The first experience wasn't so great: A developing condition of osteoarthritis in my lower back and knees escalated to the point of severe pain when getting in and out of a car, and stepping off a sidewalk. "I'm too young for this!" moaned me.
Ironically, all the literature says the best treatment for this type of condition is "more exercise." Yet movement creates excruciating pain. What's a guy to do? Swimming is highly recommended. But finding an accessible pool, or building my own, wasn't to be. (I live kind of out in the middle of nowhere, or so most city dwellers would define my stomping grounds, and, I don't have extra money floating around to build a pool.)
Finding a convenient, low impact, high areobic exercise was ellusive. (The rationale for exercise and osteoarthritis hinges on the idea that a radical increase of blood supply, such as is experienced in serious exercise, seems to "heal" or at least slow the degenerative bone and joint breakdown. This, I am happy to report, has indeed, so it seems, been my experience. I am take one Aleve each morning. That's it. And since I have been consistently riding, I have not had a level of pain worth complaining about.)
The second experience was much more pleasant and exciting: My older brother, Mark (check out his bike blog at http://azpedaler.blogspot.com) re-introduced me to the bicycle. Mark had been falling in love with road biking for a few years. His enthusiasm contagious.
I added the two experiences together. I needed a form of good, heart pounding, blood pumping exercise. A bike needs a rider. Match made.
I actually did not own a functioning bike in the Spring of 2010. I did, however, stored deep in the bowels of my dirt floor basement, own a 1972 Peugeot 10 Speed. A high school graduation present. I rode it off and on through my university years and early married life. But at some point, like Puff the Magic Dragon, it got cast aside. Literally. When I started searching for it in the basement, I really wasn't sure if I still had it, or had taken it to the dump, excuse me, landfill site, somewhere along the way.
The green Peugeot was covered with rust and dust. But in a very apologetic spirit ("Dear Bike, Please forgive me.") I dusted, washed, and scrubbed the almost collectible specimen. It was now clean, but very very rusted and sad looking. Cracked plastic cable housings. Almost seized chain.
But I am the type of person who usually sees the glass half full, or in this case, the tires half inflated (which, amazingly, they did). So I loaded the Green Machine (I named it by this point, which means I am starting to get attached to it) in the back of my van and took it to a local bike shop. Actually, the only bike shop in my ruralish unpopulated neck of the woods.
The owner/operator of this bike shop is a great guy and really knows his bike stuff (I would learn over the next year. He has been very patient and helpful in many ways since then.). But I learned he's not real big on chit chat.
I wheeled my I-am-sure-with-a-little-grease-and-tweaking-this-bike-can-again bike to the service counter and asked, "Can you make this bike street respectable again?" Mr. Bike Shop Man barely glanced at the bike. Did I detect a suppressed or amused chuckle, as if I had just told him a stupid joke? Maybe. Maybe not. But he was honest.
"We would have to strip it down to the frame. Most of the parts are not made anymore. New parts won't fit." Ok, I get that. But then the killer comment: "You should take it home, put it in the garden, and let flowers and vines grow around and over it. It would look quite nice." (No joke. That's what the man said.)
Bummer. Plan A: Resurrection Awesome High School Bike must be aborted.
The drive home that day was solemn. My thoughts vascillated between planning a funeral for the Green Machine (But how do you do that if it has actually been dead for years?) and trying to come up with a Plan B to address my bike replacement dilemma.
(The flower pot bike idea and the funeral never took place. The Green Machine is back in the basement, in deep hyper-sleep awaiting for the advancement of bike part donor technology to develop enough to secure his resurrection. But he is not alone. Flanked on one side by my 33 year old son's first bike, "The Yellow Rocket," and on the other side by Brother Mark's Schwinn Contenental , which was old when he got it used in high school and is now probably quite collectible. But don't try to snatch these cyclic cadavers out of my basement. You will not, I repeat, will not escape alive. Indiana Jones tried. Guess why he quit making movies?)
Back to the question: What is a wanna be bike rider supposed to do without a bike?
I went to see Bob. Bob has a simple sign on his front lawn, "Bikes For Sale." Bob has no last name. He's smart. He doesn't want to be tracked. (I seriously doubt if "Bob" is really his first name, either.) Bob says he "buys" bikes at police auctions and flea markets, etc. Maybe he does. I've also heard the Mafia provides protection for people.
