| As I approach middle age (UGGGGGGGGH...!!!), I finally realized at the end of one of my twice-daily 300 feet walks to the barn to feed the horses, that I need to exercise more! As a result, I recently bought one of those bare-boned, no fender, no chain guard, multi multi geared bicycles. This bike has 15 gears! Good grief! That's more than a semi tractor! The regular narrow hard seat (manufactured no doubt by the Portland Cement Co.) is so uncomfortable, that I bought a new, "Custom-older person-wider-more incredibly comfortable-bike seat" (hey, that's what the web site ad said!) I'm hoping that bike riding on the same route we used to ride as kids to the fishing bridge on the next township road will cause my mid-life "pear" shaped body to "pear" down to a smaller "pear" shape! (Hey, you can't expect Charles Atlas clones at my age)! For the last week or so, I've been "huffing and puffing" on the old route (it seemed less strenuous 45 years ago). I STILL HAVEN'T received my new "Custom" seat yet inspite of the fact that I paid for "fast shipping". After about 5 minutes of riding with the stock Portland Cement seat, it feels like I've just come from an 8 hour medical marathon prostate check! I think I'll wait for the "fast shipping" new seat to be delivered. Of course, by that time, my "pear" shape will have turned into a "watermelon" shape! Anyway... after my 1 mile ride and while reeling from "Inflamed Prostate Syndrome", another kid story popped into my mind. Tim and I would often take our hunting bow and shoot arrows straight up into the air and watch them fall back to the ground with great velocity! Since we never knew where the decending speeding arrow would land, we would "hightail" it under the porch roof. One time we shot a headless, pointless arrow straight up in the air and as usual ran under the porch roof. My bicycle was laying on its side in the middle of the driveway (it's usual parking place) and the arrow came screaming down and hit the side of the front bike tire which was horizonal on the ground! It hit with a SPROINNNNNG and bounced way back up into the air! What are the odds against that! It's a good thing there was no point on the end of the arrow, or my bike tire would have been history! |
