A DIFFERENT KIND OF BIKE

 …or is it the same?

 

So I went in for my annual physical  and my doctor said, “You should look at losing ten pounds.”   Immediately, the choice was clear: Either exercise more (in my case, exercise at all) or get a new doctor.

 

 

Back in the 70s, I bought myself the ultimate ten speed bicycle: a lovely black Peugeot with a lightweight frame, gum wall tires and drop handlebars.  A real looker!  The envy of the velo crowd before there was a velo crowd.  Except for a short period when it lived in my brother’s barn, I’ve had the beauty the whole time.  

         A couple of years ago, I decided to use the old Peugeot as a means of developing some stamina and toning some muscles, but the drop handle bars and the out-of-sync derailleur made riding the classic a pain in my butt, as did the narrow seat.  So into the garage it went.  Its new mission was to simply gather dust.

         Fast forward to the other day after that consult with the doc. I resolved to get back on the French masterpiece and crank through the neighborhood until my thighs burned.  Problem number one was that the front tire no longer held air.  Problem two was that damned seat and the race-mentality geometry.  

         A viable alternative would be the gym.

         Working on the stationary bike there, ten minutes was about all I could take.  Not of the exercise.  Of Fox and Friends. (Actually, any news/talk yammering, for that matter.)  I quit attending the gym knowing definitively that the only available option left for my particular circumstance was: Get a new doctor.

 

 

About 100 years ago, I pedaled from home to Rosedale School along a winding road that traced a creek.  My mode of transportation was a Schwinn “Racer” with a three-speed Sturmey-Archer shift mechanism buried in the rear hub.  

Dad had one of these bikes, also, and so did brother Beebo.  Not cool or sexy, the seating was upright and I never got a crick in my neck trying to look forward while bending over swooped-down handlebars.  The bike was perfect for that commute to school or a casual ride through Bidwell Park or out to the Sacramento River.  But I had to improve on perfection and after a succession of two wheelers, I ended up with the Peugeot.

         The old ten speed served me well.  Fast.  Elegant. Relatively light.  For some reason, however, I gave up using it regularly.  Perhaps this had something to do with a yellow Honda Trail 90 motorbike.

 

 

The bicycle vs new doctor set of options was not the full set of options.  A bike better suited to my aging, 70-plus-year-old frame might be a good choice.  Better scenery than Fox and Friends.  Fresher air than the gym.  And, frankly, I like my doctor.

         I settled upon a bike that seems a throwback to that Schwinn Racer of yore.  An Electra ‘Loft’ built by Trek. Upright, comfortable seating.  Chain guard for the trouser legs.  And fenders!  I actually rode home from the shop in the rain!  And, although color doesn’t much matter to me, a gorgeous hue that is quite reminiscent of Moto Guzzi’s signature Tenni Green found on their mythical motorcycles of decades past.  

         Two minutes of test riding and the thing was mine.  I’ve been out on it all four days since I purchased it (except one.) First ride was about ten minutes.  Second one, too.  Today?  20.  Around the ‘hood and down the block to another ‘hood.  Tomorrow?  Who knows?  The sky’s the limit!  (No, it’s not. Get real!)

 

 

I have only two resolutions for 2024.  Ride that bicycle for thirty minutes four to five times a week and read one book per week to work on one of my other weaknesses: literateness.  It is now the second week of 2024 and I’m halfway through my first book.

         Wish me luck.

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

CONFESSIONS OF A NON-FITNESS GUY (AND HIS BICYCLE)

New life comes from the old Peugeot

X-rays of my troubled right knee show the doctor that it isn’t quite time yet.  “Tone up the muscles.  Stretch.  Do some non-impactful exercises.  Go to the gym and ride the stationary bike.”

“I have a stationary bike,” I reply.  So I make a commitment to go out on the back patio and ride the thing ten to twenty minutes a day just after rising in the morning.  My commitment lasts less than a Middle Eastern cease-fire.  Why?  Boring.  The view of the back fence from the patio never changes.  I guess I’ll just settle for a bum knee.

Rummaging around my garage, I frequently move my old Peugeot ten-speed because it’s always in the way.  If I move it from in front of the shelves, it’s blocks the workbench.  If I move it away from the workbench, it blocks the door.  Some times I just lean it up against the side of the house.  If it weren’t for the sentimental value, I often think, I’d donate the damned thing to the nearest charity.

Then recently, as I’m rolling the bicycle out of my way to access a shelved box of nails or screws, an inkling inkles: Riding the old ten-speed around the neighborhood and into town, might be just as beneficial and non-impactful an exercise as cranking on the stationary bike for ten minutes at a time.  And the view would change.

I pump up the gum-walled tires and hop aboard. 

Our neighborhood is relatively flat, but on the Peugeot, even the slightest downhill is a rush.  With no more than about fifteen turns of the crank, I’m a mile from home passing the coffee bar, not breaking a sweat and my knee feels great! 

Three or four cyclists are there, outfitted in form-fitting pants, garish cycle-centric nylo-fiber shirts with big empty front and back pockets and velo-ads plastered all over them, and helmets. 

Even though my cargo shorts and ball cap headgear looks as if I just stepped off a road grader or out of a retirement neighborhood, I stop for a cup of dark roast.  One of the fellows says, “I used to have one of those,” pointing to the bike I’ve had since college.  After me not contributing to their conversation about their latest “run out to the coast (66 miles),” I mount up and head home. 

Did I say we lived in a relatively flat community?  The four-minute glide into town is a fifteen-minute grind back into the neighborhood.  Rusty in my use of the derailleur, the chain stutters and jerks as I search for the ratio that will allow me to pump my way back home.  I concentrate on staying on the seat as opposed to falling forward onto the steel crossbar that looks – from directly above – menacingly similar to one I painfully recall from a very early incident of my bicycling youth.  Finally, I reach our driveway, gently touching the toe of my shoe to the ground.  I wait there straddling the seat, while my breath catches up with me.  It seems it was about a block and a half behind on the final climb to the house.

