A remembrance of Cathy Hastie, through the stories she shared with us

cathy walking 320

Cathy Hastie, 1969-2014: lifelong Portlander, self-powered
commuter, daughter, wife, mom and (for one constantly
interesting year) BikePortland’s lifestyle columnist.
(Photo: M.Andersen)

Publisher’s note: Cathy Hastie, a regular columnist here on BikePortland for the last year, passed away yesterday after a fight with cancer.

——

The email arrived with a chime at 9:16 in the morning.

“I have been wanting to be more involved in something I believe in and couldn’t quite decide what, until I saw your publication mentioned in Street Roots. Do you need articles? editing? How can I be useful (without dedicating my entire life to your cause?)”

That was two and a half years ago. I was trying to heave my odd little magazine about low-car life from a one-person project into a team production, and generally saying yes to every offer available. So I and the woman, whose name was Cathy Hastie, scheduled a Sunday brainstorm at the Starbucks in Hollywood.

I told her we couldn’t pay; she said that was fine. She was a mom in her early 40s with a consulting-firm job and a mortgage. Experience was more important than cash. We agreed that sometime in the next month she’d send over a sample column about “low-car culture.”

Here’s a secret: this is the sort of offer small publishers get regularly. In most cases you never hear from the person again. But at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 31, another email came in.

“Well it is now officially the end of March,” she wrote. “I have completed 3 articles.” They were attached.

That was the Cathy I came to know over the next two years: unpredictable, unflappable, and just frazzled enough to remind you there was a strong pulse of life beneath what I slowly came to realize was a powerful sense of direction.

Cathy with her ride.
(Photos courtesy Cathy Hastie.)

Some of the columns she submitted were not fantastic. They overdosed on detail or buried their gems in three too many jokes. But the best parts were magnificent, like the time she described car2go as “picking up available vehicles like drunk frat boys in a singles bar” or her column capturing the urban magic of hashing, the alleycat-on-foot tradition she joined each month:

The hash leads us up and down the voluptuous hills of Portland, entangles us in her twisting undergrowth and allows us to sneak a peek at her foundations.

Sometimes she wears a girdle or some ratty briefs. But more often than not, it’s a lavender negligee.

One month, she sat on the Hawthorne Bridge for an hour and made a full tally of every bike commuter’s fashion choices by gender. For another column, she spent more than four hours gathering and analyzing what might be the most comprehensive statistics on car and bike stop sign behavior ever collected in Portland.

I loved her biker’s ode to the butt:

When I’m on a bicycle, it’s just part of the scenery. Fit or flabby, grand or petite, it is simply the motor to our human-powered motion. Very useful indeed.

So don’t get bent out of shape. If you are a biker, I have seen your butt. And you have probably seen mine. Just pat yourself on the back (or further down if you feel so moved) and know that with every downstroke, you are improving the view, creating a tauter, shapelier Portland panorama.

Cathy had plenty of detractors. After she joined me in the jump to BikePortland, her first column struck some as arrogant and self-congratulatory. And then there was this column, which we agreed to publish, after some back and forth with her, because the whole point of having her on board was to bring a different perspective to the site:

The king of arrogance is the biker without a helmet. He is announcing to the world that he is too skilled to allow himself to be hit by a car.

After the first 100 furious ripostes to that one, we talked Cathy (“I have my opinions and other people have their opinions,” she wrote in an email. “Why do I care what they think of mine?”) into posting an explanation of sorts.

I don’t know if it was the good spirit she showed with that comment, or a growing cohort of hate-readers, or the fact that she was an opinionated bike-loving woman willing to piss Portlanders off, but it was a turning point for Cathy and her audience. From then on, almost all her columns were traffic hits, and almost all the comments beneath them were friendly. The Portland Society invited her to be a guest speaker. So did the Sprocket Podcast.

cathy sprocket

Cathy with Sprocket co-hosts Brock Dittus and Aaron Flores.
(Photos: Sprocket Podcast)

It seemed like an ass-backwards way to find a voice and an audience, but Cathy had. And over the next year — her last year — she found her subject, too.

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In one of the most remarkable editing experiences I’ve ever had, Cathy began submitting unsettlingly perceptive columns about a theme that neither of us recognized at first: the relationship between her personal transportation choices and her body’s physical decline and death.

Here’s the first, from a column about the fact that she could no longer brag about running or biking to work every day:

Today, no one can tell that I am “sick.” I look the same, even better than before the illness. My medical condition doesn’t preclude me from running to work like I had been doing for the last 13 years. In fact, I still run, just not to work. I bike. And occasionally, when I’m feeling particularly uninspired, I ride the bus. …

Living under the weight of something as serious as not living made me realize that bragging rights are solely for braggarts. Doing something for the sake of saying that you did it was not enough for me anymore.

