A Colorado Springs Army veteran pushes off on a bike ride that could save a life

It wasn’t long ago that Army veteran James Bauer could climb a 14er, stand victorious at the summit, and think the one thought that had defined the last dozen years of his life: I am a failure. 

The vast beauty that stretched beneath him did nothing to pierce the mindset he had cultivated since returning from Afghanistan in 2011: that he was broken, that his life was a disaster, and that it was all his fault.

But 45-year-old Bauer has traveled a great distance since then, undertaking a mental health journey that has transformed him into someone who knows his strength and cherishes his one shot at life.

Now, he’ll be undertaking a physical journey. After months of training and at least 800 practice miles this year around his home in Colorado Springs, Bauer is heading to Washington, D.C., to begin his 250-mile leg of a 1,000-mile bike ride in celebration of America’s 250th birthday. 

Bauer is one of three Colorado veterans participating in the Wounded Warrior Project’s Soldier Ride, an epic bike journey split among four groups of 20 veterans. The first group took off under a bluebird sky on May 14 from Jacksonville, Florida, and the Colorado veterans will see the ride to its conclusion as they pedal from D.C. to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

The ride honors service and sacrifice. But for wounded warriors like Bauer, it’s also a hard-won celebration of life, and of wanting to live it. 

“I’ve lost more friends now to suicide or drugs and alcohol than we did during our deployments,” Bauer said. “I’m grateful that I was able to get help, and I’m grateful that I’m still here, and I’m grateful that I feel like I have a purpose again.”

The bike ride that could save a life

Wounded Warrior Project leads more than 50 soldier rides each year across the country, but the veterans service organization wanted to do something big for America’s 250th birthday. Beyond marking the occasion, a grand ride like Soldier Ride 250 sends a powerful message to wounded veterans.

“I want to show them that they can live a rad life,” said Jonas Harmon, associate director of the Soldier Ride program. 

“Life is meant to be lived, and we want to show them that, regardless of (their) injury, illness, that they can get out there, do fun things, do hard things, add value to their life, (and) motivate others,” he said.

Jeff Flight, a 39-year Air Force veteran joining Soldier Ride 250 from Colorado Springs, hopes that while he’s riding, he can serve as a cheerleader for the other wounded warriors on his team. Training for the journey in the gym and on the trails has helped him get stronger physically and mentally. 

“It’s just that sense of purpose of doing something, and if I can pass that on to any of these guys or gals, that’s great,” Flight said.

For Marine Corps veteran Zach Tidwell in Castle Rock, adaptive sports including biking brought a sense of normalcy back after a suicide attempt cost him his eyesight. He’ll be completing Soldier Ride 250 on a tandem bike he says will be a treat compared with the training hours he spent on a Peloton — for the sensory experience of riding outside, and for the camaraderie of riding with other wounded warriors.

Along with sleep problems, depression, anxiety, headaches and PTSD, a majority of post-9/11 wounded veterans struggle with loneliness. More than three-quarters of them report feeling isolated. 

Through the shared suffering of days in the saddle, Harmon says vets on Soldier Rides will open up and make connections — even lifelines. 

“There’s going to be a great camaraderie and ability to create a network that will transcend this event,” he said. “And maybe that saves a life.” 

The nightmare that changed everything

Just two years ago, Bauer would not have believed he’d be part of a team biking 250 miles. 

Bauer enlisted as a combat medic in 2004 and was in the Army for less than 12 months when he deployed for the first time, to work in the emergency room at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. “Yes, it was traumatic,” Bauer said. “But it never felt like everything was on my shoulders.” 

Six months after moving to Colorado in 2010, he left his wife, Jess, and two young boys behind for his second deployment, to Afghanistan’s Arghandab River Valley. This one was different. 

That first night, he listened in the darkness to Kiowa helicopters adding their throaty thrum to the cacophony of aircraft overhead and small arms fire in the distance. After a few months it seemed like they were handing out Purple Hearts like bottled water. 

Bauer was sleeping in the aid station one night when he was awoken by his executive officer, whose calm voice belied the fact that something was wrong. A soldier was badly wounded and another was missing after their vehicle had hit an improvised explosive device and been blasted into a canal.

When Bauer reached the injured soldier, intubated him and began chest compressions, blood and dirty water spurted from his mouth with the first downward thrusts. The soldier’s buddies watched over Bauer’s shoulder as he worked, rooting for him to pull through. He could feel the pressure of their hope behind him.

Then came the hourslong search for the missing soldier. Once they found him, there was no need for chest compressions. Bauer sat with the body bag draped across his legs on the silent ride back, the only sound the drip of canal water onto the floor of the truck. It felt like being awake in a nightmare.

In the black predawn hour when Bauer flicked the light on back at the aid station, he saw he was soaked with water and blood. He sobbed into his pillow until he fell asleep, and awoke the next day to learn the soldier he’d tried to save had died. 

Anger without warning

Seven or eight months later, when Bauer returned home, he told himself he was going to shove the memory of that night down so deep he would never have to deal with it again. 

When burying it didn’t work, he tried to numb it with alcohol and the pills he was prescribed to deal with a jacked-up spine and the shoulder he’d dislocated when a shed he was sleeping in collapsed on him during a sandstorm. 

But nothing could stop the anxiety that drove him to stand alone in a corner at his son’s hockey games. Or the rage that exploded inside him at the slightest provocation. “I was just angry, and there was no build up to the anger,” Bauer said. “It was like, you’re at a zero and now you’re at, like, 1.5 billion.”

Bauer dwelled in the darkness of his certainty that he had failed that night in Afghanistan. Now he was failing as a father and a husband. Fine, Bauer thought. He didn’t deserve happiness anyway. And his wife and kids certainly deserved better than him. 

Finding the quiet

Bauer lived in anger, anxiety and isolation for seven years before he joined the Wounded Warrior Project’s 12-week adventure-based mental health program. The experience left him with a realization: He could change. And he wanted to.

“It was me realizing, like, you have so much potential, and there’s always time to grow, always time to get better, always time to lead a happy life that we all freaking deserve,” he said. 

Bauer agreed to try out a Soldier Ride, and when he got on that bike something incredible happened. “There’s no, ‘I’m a failure.’ There were no negative thoughts,” he said. “I think riding the bike there was one of the first times that it was just quiet.”

Every one of the roughly 2,000 wounded veterans who biked in a Soldier Ride this year reported feeling temporary relief from daily stress while they rode, according to Harmon. 

“The bike is so much more than a physical activity or a fun activity, it’s an opportunity for a moment of clarity, a moment of peace,” he said. “Maybe it is hard, but … these veterans, these warriors love hard things. It makes them feel alive, it gives them that peace.”

It did for Bauer. But he wanted to feel like that all the time, not just when he was cycling. He enrolled in an intense mental health treatment program for veterans at Emory University in Atlanta, and it finally showed him how to master his anxiety and damaging self-talk. 

Bauer felt like he’d been stuck on the side of that road in Afghanistan for seven years. He was finally allowing himself to walk away, and come home. 

Bauer returned from Georgia and earned his college degree. He started coaching his son’s baseball team and volunteering. He’s getting his MBA and plans to become a teacher. The people he pushed away — Jess, his two boys now grown and the 9-year old son he calls his best buddy — are the ones who fill him with gratitude and motivation. 

“Three years ago, I would be upstairs looking out my window, wishing that I could do all these things and not believing I could,” Bauer said. Today, he’s doing everything he’s ever wanted to do. 

“Nothing’s changed in my life, except my perspective,” he said. “Now, riding 250 miles over four days is just the icing on the cake.” 

To get involved with Wounded Warrior Project or support its programs, visit https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/