At any rate, Bob has a large garage/workshop full of all kinds of bikes. In the summer months he puts them out on his front lawn with his highly descriptive "Bikes For Sale" sign. (I often wonder if the fact that he spends 6 months of every year out of the country is significant. He says he has a home in Florida. But if I was on a Most Wanted List, I would say something like that, too. He has probably created so much bureaucratic confusion between the RCMP and the FBI that he will never be tracked. I sure hope he doesn't read this.)
So I meander through the maze of bikes surrounding Bob's Bicycle Emporium and Pre-Recyling Frame Depot. And then I saw it. Big. Bold. Bright Red. And priced right. A Raleigh mountain bike-type bike. Nothing fancy. No springs. No bells. No whistles. Seat extra. I road it up and down the street a few times. Felt good. The front wheel and back wheels did not line up exactly in a straight line. But I have astigmatism, so that doesn't really bother me. (Later I would learn that the frame is slightly bent. But that's ok. Kind of like buying a used car with a dent. At least you know you won't put the first dent in it.)
I paid Bob. Cash. No cheques or credit cards. (What? You're not surprised, are you?)
As I loaded Big Red into my van for the trip to his new home, I was thrilled.
Big Red and I had a great summer together. His big tires were well suited for the matrix of rough pavement and gravel roads in my neighborhood. And his heavy steel frame and lack of a few of the gear sprockets ("Sorry," says Bob, "Those can't be fixed.") combined to provide me with hours of good cardio workouts.
My brother supplied an odometer when he came to town for my son's wedding in May. (He was kind enough to not laugh aloud at Red. In a few months I would understand why a laugh might have been appropriate. You see, my perception of "biking" was about to be expanded beyond anything I could imagine. More about that in future blogs.)
Biking the Summer of 2010 involved the great routine of actually "parking" Big Red in the back of my 1997 Chevy Astro Van. (This van was getting so old that I couldn't lock all the doors. They had rusted beyond the lockable stage. So I had to use a bike lock to lock Big Red to the interior van frame of the van.) I drove the van all over the county to the four different offices from which I do my counselling. So whenever I had an hour or more break between clients, and didn't want to spend an hour of my summer inside an office doing paperwork, I unhitched Red from his mobile home and we rode, almost every day. Those almost daily spins where a highlight of my summer.
As summer subsided, and fall fell, Brother Mark and I started thinking crazy. We got this nuts-so idea that we could perhaps do some "serious" (which actually means "not so serious, lots of fun") bike riding together.
Slightly problematic. In a few ways. Bro Mark lives in Arizona. Bro Kent lives in Ontario, Canuckland.
No problem, says Bro Mark, better known to many as "The Fixer," as in "The Problem Solver." He's got lots of "air miles" so as to get me to AZ. I can go there. (This works great, especially since my family doesn't mind, much, going hungry when I take time off work.) What about my bike? Can Big Red come too? No. Unfortunately, Big Red cannot come. He has a heart condition and cannot fly. Nor can he ride in airplanes. No problem, says Bro Mark, The Fixer. He says, "Just plant Big Red in the garden and let flowers grow around him and......." Wait. No. He didn't say that.
But Mark did say, "I will buy you a decent bike." The offer, the deal was simple. Mark will buy me a real road bike, and I will not get anything from him for my birthdays or Christmases until one of us dies. Then we won't worry about exchanging gifts anyway. Nor will I be in his Will. And the other part of the deal was that I must promise, actually sign in blood, that I will never tell the world a bunch of stuff I know about him because we grew up together and I was very observant and Mark wasn't as sneaky as he thought he was about a bunch of stuff that he knows that I know about him. A great deal. We both win.
And so the following March (2011), I flew (in an airplane) to AZ. And Mark and I had our first "Two Brothers' Big Adventure." (Notice that the adjective "Big" modifies the noun "Adventure." It is not, the "Two Big Brothers Adventure." If that were the case, "Big" would modify the noun "Brothers." And we don't use the word "Big" to describe either one of us, whether it is accurate or not. We are serious and sensitive about this. And this has nothing to do with Mark's addiction to corn dogs or my addiction to Dr. Pepper.)
Well, this is a good place to end this blog like chapter. Next time, I'll tell you a bit about that First Brothers' Big Adventure.
Thanks for sharing the time with me. Ride Safe.