When it comes to my commute, I am doing what feels good for me. And the truth is that most people do what feels good to them. We low-car eco-warriors have to be OK with that. Sometimes sitting in a dry, warm car feels pretty good. If we want commuting habits to change, we have to offer choices that feel better.

She followed with a plot twist: she’d accepted a position based in Vancouver and started car commuting for the first time in 15 years.

Today’s business model assumes that employees will do whatever it takes to earn more money, build more prestige and climb higher on the professional ladder. They assume we live the accompanying middle-class, suburban, auto-centric lifestyle. But I don’t like to drive, let alone cut throats and climb ladders. …

I value my time and how I spend it, maybe even more than my money. … My dilemma was eating me up. Ideally, careers improve with time, and my Vancouver opportunity was a stepping stone in the right direction. But how much was I willing to give up now for the promise of a rosier future? If I sacrifice this pillar in my moral structure, who’s to say the roof won’t cave in as I sink deeper and deeper into a materialistic pit, swimming in money while gasping for air?

Perhaps this pebble is just the first in what could turn into a landslide of sacrifices, eroding the hard-fought lifestyle gains of flexibility, stress-reduction and being true to convictions. Would I start traveling too much, seeing less of my family, working 60+ hours a week? In other words, killing myself slowly? …

Notwithstanding the decision to go to Vancouver, I still believe that lifestyle counts as much as salary. I vow to find a creative work arrangement that honors my core values. The burden of dragging a car around, the cost of gas, the time spent sitting still – somehow I will counterbalance these factors. I’ll let you know what I come up with!

candghats

Cathy with her daughter.

The next column that popped into my inbox, right on schedule, was the best and most haunting thing I ever saw her write. She called it “What a car is good for.” It opened like a piece of bike-blog trolling to top her earlier one:

The car serves a multitude of purposes that have become essential in the modern world.

Then she slowly threaded cracks across the facade:

The average workplace doesn’t provide a private place to eat lunch, make personal calls or take a nap, let alone have a cigarette, watch an episode of “Archer,” or ogle the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition (not necessarily in that order). What better place to perform these important lunch-hour tasks than inside your parked car, anonymous amongst thousands of others, ordered and sorted in the acre-wide company parking lot? The car gives us the isolation that our gadget-driven culture demands and our efficiency-oriented employers force upon us.

“The car is a great place to store garbage,” she observed. “Delivery errands can be put off for months when the items are all crammed into the trunk, invisible and forgotten.”

By the end of the post, she had perfectly captured everything I’d come to hate about myself in the years when I got around by car, but had never found the language for at the time.

The car makes us independent — so independent that we can drive 45 minutes to work in a neighboring city every day for a month without knowing a single thing about the place, its people, or what happens there. We use the unexplored city without connecting to it. The car distances us physically from the place we call home, so we ignore the community where we spend 8 hours a day. As a car commuter, we just don’t care.

During that editing process I emailed Cathy that I was honored our site was publishing the post. Also that I should have known she was an “Archer” fan.

“Ha!!!!” she replied.

The last column Cathy wrote for us published last month. It was remarkable in a different way: not as a reflection on the universal tragedy of car dependence but as a very specific account of how she believed her car commute had begun to literally kill her.

At 5’11” and 160 lbs, my body was capable of just about anything I asked it to do, from hoisting boxes to dancing the two-step to running a few miles through the neighborhood. …

No one could tell I was battling my own body’s errant cell-production assembly line. I sat for chemo once every three weeks, followed by more chemo in the form of pills taken every day. I went to work like everyone else. I volunteered. I directed a children’s play after school. Luckily, side effects didn’t stop me from living a full life. The cancer treatment had become my new “normal,” and I barely noticed it myself most days. …

Biking brought fresh air into my lungs, pumped blood to my extremities, and brought a sense of calm and appreciation as I moved through the city’s daily machinations. Details, blurry when passed at the speed of a car, revealed themselves as I took in lilting lilies, swaying birches, jumping dogs, toddling toddlers. … Bicycle commuting not only kept my body working, it stabilized my mental health.

Then, five months and three weeks ago, everything changed. My employer assigned me to a position 17 miles from home. I had to give up my bike commute. …

Tired from sitting erect and still for hours at a time, I didn’t have the time or energy at the end of the day to add on a bike ride or a swim. So I did nothing.

My back started to hurt.

Cathy’s account of the physical disintegration that followed is harrowing. You can read it if you’d like.

