Blind Bike Racer: 2 Good Legs and Faith in Partner

Nevin Musgrave figures that when it comes to tandem bicycle racing, he’s got about the best possible partner pedaling behind him. A blind man.

And Ray Patterson--who is that blind man--thinks he’s finally found a sport in which he can participate with absolutely no handicap. After all, when you’re stoking from the rear and hunched over so your nose is just about touching your partner’s tail bone, what’s there to see?

Musgrave and Patterson--four good legs and two good eyes between them--think they’re pretty hot stuff, so they’ve headed off to Paris, where in July they’ll be competing in the tandem bicycling component of the Tour de France, the world’s premier bicycle racing event--actually several races strung together over the course of about three weeks.

Patterson initially took to tandem bicycling for more domestic reasons: it’s the one sport, he notes, where the husband can’t leave his wife in the dust, or vice versa. So Patterson and his wife of five years, Bobbi, bicycle for hours in the hills and down the rural lanes around their home in southwest Escondido.

Patterson said he was always drawn to bicycling, but couldn’t very well pursue it until he found a partner who enjoyed the sport and could sit up front. Thank you, Bobbi.

Patterson, 39, lost his right eye to retinoblastoma, an eye cancer, when he was 3 years old, and his left eye developed a blinding cataract from the resulting childhood radiation treatment. Today he has little if no recollection of sights or colors, but he grew up resolved not to let his blindness be a handicap.

Earned College Degree

He attended a school for the blind, then earned a bachelor of art’s degree in history from Kansas State University. He got a job as a student counselor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

All the while, Patterson, a scrawny, lean fellow with a wild brown mop of hair, nurtured his love for sports.

There was, for instance, archery. He used the tick-tick-tick of an alarm clock as his target.

He tried snow skiing but, following the bad instructions of a sighted partner, he zigged when he should have zagged and ended up against a snow fence, upside down in five feet of powder.

He attends as many grand prix automotive races as he can, including in LeMans and Monaco, either positioning himself along a straightaway to pick up on the sounds of speed, or cozying his way into the pits to hear--and smell--the sport.

Flying and Wrestling

Once Patterson even bought an airplane--not that he planned to fly it. That was his friend’s job. But he said he enjoyed the sense of motion that can be experienced only in a small airplane.

And in 1972 Patterson qualified for the Olympic trials in wrestling, by virtue of his prowess as a varsity wrestler at Kansas State.

Patterson’s zest for life hasn’t been confined to sports. He has traveled around the world several times, for business as well as pleasure, first alone, and more recently with his wife.

He can’t discuss the sights but he can go on for hours about the other sensations he experienced in such places as Singapore, India, Nepal and Ireland, often challenging fellow travelers on their observations because of his ability to detect nuances in speech, smells and feelings which his sighted counterparts overlook.

At one point he set up a wholesale business to import swap-meet items to the United States.

It was after he married Bobbi that the couple went to France, where they found an inexpensive apartment in downtown Paris and where he hooked up with a local tandem bicycle club for the benefit of blind cyclists. No similar organization exists in the United States, he said.

He remembered his first ride as cold and miserable, and he was told later that his sighted pilot had taken the bike up to speeds of 35 m.p.h. down a narrow bike lane where the clearance between his handle bars and the safety poles to keep out motorists was only a matter of two or three inches.

Ignorance was bliss, Patterson thought.

The couple lived in Paris for two years, then came upon an incredible tourist bargain to travel by train from Budapest to Beijing, via Moscow, for $54 per person.

They took their tandem along, and were crestfallen to learn that a baggage car snafu in Moscow kept their bike there while they ended up in China. Undaunted, the couple spent five months in Southeast Asia and Singapore before returning to Beijing, by which time the bike had been delivered.

Several months ago, the couple returned home to Escondido and Patterson kept in shape with his wife and local bicyclists so he could enter his third Tour de France.

In his first race, in 1985, Patterson and his partner placed 24th in a field of 94 bicycling pairs--each with a sighted captain and a blind power stroker, or “stoker,” in the back.

In 1986, he placed 35th in a field of 56 tandem teams, and put the blame for the less than fulfilling finish on his captain, who had not before ridden tandem and was unfamiliar with the different techniques of riding a bicycle built for two.

So he and Musgrave, 34, who lived in Vista until moving recently to Wofford Heights near Kernville, have high hopes for this year’s race, since both are experienced tandem riders.

“This is a sport where there doesn’t have to be any concessions for the handicapped,” Patterson said. “There is no negative effect, no disparity. My job’s simply to add power and balance to the machine.”

To help meet expenses, Patterson, his wife and partner hustle for free parts from manufacturers and modest financial support from sponsors. In Escondido, the couple live at Bobbi’s parents’ home and in Europe, they’ve learned to live “dirt cheap” on their savings, accumulated from odd jobs and from his small import-export business.

Musgrave said he couldn’t hope for a better partner than Patterson, blind or not.

“The guy in back has to totally trust the person in front, to learn balance and to judge what the person in front is going to do,” Musgrave says. “They’re like dance partners. And it doesn’t matter if the guy in the back can see or not, because there’s nothing to see anyway when you’re back there.”