As spring approached I decided that i was going to do some stuff and have some fun this summer. As soon as I possibly could I had my boat launched and started sailing. I still wanted more fun stuff and less working on my house and mowing the yard. At some point I saw my old friend Harold who's blog Wayward Son was on Face book. He really caught my attention. his descriptions of his life as a locomotive engineer and his long distance bicycling really caught my attention. No I have no desire to be a locomotive engineer but the stories are really interesting. The part about bicycling really caught my interest.
Then it hit me...I have a bicycle somewhere down in the basement, in fact if memory serves me there are three. Well I will just pull my old Peugeot Evasion out and start riding...It was a pretty funny experience. Did you know that when you add air to 15 year old bike tires all sorts of cracks show up and if you are dumb enough to try and ride on them they will sort of explode..Lesson one always keep good tires on your bike. Did you also know that keeping your bike in a dirty garage or basement will really gum up the derailleurs, so much that when you go on your first ride (after putting on new tires and tubes) that when you pedal backwards the chain will fall off....
After putting the chain on for the second time I thought I was ready for the Tour de France. So I got about 1.5 miles down the road and could hardly catch my breath. Why is this so hard? My answer was I am 62 years old, fat, and out of shape (round is a shape). I really needed to change all that so I set about riding a little bit farther each day. After I got up to about 5 miles a day Harold tells me I should join his team on the Tour de Cure. I was thinking that maybe Harold had taken too many century rides and suffered some kind of damage from dehydration. So I checked out the Tour de Cure and found that although they had some really crazy rides 100, 65, 35 miles they had one loop that was ten miles. I was half way there riding 5 miles a day so I signed up and decided I better kick it up as I only had forty days to be ready. It was really surprised how quickly the miles racked up. The first time I did 12 miles I thought I was Lance Armstrong and then a couple of real bike riders blew by me so fast that I thought I had stopped. Since that day I have been riding at least seven miles every day and two or three times a week I do 14. It's still hard but getting easier. Of course where I live is very hilly and I live at the top of the hill, the last few miles is always up hill.
I am still signed up to do the ten miler as I know 35 is way too much but it gives me something to work to. Did I mention that the 35 miler gains a couple thousand feet elevation in the first ten miles.
Ok we are sort of caught up to date so I can update the blog every once in a while.
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