On August 24, no doubt with an eye on her usual end-of-the-month deadline, Cathy sent me an email:

I don’t know how much longer I will live — don’t say that out loud. And so I don’t know if I need to focus on creative writing or being with my kids. I don’t think writing about bikes when I cant even walk is very compelling. I don’t know what to do. I am sinking into the harsh realities of my predicament. Don’t expect much from me.

I told her that of course time with her kids would be well-spent, that we and the BikePortland audience were rooting for her and that her volunteer gig would be waiting for her once she recovered.

Cathy didn’t recover. She died this week, one month shy of her 45th birthday. Our hearts go out to her friends and family.

I was reluctant to sell Cathy’s final column too hard. Human health and medicine are mysterious, and I didn’t want us to make it look as if BikePortland was blaming car commuting for the symptoms of cancer and chemotherapy.

What I know is that of the many stories Cathy left us with, the one she told in those last four columns will stick with me all my life. As I follow her (I hope) into the pressures of parenthood, through the curves of a modern career and eventually the decline and failure of my own body, I’ll be thinking of hers — of the joy she took in using and writing about it, and the awful realization she went through as she watched it fall, semi-publicly, apart.

If using bicycles can teach us anything, it should be that our bodies are too precious to put to waste. Cathy, thanks for working so joyfully to help more of us see that.

Michael Andersen (Contributor)

Michael Andersen (Contributor)

Michael Andersen was news editor of BikePortland.org from 2013 to 2016 and still pops up occasionally.

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pixie
pixie
10 years ago

Sad news. Thank you, Cathy, for sharing yourself here.

patrickz
patrickz
10 years ago

“If using bicycles can teach us anything, it should be that our bodies are too precious to put to waste. Cathy, thanks for working so joyfully to help more of us see that.” (Michael)

I’ll certainly be not the only one to second that. My thoughts are with her family.

Lillian
Lillian
10 years ago

Sorry to hear that Cathy has passed. I was rooting on her getting through this cancer. Her work at BikePortland & Portland Afoot, while controversial at times, brought a valued & unique voice to the blog. Best wishes to her family in this tough time.

Anonymous
Anonymous
10 years ago

I was a vocal critic. I too appreciated her more recent articles. I am incredibly saddened. My prayers for Cathy and her family. RIP

pdx2wheeler
pdx2wheeler
10 years ago

Never take a day on your bike for granted! It’s a special place to be. Thank you Cathy!

benschon
benschon
10 years ago

So sad. Condolences to Matt and her kids.

Steve B
10 years ago

Rest in peace, Cathy.

Rebecca
Rebecca
10 years ago

We’ll miss your voice here, Cathy. Thanks for being courageous enough to put it out into the world.

Bethh
Bethh
10 years ago

I’m so sorry to read this sad news. Thank you for this remembrance – I hope it brings her family some measure of satisfaction to know that she really spoke to a lot of her audience. I will ride my bike for her this winter!

Joe Kurmaskie
10 years ago

Thank you for sharing your voice thru bikeportland. My heart goes out to Cathy’s family. So full of life… as it should be. And thank you Michael for the wonderful tribute and remembrance.

9watts
9watts
10 years ago
Reply to  Joe Kurmaskie

Well put, Joe. Thank you Michael and Cathy!
What awful news. I was in denial, sure that Cathy would get better again.

El Biciclero
El Biciclero
10 years ago

“…our bodies are too precious to put to waste.”

Many things can give us perspective and help us to realize such truths; it’s too bad many of those things are sad events such as this. On multiple levels, you truly don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone. When I whine about aches and pains, my wife often tells me to imagine I’m 90, and that I get to go back and be [my actual age] again—there, now don’t you feel great?

I appreciated Cathy’s candid viewpoints and sense of humor. I have no doubt she will be easily remembered by those who actually knew her; to them I offer my condolences.

VTRC
VTRC
10 years ago

This is a tough one… I didn’t always agree, but I liked the columns a lot. This sucks.

Oregon Mamacita
Oregon Mamacita
10 years ago

She was a blessing to her children’s grade school also. RIP.

John Liu
John Liu
10 years ago

I’m very sad to read this. Her columns gave us a little glimpse of the passionate, vigorous, inquisitive and outspoken woman writing them. I wish we could have read more from her; I mourn for her family and their loss. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your wife and mother with us.

Pete
Pete
10 years ago

Though I can’t say I related to her articles, I enjoyed reading them and have great respect for people willing to put themselves out there and stay behind their views. My condolences to her family and friends here; sad to feel the loss of a BP family member.

rachel b
rachel b
10 years ago

🙁

Puddlecycle
10 years ago

Sad and inspired reading this strong tribute – loved the wildcard energy Cathy brought to this blog.

Austin
Austin
10 years ago

This is sad news. I hope her family is doing as well as possible.

