat bag.

“We made it so he could go jump on it and ride,” Heydorn said.

And that is what Adam did, even though it was raining that day.

“I was blown away,” Paul said. “It’s a gorgeous bike. I just was not expecting the generosity.”

“I had faith in them that they were going to do something for me but I wasn’t expecting them to do something that big,” Adam said. “It’s a really nice bike.”

Adam and his father immediately began training. Adam said he was amazed by how smooth and fast his bike was and how easily it shifted gears while going uphill.

“In my opinion, it’s almost life changing,” Paul said. “These are the kinds of things that are going to mold his life.”

Adam has always loved biking from the time he was two, when Paul began dating his mother.

Paul didn’t grow up with a father who was very present. “He just wasn’t the father that Paul is,” Angelica said. “That’s why spending time with Adam is so important to him.”

When Paul was dating Angelica and didn’t have a car, he would strap Adam to his back and take him all over town to run errands. When Adam was 7-years-old they got him a mini BMX bike, which he was obsessed with. As he got older he began playing baseball with Paul and became really good at it, his parents said.

“He has this internal drive to be able to strive,” Angelica said. “He’s very shy and he’s very sweet. He’s got a good heart and he tries really hard.”

But Adam struggled with school a lot during pandemic shutdowns and virtual school. With ADHD, being stuck inside made learning difficult and his grades started dropping, along with his self-esteem.

“It was a really sad time for him and coming out of that,” Angelica said, “but now he’s been doing much better.” Getting out of the house on a new bike and returning to in-person school has helped tremendously, she said.

“I don’t know how to put it into words,” Adam said. “In the car, I was like ‘I don’t know what to make my emotions because I was very, very, very grateful.”

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8511 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.