Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 26, 1994 TAG: 9409260034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LISA GARCIA STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
His calf muscles look like they were chiseled out of marble. Not surprising for a man training to complete a bicycle trip from Brownsville, Texas, to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, in the next seven months - 6,000 miles by air, nearly three times that by road, Wagner says.
What is startling is that Wagner is 65 and still recovering from prostate cancer.
About a year after the removal of his prostate and two weeks after completing 38 radiation treatments at Lewis-Gale Hospital, Wagner said he was feeling tired. But in the same breath he talked of the next day's hike on the Appalachian Trail.
Wagner said his doctor told him to rest when he felt fatigued; he prefers exercise and lots of it.
He takes step aerobic classes at the YMCA. Most people in the class use one or two steps; Wagner uses three to four.
Next it's on to the treadmill at 5.5 miles per hour for 40-55 minutes - and then the weight machines.
Wagner insists he did not seriously get into fitness training until 20 years ago, but long before that he was sky diving, rock climbing, scuba diving and running a dance studio with his first wife. His sense of adventure has not dwindled with age.
His gray hair with streaks of black would be considered a little long by conservative standards. His blue eyes look weary - a condition he attributes to the lingering after-effects of chemotherapy.
For an interview last week, he dressed in well-worn tennis shorts (the kind most moms throw out while their teen-agers aren't looking), a grey bandana, new hiking boots and a T-shirt advertising his membership in a Houston rowing club.
Wagner said he has spent most of the past 20 years living on his sailboat off Key Largo, Fla. He is also a part-time resident of Roanoke, where his ex-wife and two teen-age children live.
In recent years, he has lived off Social Security and jobs planting trees - as many as 5,000 a day.
"When I'm working, I'm living in a tent in the woods," Wagner said. "I prefer the lifestyle I live; it's less inhibited."
It was Wagner's desire to live on his boat, unfettered by social rules, that spurred him to undertake a bike trip from Texas to Argentina in April 1992. He and a friend from Key Largo, Ian Cortina, 25, wanted a better port, one where boat residents got respect.
Wagner said biking the coast was quicker than sailing and was inexpensive - an average of $4 a day.
The pair got only 3,000 miles into their trip before Cortina got sick - with cholera, he feared. A trip home to Florida and a doctor's visit proved Cortina wrong. Soon afterward, though, Wagner was called to California to help with a sick aunt and sister.
While in the states, Wagner went to Houston to visit a daughter. He also visited a doctor there and was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Wagner said he was "a little bummed out" when he had to cut his bike trip short because of his relatives' illnesses, but "was destroyed when I found out about the cancer."
Wagner said his diligence in exercising has helped him through the prostate surgery and chemotherapy.
Feeling well enough to take up his bike trip where he left off, Wagner and Cortina will begin in Belize City, Belize, and bike about 14,000 miles south.
Along the way, Wagner and Cortina will take time out to plant about 5,000 trees in several countries. The trees are being provided by Siembra un Arbol Como Norma, an environmental group in Honduras. Wagner set up the volunteer work after a visit to the Consul General from the Honduras Embassy in Houston.
According to Wagner, there is a reforestation project going on in South American countries where energy sources are at a premium. In Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, energy needs are so severe that power is turned off 14 hours each day. Wagner says many of the poorer residents cut trees for firewood for heat and cooking.
His offer to help was well received. He even got a call from government officials in Honduras who have arranged contacts for him in most of the countries he will pass through, enabling a safer trip.
Wagner said he expects to be "treated like royalty," as he and Cortina were in 1992. Twenty-three South American newspapers covered their trip as did one television station. People asked for autographs and restaurant owners paid their bills.
"Being on a bike puts us aside" from the average American tourist, Wagner said.
So Cortina and Wagner will set out again on their bikes, averaging 70 miles a day. (Their best day on the first leg of the trip was 178 miles.) They will breakfast at 8 a.m. on corn tortillas and beans after biking about two hours. They will "indulge" in a hotel room and a bath about once a week.
Their portable home, including cooking supplies, a tent and bed rolls, weighs 50-60 pounds, Wagner said. Now, they will burden themselves with an additional 16 pounds each of tools used to plant seedlings.
The extra weight, according to Wagner, will not prevent him and Cortina from crossing the Andes - a feat he claims no other bicyclist has done.
When asked why he believed he could bike the Andes, Wagner simply said, "Because the roads are good."
To contact Wagner about joining his bike trip or to help support it, write him at Larry Wagner, General Delivery, Key Largo, Fla., 34640.
He also admits that smoking marijuana after chemotherapy helped him overcome the inevitable nausea and fatigue.
by CNB