It’s been a few months since cyclists completed the 43rd-annual LoToJa bike race from Logan to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. For those who successfully finished the grueling 203-mile course, the memories live on.
But for cyclists and fans alike, many are still sharing stories and talking about one of the highlights of this year’s race. That’s due in large part to Bruce Bryner and Mike Traveller, who crossed the finish line riding in their first-ever LoToJa relay.
Bryner and Traveller look like your ordinary cyclists, riding together on their custom-built tandem bicycle with matching bright orange jerseys. From a distance, they look like any other racers pushing hard to stay on pace and keep the tandem bike moving forward.
But upon a closer look, you’ll notice a small detail that only a keen eye would notice — something you rarely see on a bike.
There, strapped on the top tube of this tandem bike, was a long, white cane with a bright red bottom. Bryner uses this foldable cane to navigate himself when he’s not riding the tandem.
Bryner is blind, which is something of a rarity in the cycling world.
Bryner suffers from a disease called retinitis pigmentosa.
“I grew up in the Kearns area and as a kid I always loved riding my bike,” Bryner recalls. “Then, when I was in my late 20s, I started to lose my peripheral vision. The doctors said it would eventually spread to my central vision. By the age of 35, I was completely blind.”
Faith and family
Bryner was living in the San Francisco Bay area when he lost his sight. Married and a father of five young children, he had a successful career as a hospital administrator for Kaiser Permanente. But he decided to take early retirement due to his condition.
The next challenge for Bryner was finding a new way to channel his energy and adjusting to the new reality of his situation.
In a world without sight, Bryner was forced to change his outlook and perspective on life. He had to adjust to a new normal.
“Without my wife, Evelyn, (my) family and my faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, I don’t know how I would have made it through those times,” Bryner said, trying to hold back emotions. “That’s what carried me through those tough days — my faith and family.”
At the time, Bryner decided he wasn’t going to look at his situation as a disadvantage. He saw it as an opportunity. He took on this new life challenge with the same vigor and effort he had before. But would he have to give up the things he loved, like cycling?
“When I met with the doctors at Stanford Medical Center, they told me one of the best things I could do for my physical and mental health and overall well-being was to stay in top shape.”
Cycling and hiking became an outlet for Bryner, something to take his mind off of his situation.
“One day, my brother said to me, ‘Why don’t you start riding a tandem with Evelyn?’” Bryner remembers. “So, my wife and I started riding together. What a joy that was. It really changed everything.”
Bryner never gave up his childhood love for cycling and has been riding ever since.
“I always had a desire to ride LoToJa if we could ever get in. It’s always been a dream of mine,” he said.
Cycling is a family affair for Bryner and Traveller, who are first cousins. Their mothers were sisters and grew up in a modest family home in Lewiston, Idaho.
“The house where both our moms grew up is right on the LoToJa route,” Traveller recalls. “It always brings back great family memories for me and Bruce to talk about visiting there. We love to see that house.”
The race route has another family connection.
“Our 97-year-old aunt, Joyce Gilbert, still lives in her home in Fairview, Idaho, which is right along the LoToJa course, so we had to do it,” Bryner explained. “We have family connections who live on the race route.”
So, for these two cousins, who went to BYU together, riding LoToJa was a cycling rite of passage. It was something that was always on their bucket list, almost like a family calling.
“I was talking with Bruce one day and neither of us thought we could do LoToJa. With the elevation and the distance, I was concerned, but Bruce wanted to try to do it,” Traveller said. “My brothers suggested we all do a relay, so I got my three brothers and their sons to join us. Bruce and I did legs 1, 4 and 5. All in all, we had five teams riding the two-person relay, it was so much fun.”
Cycling connections
Bryner lives in Iona, Idaho, and Traveller hails from Twin Falls, Idaho. They found that cycling together was a great way to reconnect and experience the thrill of racing while also setting out to accomplish a goal together.
