October 18, 2000

'For the love of the ride'

Family and friends honor Paul Socha with memorial bike ride

By JUSTIN CARINCI
Herald staff writer
       For riders in the Paul Socha Memorial Mountain Bike Ride last Saturday at the VASA trail, Paul Socha bikes on.
      Around 50 people participated in 5- or 10-kilometer rides to honor Socha, who died in June following a three-and-a-half year battle with cancer, on what would have been his 47th birthday.
      Socha's wife Mary was instrumental in organizing the event. Planning the ride helped her remember her husband and keep her spirits up. "It was a way to keep me busy so I wouldn't have to sit around and think."
      Socha's younger sister Glorianne Ebel of Rochester Hills rode with her husband Hank. The turnout impressed her and she thought her brother would have appreciated it. "He would be leading the pack," Ebel said.
      Ebel related how her older brother would tell people "get back on your bike, get in the granny gear and pedal through" the sand or the tough parts in life.
      Originally planned for friends and family, the ride grew to include all mountain biking fans. Area bike shops, health food stores, fitness centers and the TART trails office registered interested bikers and donated prizes and food to the ride.
      The memorial ride may become an annual event. Donations gathered at this year's ride will go towards a memorial garden and plaque to Socha at the Acme trail head as well as to the TART trail system.
      An avid mountain biker, Paul Socha rode until the last six months of his life. He had fought cancer of the neck and throat using alternatives to chemotherapy - eating organic food and juice, taking pancreatic enzymes and biking - until the cancer he had fought for three years rendered him too weak to ride.
      In mountain biking, Socha found a release from the tension of his job as a private investigator.
      "It was a good way for him to reduce stress and get outside," Mary Socha said. "He used to enjoy motorcycles a lot so the transition was natural for him."
      Paul Socha's friend Mark Mather rode on Saturday. Coworkers for more than nine years at Research North Inc., they rode a different kind of bike.
      "We were both avid motorcyclists," Mather said. "That's my only two-wheel connection." While Socha gave up motorcycling for mountain bikes, Mather still rides motorcycles.
      "This is all for Paul's benefit - and I'm going to break my back doing it," Mather noted of the mountain bike ride. "I'm not much of a biker."
      "I think of Paul often. This ride is an opportunity to keep good thoughts of him in our mind," Mather said. "He was one heck of a person - a true individual. He was an excellent investigator and I learned a lot from him. I miss him dearly."