A Long-Distance Friendship Built on Endurance

Written by Chris Janus ’91 about his adventures and friendship with Rick Hicks ’91.

Somewhere on the road between Michigan City and Notre Dame, with 50-something-year-old legs and more miles behind us than either of us probably cared to count, I found myself thinking about another trip Rick and I had taken together. That one was more than 35 years earlier. We were freshmen at Bradley University, and Rick needed a ride home.

There was something fitting about where we were headed that day. Rick and I are both Midwestern-raised Catholic guys who grew up Notre Dame fans. Long before we had careers, wives, kids, mortgages, gray hair, or any idea where life would take us, Notre Dame football was part of the world we knew.

And this wasn’t the first time Notre Dame had been part of our endurance story.

In 1993, just a few years out of college, Rick and I ran the Sunburst Marathon together. After 26.2 miles, we entered Notre Dame Stadium and finished on the 50-yard line. For two young guys who were both Notre Dame fans, it was a pretty special place to finish a marathon.

More than three decades later, we were headed there together again.

This time there would be no finish line on the 50-yard line. We were on bikes instead of running shoes, riding from Michigan City to Notre Dame and back, a little more than 100 miles round trip. The Golden Dome would be our turnaround point before pointing our bikes north and heading home.

I couldn’t help but think about the symmetry of it.

In 1993, we were young men in our 20s running into Notre Dame Stadium together, with most of our adult lives still ahead of us. Careers, marriages, children, moves, successes, disappointments, losses and all the things we couldn’t possibly have anticipated were still somewhere down the road.

Now we were two guys in our late 50s riding back to the same place, with a lot more miles on our legs and a lot more life behind us.

And somehow, we were still doing it together.

Maybe that’s what had me thinking about the past that day. Or maybe it was simply having that many hours together on the road. Somewhere during those miles, it struck me just how much road the two of us had already traveled together, not only on bikes and in running shoes, but through life.

And it all started with an ordinary car ride home from college.

Rick and I first met during our freshman year at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. We were both majoring in the relatively new field of Business Computer Systems, and although we had a couple of classes together, that’s not actually how we met.

My high school friend John, who also attended Bradley, asked if I could give one of his fraternity brothers a ride home one weekend. Rick lived about 45 minutes from my hometown, and his house was basically on the way.

So Rick climbed into the car for what would be a three-and-a-half-hour drive.

Neither of us could have known we were starting a trip that, more than 35 years later, still isn’t over.

Read the rest of the story here.