All I wanna do is………

All I wanna do is

Bicycle bicycle bicycle

I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle

I want to ride my bike

“Bicycle Race” by Queen; 1978

I have been riding bicycles my entire life.  Like a lot of people in my demographic, the bike provided my first taste of freedom. For other people, it might have been a farm tractor or a city bus, but for me, it was a bike. Riding around the post-WW II subdivision with my best “buds” was amazing.  The family didn’t have a lot but my dad always made sure I had an operable bike. Later I would ride all the way over to look at the house where my seventh-grade crush lived. That was a secret adventure that never amounted to much.  Many years later I met the Princess who professed to love cycling as much as I.  She, being a city girl, I couldn’t wait to take out on the country roads where I grew up.  Seeing how this was to be a date, in my mind at least, I selected a short 40-mile loop with only moderate hills.  Did not want to tire anyone excessively. The outcome of that ride is another story that I will not share right now but suffice it to say, her idea of a ride was a few blocks around her local park. I am still surprised she actually talked to me again after that miscalculation on my part.   I mentioned all of this because over the following 40 years my obsession with bicycles slowly waned.  In my late sixties, I just about stopped riding.  Then about a year ago, I am not sure what happened but I was riding alone on one of our local trails just to get out of the house for a few minutes. It was a beautiful fall day.  The trees were in full color and the sky a bright blue. I actually enjoyed myself and sensed that feeling of freedom from far too many decades ago.  With my type “A” personality, I just couldn’t say “well that was nice” I had to go and commit to myself to a modest goal of 200 miles a month starting from my birthday in 2020 to the following birthday.  Now people who I used to ride with would not be impressed by that number but I also knew that for me to achieve the goal it had to be reasonable given all of the other interests and time we spend on the road. Also, did I mention that my “sixties” are in the rearview mirror?

So now twelve months have passed. The Princess and I have logged a lot of saddle time.  She being rather competitive herself, insisted that she was going ride the same mileage I did so we both reached our goal with two weeks to spare and an extra hundred miles for good measure.  It was a good year.

Dennis

The Feature photograph of this post is of a print created by John Locus who is a photographer and artist from Collinsville, IL.