I enjoyed how much she could rile people up around here.

wsbob
wsbob
10 years ago

Painful reading of her passing. Her stories and personality helped brighten up some dreary days. May she forever ride joyously in the afterlife.

OuterSERider
OuterSERider
10 years ago

Thank you.

resopmok
resopmok
10 years ago

I feel blessed that she wrote and shared so many of her experiences and perspectives. Being able to see life through someone else’s eyes can be a truly educational experience – especially one as unique as Cathy’s. I thank her for this and Johnathan for recognizing her and bringing her views to us. I wish the best to her family and recognize that though they have lost greatly, her memory will live fondly in all our minds.

Paul Wilkins
Paul Wilkins
10 years ago

Our loss. Pour one out for a diverse voice in our community.

Mossby Pomegranate
Mossby Pomegranate
10 years ago

Keep pedaling Cathy! Wherever you are.

K'Tesh
K'Tesh
10 years ago

Prayers for her family and friends. Rest In Peace Cathy.

Pete
Pete
10 years ago

Cathy, you are a remarkable and insightful writer. Your columns have been magical, eloquent, and deeply personal. I’ve enjoyed every word. Thank you.

Cathy
10 years ago

Beautiful eulogy for a beautiful person.

kittens
kittens
10 years ago

God, 45… so young, so close. I really enjoyed the unique perspective and voice she brought to BikePortland.

Craig Beebe
Craig Beebe
10 years ago

I did not know Cathy personally but I enjoyed her often offbeat but delightfully perceptive articles. The butt piece was especially funny and unforgettable, as were many others. I’m guessing that a person like Cathy — for those who knew her — is unforgettable, too. Thanks for this moving piece, Michael. My thoughts are with her family and loved ones. Farewell, Cathy.

Curtis Ailes
10 years ago

Fantastic eulogy Michael. I shed a tear for Cathy and her family tonight as I read your account of her history here and at Portland Afoot. We should all be so inspired by the simple things in life.

Rest in peace.

VeLoRoK
VeLoRoK
10 years ago

Thanks for making BikePortland, and the lives of all you knew, and the world, a better place, Cathy! Until next time…

Jeff walenta
Jeff walenta
10 years ago

This us such sad news …I enjoyed her articles very much and will miss her presence here.

Dave
Dave
10 years ago

In her next life may she be both editor in chief of Velonews and the New York Times–simultaneously.

Granpa
Granpa
10 years ago

Cathy’s articles always rang a bell and they are missed. It is very sad that she was taken by cancer so young and so vital. Cancer is a bad bad thing.

Charley
Charley
10 years ago

Good luck and Godspeed, Cathy! We’ll miss you.

Larry
Larry
10 years ago

Prayers and strength to Cathy’s family and friends. I will miss her articles and her perspective on life.

Steph Routh
Steph Routh
10 years ago

What a loss. Last time I saw her, she was wheedling in Brock’s tall bike for a panel presentation on biking and walking fun at the WTS Summit. Pedal on, Cathy.

Pat
Pat
10 years ago

I am saddened by this loss – she opened herself up to us and by doing that became a friend of sorts and a part of our conversation – online and in our homes as we took her thoughts and views to others for additional reflection. My condolences to her family, friends, and coworkers. I am sure they will miss her greatly for months and years to come. It always sounds trivial to say at times like this – but still so true – your good memories will bring you comfort.

Kate Drennan
Kate Drennan
10 years ago

A lovely tribute to a vivacious voice. My condolences to Cathy’s family- I will think of them on my ride home today.

Elly
10 years ago

We had a moment of silence for Cathy at this morning’s Portland Society meeting. As a writer, it’s impossible not to be inspired by her voice and the confidence with which she waded in and learned on the job, without waiting for validation from anyone, especially internet commenters. I’ll be trying to live up to her example for a long time yet.

ralph
ralph
10 years ago

Our loss. Thanks Bikeportland for giving Cathy’s voice a platform. What I valued of her writing was how human, and how vulnerable she was, which made me feel connected because I am also human and vulnerable. So sad. Her family should be very proud of her.

Joe
Joe
10 years ago

RIP I promise to hold the road down for you!

KristenT
KristenT
10 years ago

I may not have agreed with some of the things she wrote, but she was a heck of a writer. I’m going to miss her columns and the way she makes me debate at my computer screen. My thoughts are with her family and the community she’s left behind. I hope she finds lots of beautiful roads and scenery in the Great Beyond!

S. Bush
S. Bush
8 years ago

We lost touch with Cathy when hashing became a distant memory for me. I’m sad to hear of the passing of such a dynamic woman. What a void she leaves. On on, Amazon.