TRAVERSE CITY — After life gave Karri Hagan a very bitter lemon, she put on a costume and handed out pickles.
The East Bay Township resident was widowed in August when her 55-year-old husband, David, died suddenly and unexpectedly.
An avid cyclist who, with Karri and partners Trevor and Katie Schmitz had just a few years ago purchased Einstein Cycles, David had recently undergone surgery but was recovering as expected when he experienced an unexplained arrhythmia that led to his death.
“It wasn’t a heart attack,” Karri said. “He was at home with me. I was the one with him when it happened and I tried to do everything I could. And being a (nurse) practitioner myself, I knew everything to do. But there was nothing I could do.”
Karri and David met at a Traverse City pub and dated a few years before they married in 2013. David was doing BMX racing at the time and asked Karri’s then-young son if he wanted to try it.
“My son was probably 5 or 6 — he’s 18 now,” Karri recalls. “David asked him if he wanted to race BMX and he said, ‘I won’t do it unless my mom does it.’ So we actually started racing BMX together, then David introduced me to the rest of the biking world.”
They got into the habit of riding in the woods together, which Karri discovered to be magic.
“Sometimes I would get jealous of him going out (biking) all the time when we started dating,” she says. “Then once I started going out, I understood. Because there’s nothing better than being in the middle of the woods, with nothing around, except you and your bike.”
Karri started joining David in participating in competitions including the annual Iceman Cometh Challenge mountain bike race held in November.
“We just enjoyed doing it because we were able to be part of the community at that point,” she says. “It’s kind of an end of the year party — I don’t want to say a party because it’s obviously very athletic, but it’s getting to see all of the people on their bikes and enjoying the sport.”
This year, she wasn’t ready to participate in Iceman. But as she thought about a way to still be involved — for herself as well as to represent the bike shop — she opted for pickles.
“I thought, I’m going to do pickles because I know this race, and I know about cramping and how hard it can be,” she said, explaining that pickles and pickle juice replenish much-needed salt. “And when it’s a fast race like this year, people race harder and faster and don’t have time to drink and can cramp more than usual.”
She found an inexpensive pickle costume on Amazon so that she’d stand out from other spectators and picked up four gallons of pickles. Dressed for the part and with pickles in tow, she stationed herself on a hill about 10 miles from the finish line where she knew competitors might begin to experience distress. The entire route is 30 miles.
“I just thought it was kind of fun — something different, a salty goodness that would help people who were struggling,” she says. “The feedback I got was how helpful it was for people who had gotten to that point to actually finish their race because they either had the pickle juice or pickles. It gave them some of the electrolytes they needed to help with fatigue.”
After the race, several racers sent her messages of appreciation, she says.
On Facebook, one called her “the pickle angel.” Another wrote, “She saved so many of us.”
John Wyatt of Commerce Township, who’s done the Iceman nine times, says he knew he wasn’t as strong as in past years after undergoing a hip replacement last March — and he was feeling it. So when he came across the woman who handed him a handful of pickles, he was grateful.
“I would have finished the race either way, but it definitely helped stave off the cramps and get me through it,” he says. “It was kind of like a guardian angel that we needed right at that moment in the race.”
Karri found herself getting increasingly emotional as the Iceman wore on, though, thinking of her husband and wishing he was there.
“I felt like I was looking for him quite often throughout the day,” she says. “A lot of people were remembering him and coming up and talking to me about all the good times we’ve spent out there together.
“I miss him greatly on a daily basis, but that was one of those firsts to go through — like all of the holidays and the birthdays and those big dates for us I’ll never be able to have him there for physically, but hopefully he will always be there spiritually and emotionally.”
Meanwhile, Karri has been training with Liz Belt at Intrepid Cycling in Traverse City, signing up for upcoming races and hoping to compete in next year’s Iceman. She believes David would want her to.
“He inspires me every day,” she says. “And for me, it’s like they say, you know, life is like a bicycle — you’re always kind of moving forward.
“I feel like in this case, this is him saying, ‘Honey, keep doing what we’ve been doing. Don’t lose sight of that.’”