The Bicycle Chronicles

When I was young I had very little confidence in my physical strength. I was the proverbial 98 pound weakling. The only muscles I had any confidence in were my leg muscles. Consequently, I always enjoyed bike riding. I've always felt that even though I was never athletic, if I could have excelled at anything physical it would have been on a bike. Obviously, I never proved that to myself or anyone else, but that's still what I thought.

In the Army I had to run. Run, run, run. That's what we did for physical training. Some push ups, some sit ups and then run. I hated to run, although, I always got my highest scores in the PT test in running. I ran several 10K ~6.2 miles~ runs and once I even ran a half marathon ~ about 13.1 miles. After retirement I didn't do much physical stuff for quite a few years, but then I decided I really needed to, and so I started walking and then running a little. I was quickly reminded that I don't like to run. As a matter of fact, I hate it, and soon I remembered that I do like to ride bicycles. I decided to go buy me a bike and so off I went to the best bicycle store I could think of, well okay, the cheapest, where I could at least buy a new one. Costco, here I came. I tried a few around the store and finally decided on this Blue "Motive". I rode it faithfully for an impressive two or three miles a day for almost a week.

You probably think that I gave up, well you're mostly wrong. I gave up on that bike. I decided that I was enjoying it enough that I wanted a better bike, so this time I went to the bicycle store. A store where they have wheels for over $1000 dollars each. No, not the whole bike, not even the tube or the tire, but just a wheel. This was a place where serious bicycle enthusiasts and racers hang out. Fortunately for me, some amateurs hang out there and they had bikes for a lot less than the cost of some of their wheels. (To this day, I have no idea what makes a wheel worth $1000). I found a very nice bike by a company called Specialized. The red and silver one you see me with in the photo above.

Now my goal was to get Jeanne to ride with me on that bike I had bought from Costco. As I was working every day except Wednesday and Sunday and it was summer time I hired the grandkids, Makenzie and Makenna, to take their grandma on a ride at least five days a week. I paid them a dollar to ride over to our house and get their grandma and take her for at least a one mile ride. After not too many days of doing this Makenna came over on my day off and Jeanne and Makenna and I went for our ride. About half way through the ride Makenna and I were racing a little and came to a corner. As I went around the corner I cut across in front of Jeanne. Even though I was several feet in front of Jeanne and no danger to her she got nervous, hit her brakes and went down biting clear through her lip and scraping up her face a little bit. We took her to an emergency care office not too far away where they put a butterfly bandage on her lip and sent her home. If you look closely you can still see the scar. The bike is now known as the Lipper Ripper and the corner where she fell is known in the family as blood corner. I knew that I would not get Jeanne back on the bike for a while so I just let it go, but about six months or so later I tried again with no luck. She said she didn't feel like she had the coordination and quick thinking that she needed to ride the bike. I kept trying, very subtly for a while, all the while still riding regularly myself. Then a whole bunch of changes came into our life as I changed jobs, started working with Eric in the Mortgage business, etc. and the bikes went up on racks in the garage.

I often looked up at the bikes hanging from the garage roof and thought I needed to get them down and get back on them. About a year and a half ago I even bought at bicycle hanger that allows you to raise and lower the bike from the ceiling so you can keep it out of the way, but it only takes a few seconds to drop it down to go for a ride. I finally put that up less than a month ago. When I did that I also took the bike down and started riding it again. Now that I was back on it I wanted Jeanne to be back on hers too. But I ran into the some reasons as before: “It's awkward” – “It's too hard to get on and off” –“ I wish I had a 'girls' bike”.

Last week I brought my bike down to ride and the front tire was flatter than a pancake. As I started pumping it up the tube came out the side of the tire, so I let the air back out, pulled out the tube altogether and started pumping it up. I must not have been paying attention because all of the sudden I heard a loud BANG and pieces of rubber went flying. It was no longer a fixable tube. A couple days later when I was at the bike shop getting a new tube I decided to look for a “girl's” bike. I found out they had some good ones so I came home and got her and took her back up. We picked out this 7 speed Electra Townie.

So far she likes it a lot better because it's a lot more comforable to ride and she can get on and off easily.

The goal of this series is to motivate me to get out on the bike regularly and get some photos as we go. Hopefully I can get Jeanne out there some also, but she doesn't want to be pressured, so I may just casually mention some times when she goes with me, or I may not, we shall see.
As of this writing, the odometer on my bike reads around 560 miles, but I probably put 50 to 100 on it before I got an instrument to tell me my speed and distance.

Watch this space for more fun from The Bicycle Chronicles.