Yet, the following day, I do it again, modifying my route and lengthening it a bit.  I want to check the construction progress on the new Renner gas station going in just south of town.  I decide to pick one gear and stay in it whether I’m whizzing along a flat stretch of road or pushing myself to get up the hill.  I don’t stop for coffee.  I do twenty minutes.

On the third day, I add a bit more and tackle the hill that fronts the Hamburger Ranch Barbecue joint.  I enjoy that becoming-familiar rush by coasting down the other side past storefronts and into town.

I’ve ridden the old Peugeot on a daily basis for longer than the most recent, ill-fated Syrian cease-fire lasted.  I’m up to between thirty and forty minutes, exploring neighborhoods and country roads, viewing hillside vineyards, paralleling the old railroad line and using the paved path next to the Russian River that we’ve walked many times. 

I’m packing my camera now.  The scenery is much better than the view of my back fence. 

The other day, I saw an old Ford Ferguson tractor rusting in somebody’s front yard.  It was like the one upon which I learned to drive.  

There’s a great “stairway to heaven” leading up to the oldest part of the town cemetery.  

And the Northwestern Pacific right-of-way has all manner of eighty-year-old railroad memorabilia and clutter. 

My knee is wrapped and on ice as I type.  And as I type, I plan tomorrow’s little itinerary. 

© 2016

Church of the Open Road Press

Along the Miner's Ravine Bike Route

THERE’S A BICYCLE PATH running from near our house to downtown. Given that I just procured my first pair of pants with a 38” waist – up from 34 not all that long ago – I determined that non-exercise had become the great non-option of the up-coming decade. Fitting new tires, tubes and spoke-end rubber-band thingies to the Peugeot ten-speed that I originally purchased in 1968 from Vern Pullins Cyclery in Chico (and which was referred to as “vintage” by the punk who sold me the skins), I slicked the thing up and decided today was the day to ride into the heart of Roseville.

First, a trip to the local Chevron to fill up the tires as, apparently, I don’t have the skills to use the standard bicycle pump I bought recently: specifically, the flipping plastic valve fitting. With each compression, as much air escaped as found its way into the tube. In the old days, one would screw the tire pump to the valve stem, pump up the tube and lose a little as you disconnected. Now, like automobile windshields, Amana refrigerators, Microsoft Word, the government of the State of California, and Christianity as of late, we’ve improved on the simple bicycle pump to the extent that it doesn’t work as well as it once did.

The trailhead on Sierra College Boulevard is a couple of miles from home. I hefted my steel framed French bicyclette into the back of the Nissan pickup. A lighter framed bike constructed of recycled space shuttle might have afforded a more efficient ride, but that would seem to defeat the purpose, I supposed. Off-loading it in the parking area, I climbed on the relic and pedaled a bit, adjusting the gears to what seemed like an efficient ratio for the rolling terrain. I determined that the gear I like best is the one where the chain is on the smaller sprocket in front and the smallest sprocket in the back. I think that’s ninth gear, although it could be second gear. Once set, I didn’t shift. I recalled having the chain slip off the front of too many bikes when I was a kid to ever want to shift this thing.

The bike “trail” is paved. In the old days, trails were constructed by game, Indians or members of the Sierra Club – not Teichert, Inc. Never the less, this path makes for a nice Sunday morning experience as I easily cranked and coasted quite a distance in a very short span of time. Didn’t feel as if the heart rate had risen. Didn’t feel much stress on the legs. The little up-hills, never tempted me to risk throwing the chain off the chain-ring up front. The route follows the Miner’s Ravine drainage and then Dry Creek into town. The dead-of-winter oak woodland is still. Willows along the stream courses denuded, awaiting spring. Green winter-grass shoots barely peek up from the wet soil. The movement of water animates and provides a soundtrack for the evolving scene. Unlike the penultimate Bidwell Park in Chico, this route parallels and crosses under several major streets on its course, so traffic and its noise is never far away. Yet, the glide along the stream courses does prompt one to imagine how life might have been prior to the motorcar and the suburb-of-Sacramento growth it afforded.

The terminus of the bike trail is in Royer Park. An easy trip from where I’d left the Nissan. I turn to return.


ABOUT TWENTY YEARS AGO, when living in the mountain community of Chester, I partook, one Saturday, of the Bizz Johnson Rails-to-Trails route from Westwood to Susanville. The first little bit hurt because, like this time, I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in years. But once my body warmed up, I found I’d achieved the 18 miles into Susanville in well under two hours. Returning, I discovered that a two-percent down grade (what the old Pacific Fruit rail line was) is a helluva lot easier ride than a two percent upgrade. The sixteen miles to the unnoticeable pass took four and a half hours, and I had difficulty both walking and sitting for a week to ten days thereafter.

Similarly, following a path downstream going from the parking area should imply that coming back one would be riding upstream. And this was the case. Still not succumbing to shifting that damned chain, I grunted up the infinitesimal grade along Dry Creek and then Miner’s Ravine to the parking area. When other bicyclists were in the area or walkers, I made sure to sit on the seat as they passed, but once out of view, I found standing gave me a bit more power.


TRUTHFULLY, THE 13.8 MILES round trip was less than an hour “workout.” My heart rate elevated on the way back and my thighs felt as if they were doing something they hadn’t done in maybe twenty years. Work.

A correspondent, responding to a question about new years resolutions, suggested that if one does something they resolved to do for thirty consecutive days, they will be unable to give it up at the end of the month-long trial period. I am resolved to see if this is the case.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press