bikes

NFS

35 year old Raleigh bike. Still runs great.

Looks like I might start riding a bike again. Not necessarily on any main roads. Rode up to the Post Office a week ago, mailed a letter locally, went for a spin into "The Forest." Going down a grade, with vehicles approaching behind, and pedestrians on both sides of the road ahead, there was a moment of instability while swerving through a patch of loose gravel at the edge of the pavement. Not good. It's been a while since last riding a bike. Can we do this?

No crashes were experienced, although the predestrian in front of me did move aside, seeing my momentary loss of control. That would have been a painful crash, even if I had been wearing a helmet (which I wasn't.) Shorts and a T shirt on a paved road would have been bloody. And yet I lived to tell the tale. Huffing and puffing when I got home again, after about a massive two mile ride.

All this inspired by the professional racing I've been watching from Europe: Tour de France, Tour de Pologne, and the Golden Trail World Series running competition. The latter with amazing trail footage of the runners courtesy of bicyclists with Gopros and transmission rigs. They go almost everywhere on the trail. The steepest sections are however covered by runners holding a gimbaled camera as they lead or follow the runners. Crazy exertion.

The pic shows the well aged chrome rusting off the handlebar, and hand grips splitting apart. Time for a renewal, which has been ordered from my local bike shop. None of this going online and ordering from amazon. If we don't watch out, there will be NO local merchants. This may be something of an amendment of previous attitudes from 25 years ago, when online commerce was a fabulous development, and we didn't have to schlepp to a brick & mortar facility and deal face to face with actual humans. J. Bezos has managed to turn us back to our local sources. Surely a good thing. But of course there is no turning back the tide that has gotten us to this realization.

For nearly 20 years I've been walking for my exercise - which I never really liked - to accompany JDW, and avoid riding on narrow roads with no shoulders. I think I'm about to change that. Development roads will do fine for now. And I know of at least one off road trail I can ride that's only a little farther down the road from the P.O. < a mile away, only one busy road to cross. Probably prematurely, I took the bike apart, looking for other parts that could use replacement.