Two, three, maybe even four years ago Mary gave me a bicycle for Christmas. It was a great gift and I really was happy with it and had every intention of riding every day. There was only one teensy-weensy problem ..... it was unassembled and in a box.
We hauled the huge box home in the CR-V. Now everyone knows that you can't load an item into a vehicle, take it home and unload it. There is a certain period of time in which it has to be hauled around. It's rather like aging wine. Open it too soon and you have a cheap tasting wine. Age it for a short while and you have a decent wine. However, leave it forever and a day and you have a very fine wine.
Let's just say that I have a very fine bike. It rode around in the CR-V for several weeks, at which time I moved it into our kitchen where it has remained since. The cats found the box to be an excellent scratching post and utilized it at every opportunity. Before long the box no longer existed and I was left with this.
So it sat for another month or two or six or seven. Evidently Hades froze over because tonight after supper I got a wild hare (or is it hair) and decided to put it together.
Believe it or not I still had the instruction manual.
Of course I didn't use it, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
I gathered my tools .... according to what the manual indicated I would need.
Didn't even use half of them.
Maybe that's why I had three pieces left over!
One of the reasons I used to procrastinate so long with this
project was that I hadn't purchased these nifty puncture proof tubes.
Where the hell were these when we were kids?
They would have saved me a great deal of grief.
I can vividly remember going down to Grandad's hardware store and watching him and Uncle Jon change tires. They did it so fast and made it look effortless. Uh, huh.
Let's just say that I may not have taken a dip in the mechanic gene
pool, but I sure got the mechanic vocabulary down pat!
Success!
So what if it took me the better part of forty-five minutes?!
One down, one to go.
I'm sorry to report that the rest of the process can not be depicted
because my camera will not shoot through the blue haze.
because my camera will not shoot through the blue haze.
Just know that it didn't go smoothly, but I did manage.
Right now Uncle Jon and Grandad Jiggs are rolling in their graves because it isn't a Schwinn.
But, I still have my 12 speed Schwinn from childhood. It is safely esconced in Mom's shed,
But, I still have my 12 speed Schwinn from childhood. It is safely esconced in Mom's shed,
but I don't have nifty tubes for it so it is useless out here.
It was actually still light out when I finished up, so I took it out for a spin.
Air Link wasn't even involved.
Riding did take me back to when I was Sister Two's age in this picture.
It was nothing to go ride for three or four hours. I'd often go with my cousin and we would head for the country and ride fifteen or twenty miles. We usually stopped by Grandmother Hall's for provisions first. She was always good for a Coke and some cookies.
Even though I only managed about a mile and a half tonight, I enjoyed it. It was nice to feel the breeze on my face, without a care in the world while the insects and birds carried on as they do in the country. We'll see if I'm still as sentimental next week when the sore muscles and aches and pains settle in my joints!
4 comments:
Good grief, I rode 3 miles with Dani and Keith a couple of weeks back. Ginger (our 10 year old lab) and I were wishing there was air link involved!!! Country roads are not meant for bicycles, regardless of the tires you have on. I will gladly ride my recumbant bike for 10 miles in the comfort of my family room. Oh, I just looooooove the picture of me. Did I ever have a good hair style growing up?????? The only good thing are those skinny legs.
Did I forget to mention that I win the procrastination award. I still unpacked boxes in my store room when we moved into our house 6 plus years ago! I wonder what is in those boxes???????
Six years? Lightweight. We have an outbuilding with three sections --- the west section is full of boxes that we moved and haven't yet unpacked. That's closing in on twenty years! Of course, my first goats and sheep tried to help out with the unpacking. They ate several boxes. In fact, I think Clarence the Goat ate my divorce papers and any wedding pictures that I had kept. That's one way to dispense of the evidence!
Just know you want to know that I rode 15 miles on my $60.00 Walmart bike this summer at age 65.
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