Zest for Life

Freewheeling

This is no ordinary biker gang.

Written by Diane Krieger | Photographed by Michael Neveux

Under their sleek racing helmets, these six silver-haired cyclists have a combined life experience of 550 years. The youngest, Jerry Biggins, turns 90 in October.

Early every Friday morning for the past dozen years these biking friends have met at Torrance Beach, straddled 10-speeds and pedaled the 4 miles to Hermosa Pier. Rolling up to Scotty’s on the Strand around 8 a.m., they park themselves at their regular table.

“We like sitting by the window, watching everybody go by,” says Jerry, who’s been doing this for nearly 40 years. When he and USC fraternity brother Sim Hixson started the Friday morning cycle group in 1985, they would ride all the way from Palos Verdes. Other friends joined over the years.

Sim passed away in 2019, and Jerry now rides alongside George Schuler, 91, Don Tuffli, 91, Warren Cutting, 93, Dal Corsaro, 91, and Fred Christie, 90. Three of them still work, which is why the group meets so early. After breakfast at Scotty’s, they’ll turn around, go home and get down to business.

Jerry is president of G.E Biggins & Associates, the Palos Verdes-based paper manufacturing business he founded in 1983. George heads up Schuler Investment Corporation, also based in Palos Verdes. Don is an executive with Tuffli Company, a Torrance-based real estate investment business, and its Long Beach subsidiary, Tell Steel.

The other bikers are retired. Dal was an executive in the food services industry. Warren was a Redon- do Beach dentist. Fred was president of Southern California Edison.

Whether retired or employed, these six nonagenarians work hard at staying young at heart. The weekly ride to Scotty’s is just one link in the well-greased chain that binds them. In addition to cycling, most of the men regularly play golf together at Palos Verdes Golf Club.

Jerry and Don go back a long, long way. They were fraternity brothers in the USC chapter of Delta Tau Delta in 1951. Don and Warren also share a special bond: Their youngest kids have been married about 40 years. They have three grandchildren in common.

All the bikers have been married at least 60 years. Between them, they have more than 70 grandkids and great-grandkids.

Once every summer, the cyclists get together with their wives for dinner at Scotty’s. (George recommends the spaghetti: “For $6.95, it’s all you can eat, though the price has been going up. It’s now $12.95.”)

The ladies independently see each other through their volunteer work for the Peninsula Committee Children’s Hospital and other activities. In another group activity, the friends gather once a month at The Original Red Onion in Palos Verdes for lunch and a friendly game of gin rummy. When the plates are cleared, the cards come out. The rummy club is whimsically called the “Bored of Education.” They play for $20 stakes.

“We used to play volleyball 40 or 50 years ago,” Don explains. “Then the gals got tired of breaking their fingernails, so we started playing gin rummy.”

It’s 7:30 a.m. on a Friday in late June. Dal sips coffee and reads his paper, seated at their regular table in Scotty’s. Normally he arrives with the gang on his three-wheeler, but “I’m taking a little vacation from riding,” Dal says. He’s recovering from a temporary health setback but expects to be back in the saddle in two weeks.

As the other bikers roll in, there are smiles and back slaps. Fred is conspicuously absent. He’s home sick with COVID-19. That doesn’t faze these fearless men. Throughout the pandemic, they never stopped cycling.

The bike group arrives early on Friday mornings for breakfast and conversation at Scotty's in Hermosa Beach.

“We just kept coming down here. We’d get takeout and eat on the patio,” says Jerry, a four-time cancer survivor. “I never got that worried about COVID,” he adds with a shrug.

Waitress Jasmine Calderon has been taking their orders every Friday for the last two years. “They’re really nice,” she says. “They always order the same thing.” Dal and George content themselves with a bowl of plain oatmeal. Don enjoys two slices of bacon and half an English muffin. Warren and Jerry like two eggs with their bacon.

Manager Luis Monroy has worked at Scotty’s for 20 years. “They’re my friends,” he says of the Friday morning senior biker gang. “It’s so cute. They’re like young guys, always making jokes.”

All six cyclists are Southland natives, but Dal is hyperlocal. He grew up in Redondo Beach and remembers when it was a sleepy village. “From our house to Palos Verdes, there was nothing but oil derricks, Japanese flower gardens and bean fields,” he recalls. Weekenders came from across town on the Red Car. Dal himself would ride the streetcar to his grandparents’ home in San Bernardino.

As breakfast winds down, Don and George strap on their helmets for the 4-mile ride back to the big ramp near Miramar Park. Jerry stays behind to accompany Warren on the 1-mile ride to Bluewater Grill, where his car is parked. “I do a ‘sissy’ ride,” Warren explains, “because I’m so slow.” In his prime, Warren swam on the men’s relay team at Stanford. Jerry used to bike 50 miles a week. A knee-replacement surgery in 2021 has pared back his cycling distances. In the ninth decade of life, both men accept their physical limitations, but they pride themselves on the things they can do. On the links, Warren defiantly carries his own golf bag. “I hate golf carts,” he grumbles.

After helping load his friend’s bike at Bluewater Grill, Jerry rides on to Torrance Beach, where his own car waits.

They know the joyride can’t last forever. Dave Diestel, the group’s erstwhile “cutup,” left for Arizona to be closer to his daughter. “He’s in the warehouse now,” Don cracks, meaning a senior living facility. Dick Dunbar, who used to show up for breakfast when he could no longer pedal to Scotty’s, has stopped coming. Dal’s wife, Joyce, passed away in November.

But week after week, these seniors cycle on, keeping their legs, lungs and long friendships strong. “It's good exercise,” Jerry notes, “and you‘ve got to do something—as you get older especially. You’ve got to do something.”

Perhaps Frank Sinatra said it best when he crooned: “And if you should survive to 105, look at all you'll derive out of being alive.” For these young-at-heart cyclists, that’s another 15 years down the bike path. •

Seated at their regular Scotty's table, it's just another Friday morning with the guys for Warren, Jerry, Don, George and Dal.