“Bruce is so inspiring to me,” Traveller says. “When Bruce was a YSA bishop, he was always trying to get some kids in his ward to go on this century ride with him, but he rode on this old beach comber-looking bike. It wasn’t designed for 100-mile rides, but he did it anyway. That’s the kind of person Bruce is, always trying to connect with people.”
LoToJa cyclists know that the day of the race is really a celebration of the hundreds of hours of training it takes to get there. The same was true for Team Bryner/Traveller.
“I trained in Twin Falls with my brothers at all hours of the night and in morning,” Traveller said. “Sometimes I would get up at 3 a.m. and ride in the dark to get my miles in because I knew Bruce would be at home riding on his trainer in his basement. Bruce is the most fit 70-year-old I know.”
Bryner is also dedicated to his training regimen. He rides six days a week, spending long hours on his Schwinn Pro stationary bike. But he never trains on Sundays.
“For LoToJa, you pay the price before the race in your training, or you pay the price during the race if you didn’t,” Traveller said.
Riding a tandem for cyclists with clear vision can be a serious challenge.
So how does Traveller feel about being the eyes and navigator for his tandem team when he and Bryner train in different cities? Especially showing up at LoToJa when they haven’t ridden together for more than a year?
“Honestly, I was feeling a little stressed before LoToJa because I’m responsible for me and Bruce,” he said. “But what’s amazing is we are so in sync, it only took a few revolutions before we started to click. We have a sense of rhythm together. We are a team.”
It’s that rhythm and unity — two riders pedaling in unison, both working together — that makes riding with a tandem a beautiful thing to see. Trust between riders is the bond of the tandem team.
A matter of trust
“I trust him completely and he trusts me completely,” Traveller said. “That’s the only way it works for us. We have to trust each other.”
“It is a lot of trust,” Bryner said. “Mike is the pilot, the person in the back is the stocker. We’ve done it so many times that he will tell me when to clip out, pedal harder, stand up, when a sharp turn is coming and when we are stopping. He will communicate to me throughout the ride.”
But there is one part of cycling that still makes Bryner a bit uneasy.
“Honestly, I don’t like the downhill,” Bryner says, “When it’s really steep and I am on the back of a tandem going 50 miles per hour it just scares me. I can’t see anything, so we have to be aligned as a team. But I understand that we lose so much of our momentum on the climbs, so we have to make up for it somewhere.”
So far, this teamwork approach has helped the dynamic duo to avoid serious accidents.
“Bruce is such a smart rider,” Traveller said. “He will study the course for months leading up to the race and he will tell me what we have coming up on the road ahead of us. It’s like he sees the course in his mind. Where the climbs and turns are and what’s coming ahead. I don’t know how he does it.”
How does a sightless rider prepare for a course as varied as LoToJa with its summit climbs, flat stretches and descents?
“My wife Evelyn is amazing,” Bryner said. “She spends the time to go over the course map with me. We have driven the LoToJa course many times in the car, and I have that in my mind, and she tells me where the turns are and what she sees and where we go. Then she reads some of the descriptions of the grades and the elevation. She is my eyes in preparing for the course.”
Teamwork
It’s that teamwork that caused other cyclists along the LoToJa course to take notice of the Bryner/Traveller team.
“People recognize Bruce on the ride,” Traveller said. “He has that white stick strapped to the bike and all sorts of people were talking to us and clapping for us during the race. I’ll never forget the last 10 miles, which are the hardest for me, that there was a young boy running along the side of the road yelling to us, ‘Go tandem! It takes team work to make the dream work!’ That really lifted my spirits.”
For Bryner, it’s those sounds and voices of encouragement that he hears along the racecourse that motivate him to keep pedaling.
“At that time, I could tell the voice was that of a young man who had to be 13 or 14 years old. His voice was so excited, and he was really cheering us on. I was thinking to myself, this young man stood there on the side of the road, just to cheer on cyclists. I’ve got to finish,” Bryner said.
