Globe-trotter

Patricia Starr gears up to ride her bike across the United States

6/13/04

By CHARLOTTE BOECHLER

NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

Once Patricia Starr takes off on her cross-country bike trip next week, she's likely to encounter a few snags.

She will, after all, be wearing pantyhose the entire time.

"They make your legs feel good," Ms. Starr explained with a chuckle. "We are contacting the company right now about maybe an advertising endorsement from them because they've probably never had Hanes support hose pedaling across America before."

The Santa Barbara concert pianist will find out if the brand really does "help reduce leg fatigue" as promoted when she pedals 3,622 miles from Astoria, Ore., to Portsmouth, N.H., to raise funds for Santa Barbara City College music scholarships. She's also hoping to break the Guinness Record for the longest distance bicycled by a woman her age.

She is 67.

You wouldn't know it, though -- particularly if you check out her legs.

"I mean, look at that -- there's no varicose veins, nothing," gushed her husband, Gabriel Gonzales, 46, as she modeled them on a recent day inside the couple's home.

Ms. Starr admits she's had some help -- namely from the Hanes Alive support hose.

"I wear them all the time."

Even when she's training. To prepare for the upcoming ride, Ms. Starr has practiced on hills throughout Santa Barbara County. One of the biggest is along Gibraltar Road.

"Lance Armstrong has said that it is like the Pyrenees that he rides in the Tour de France, and that's why he likes to come and train here," said Ms. Starr. "When people say they can ride up Gibraltar Road, others go, 'You've got to be kidding!' "

She admits she avoids going to the top.

"The last mile and a half is where that crummy road is with all the potholes!" she said. "I figure, why go fall in a pothole and bend my rim? Going up 3,500 feet is still an awesome challenge."

Ms. Starr can use the experience. As part of the 50-day bike ride, which will begin June 20, she and about 40 other participants who signed up for it will cross the Cascade, Rocky and Appalachian mountains. Not to mention Togwotee Pass near Jackson, Wyo., which is 9,658 feet high.

"You don't know how your body is going to react," said Ms. Starr, adding that the lack of oxygen up there can lead to altitude sickness. "Some people absolutely get into a nonfunctional state, period. They have to get them out of there."

America By Bicycle, the company organizing the tour, will have support vans patrolling the stretch of road that bikers will be on each day just in case something like that happens. Participants, who will follow a predetermined route, must check in at designated stops in the morning and afternoon before they meet up again in the evening at their AAA motel.

Mr. Gonzales will be riding along in the family van. Given that there's enough room in it for 11 passengers (and a bike), what stops them from cheating?

"This is costing us personally a lot of money. By the time we get through with everything we're doing, we can be up in the range of $15,000 to $20,000," said Mr. Gonzales, adding that their expenses include gassing up the van for the return trip home. "I just took it to fill it up down there at $2.50 a gallon, and it ended up being 68 bucks."

Putting his hand to his heart, he added with a laugh: "I finally felt it. I finally felt the rise of the gas prices."

His wife, on the other hand, said the experience is priceless. Which is exactly why she said she'll pedal the whole way.

"You ought to see me keeping track of that schedule that I have there," she said, pointing to the times and distances she logs each day on a calendar. "If I come back from, say, Montecito and get back close to home and still have five minutes and have ridden an hour and 55 minutes, I go and circle around the neighborhood for five minutes so it's exactly two hours."

The only real detour the couple will take together is to Niagara Falls, where they get a day off.

"That's supposed to be one of the most romantic places in the world," said Ms. Starr.

So, do they have any particular plans there?

After a brief pause, they both let out a chuckle.

Nevermind.

The two, who have been married since 1998, met when Ms. Starr's engine blew. Mr. Gonzales, who owned GM Automotive, has been her mechanic from that point on.

"I got stuck someplace, so I called him right away. He said: 'Tow the car in. I'll have a car for you tonight. Don't worry about it.' I came home from choir rehearsal, opened the garage door. There was his baby: his '67 Impala convertible, red with a white top," recalled Ms. Starr. "This is the way he does things."

By the time they finish the bike tour, they will have traveled one-way through 10 states.

Ms. Starr figures her biggest roadblock will be the weather, particularly in the Midwest.

"You don't know what you're going to run into. We could run into flash floods, hailstorms . . ."

said her husband, who recalls the TV stations there running weather warnings at the bottom of the screen 24 hours a day. "One day, it's perfectly fine and then, all of a sudden in the middle of the afternoon, there's lightning and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms like you've never heard in your life."

Ms. Starr remembers being caught in one during a bike tour in Europe several years ago.

"The lightning was so close you could see it bouncing off the ground," she said.

She's quick to point out that a man was recently struck by lightning in Colorado while golfing. He was holding metal. She will be riding it.

The only thing she fears as much as that is a tornado.

"I grew up in what they call 'Tornado Alley.' That goes down the whole center of the United States," said Ms. Starr, who was born in Nebraska. "The tornado is whirling up in the sky and it's just very capricious. It can come down and cut a swath like it did in Omaha a quarter of a mile. It just takes out everything in its path."

She once came within feet of one.

"There was a big tree outside of our house and it picked up the whole tree -- roots and everything," she said. "It was that close."

But if anyone is prepared for extreme weather, it's Ms. Starr.

"This is how I grew up. You don't go out in the morning and get in your car and go. You have to scoop out the driveway first, you have to put the chains on, then you go up to your car to open the door and you can't get the key in the lock because it's frozen," she said. "It's like the weather tells you what to do instead of the other way around."

Ms. Starr was living in Nebraska when she discovered music. Her future piano instructor's car broke down in front of her house when she was just a kid. The only payment her father accepted when he fixed it was free lessons for his daughter.

"By the time I was 13, I was already playing some of the numbers that I still play now in concert," she said, including "Fantasy-Impromptu" by Chopin.

Her gigs have since included founding The Santa Barbara School of Music, where 18 different instruments were taught, and becoming director of music at St. Raphael's Catholic Church. She continues to perform for private functions and teach piano. None of it, she said, would have been possible without receiving scholarships.

"That's how I got through college. I was a little cornhusker with no money," she said. "I've never forgotten it."

That's why she started the Patricia Starr Endowment Fund for Music Scholarships at City College, which will provide a $1,000 grant each year to a music major. To raise funds for it, Ms. Starr is encouraging people to pledge money for every mile of the bike ride she completes.

What if she doesn't get that far?

Ms. Starr hasn't considered that an option.

"I've basically been training to do something like this all my life. When you're a musician, you go. You do the best job you can do, no matter what the situation is. You're maybe feeling like you're going to fall off the bench, but whatever," she said. "You have an obligation to your audience. Sure, Madonna and Barbra Streisand have all had to cancel concerts once in a while. There's many times you can be sure that they maybe had a headache or something else and went on anyway. Like they say, the show must go on."

Even if, at the end of the day, her legs are hurting.

If the pantyhose doesn't help, perhaps her husband will. After all, he is a certified massage therapist.

"It's nice to have my own private ace in the hole," said Ms. Starr.

PEDALING FOR CASH

To donate money for the bike tour, which will go toward the Patricia Starr Endowment Fund for Music Scholarships at Santa Barbara City College, call 897-3537 or go to www.sbstarrsview.com on the Web. All donations are tax-deductible.

STARR SIGHTING

To track Patricia Starr's progress, go to www.sbstarrsview.com.

MIKE ELIASON / NEWS-PRESS PHOTO

Talk about a shooting Starr. Patricia Starr plans to go across the country in just 50 days on her 24-speed bike. "We dip our back wheel in the Pacific Ocean, then we dip our front wheel in the Atlantic Ocean," she said.