| As I've been riding my bicycle on Tennant Road, which is the same route we traveled as kids to our favorite spot, another story dawned on me! By the way, speaking of bicycles, I recently gave my 15 speed-mountain- middle age unfriendly-masochist bike to my nephew, Jason, and bought an old fashioned-balloon tire-comfortable-just like the one I had as a kid-with a chainguard-and fenders bike! Like the "Gen X" friendly bike, I got it at Wal-Mart so I didn't spend a great deal of money on either one. I even got a REAL mirror and an old fashioned cable driven speedometer on it, just like when I was a kid! (No, I'm not going through a "mid-life crisis", I already went through that several years ago). All it's missing now is handlegrip streamers and a big mud flap on the rear fender (give me time...). I've been riding the new bike in the cemetary and on Tennant road. Boy, this bike is so much more comfortable than the Gen X masochist bike. I've even stopped urinating red and I'm less sore (of course the rest of me continues to be chronically sore whether I ride a comfortable bike or not). One of these days, I'll make a long list of everything that's always sore! I'll bet that will be a much anticipated list to read for everyone! Anyway... I've been riding an average of 6.5 miles per ride and averaging about 12 miles per hour. Hmmmm, if I had one of those trendy new electronic speedometers, I could also relate my average speed, my average heart rate, the length of the ride, the time of the ride, ALL to 9 decimal points! Alas, the things I pass up just for speed and total miles for each ride! While riding on Tennant Road on a hot late afternoon, I relived the memories of hitting the hot tar bubbles on the road and hearing them sound like bubble wrap bursting. (If you like to burst bubble wrap as much as I do then check this site out ). When we were kids, Tim, Len, and I would take Len's .22 rifle and shoot grasshoppers on Tennant Rd. The bullet would usually sink into the hot, soft pavement. Once and a while we hit a grasshopper too! Tim and I would sometimes use our .22 9 shot pistol, but rarely hit anything with it, including the road! If there were no grasshoppers on the road, or if we shot them all, we would shoot birds, cats, cans, or any other "targets of opportunity". Lacking any of these, we would lay the rifle on the pavement and shot down the road with the bullet skipping off the pavement for as far as we could see! Most "normal" people skip rocks, we skipped bullets! I'm not sure if we ever thought to check if any vehicles were coming down the road first, but none the less, we never hit any vehicles! It's a good thing we didn't have any of the powerful firearms each of us own now, or we could have skipped bullets into the next county! |