As the duo started to near the finish line, Bryner could hear the race announcer in the distance.
“As we got closer, Mike would say, ‘5K to go,’ then ‘3K to go.’ I knew we were going to make it. As we got closer, I could hear the announcer’s voice as the riders crossed the finish line. Then I could hear the fans’ cheering get louder and louder as we got closer to the finish. I’ve never been in a race before with fans. That cheering really lifted my spirits and gave me the power to push on.”
Cycling community
The cycling community is a close one, and for Traveller, who was starting to feel the effects of a long day of racing, it gave him a much-needed lift.
“I was fully spent. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it all the way, but I kept thinking I didn’t want to let Bruce down,” Traveller said. “So luckily for us, we had a good friend from Twin Falls, Russ Mayes, who helped us the entire day and he really pulled us to the finish line.
“Russ helped with our nutrition and hydration. People don’t realize that with a blind person on the tandem, you don’t just reach for your water bottle anytime you want. You have to be careful and pick your spots. Because of that, I often get dehydrated because I don’t drink enough.”
With only a few kilometers to go, the entire relay team pulled together and, as a team, they all made a push for the line.
“Sometimes it’s kind of emotional coming into the finish line,” Traveller said. “Both of our wives and families are there to meet us. But getting there safe is a huge sense of relief.”
Bryner recalls, “When we got to the finish line, one cyclist that we had passed along the course came up to us and said, ‘I want you to know what an inspiration you both were to me today. Every time you passed me, I felt I have the will to finish. I could do it.’”
This motivation is what fuels Bryner and Traveller.
“We all have obstacles in life, but how we choose to take them on is up to us,” Traveller said. “How easy would it be to sit on the couch and not ride a bike? But Bruce doesn’t. He hikes, rides bikes, he’s done the Hiawatha Trail. He is amazing. When his kids asked him what he wanted for his 70th birthday, he said all he wanted to do was ride his bike 70 miles.”
For Bryner, his LoToJa experience was another pedal stroke, another revolution of his wheels in a long and winding journey of achieving the impossible in his life.
Bryner not only finds joy in cycling, but also in his church calling as the patriarch for the Iona Idaho South Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The physical and the spiritual
“I believe there is a real connection between your physical and spiritual health,” he said. “I value my physical health, and it helps me spiritually in so many ways. I am an early riser, so I’m up at 5 a.m. each day for my daily worship and communion each and every morning.”
“The Spirit speaks to me in the quiet hours of the morning. I cherish those times. I have my quiet time to think about the names of those people that have requested a patriarchal blessing. They are always on my mind.”
One might wonder how a patriarch who can’t see fulfills his church calling.
“I have to be spiritually tuned in because I don’t have the eyesight I used to have,” Bryner said. “When people come to me for a patriarchal blessing, I see them as a person. I don’t see their physical appearance. I see them as a child of heavenly parentage. I see them as a child of God. A loving Father in Heaven who knows who they are and knows who they will become. He can see their potential.
“I feel light from them. I can’t see anything with my eyes, but I can feel their light. I am truly blessed by my calling and for that experience.”
With their first LoToJa now behind them, both Bryner and Traveller begin to reminisce a bit.
“I have an amazing wife, and having the gospel in my life has helped me during the most difficult times. On those hard days, I focus on my abilities on what I can do, not what I can’t do. I feel grateful that I have people in my life that love and support me and help me achieve my goals and dreams,” Bryner said.
So next year, if you are one of the lucky ones to ride LoToJa, take a moment to take in all the beauty the race has to offer — the fall colors and the towering peaks of the Grand Tetons at the finish. But be sure to keep an eye out to say hello to Bruce and Mike.
You can’t miss a tandem team with two road warriors, wearing orange cycling jerseys with their trademark white cane strapped to the back.
Glenn Seninger lives in Salt Lake City and is a 15-time LoToJa finisher.