New bike day
Deep thoughts from a shallow cyclist: Be careful what you’re passionate about when you’re 15. If you’re lucky, you’ll still be doing it when you turn 55.
If you had told me when I was 15, in 1980, I would spend this day in 2020 riding my bicycle by myself around the countryside there would have been great rejoicing. Winning! This is, almost beyond imagining, exactly what I explicitly wished for in my fanciful youth. It seemed to the teen me a fantasy. As envisioned back then, it would have remained so. It’s a stretch to say maturity ensued, but a causal relationship between effort and reaching goals was roughly established, recognized, and acted upon. Throw in equal parts luck, or blessings, or privilege to taste and there you have it.
Same deal if you told me when I was 50 about this turn of events I would have been just as thunderstruck as the sophomore in high school. Yet, here we are.
My fortune is great. I am aware.
The differences between 1980 and now are at first glance inconsequential.
Swap out Gretna, Chattahoochee, and Faceville for Sparta, Chadwick, and Garrison; Missouri 125 for Florida 267.
Change a steel bike frame made in Chicago (or maybe Greenville, Mississippi?) by Schwinn for a titanium frame made in Chattanooga by Lynskey.
Then I was a skinny kid tipping the scales at 150, now that plus three stone and a half.
It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed back then, either because of the blind curves on Missouri 125 or my own blithe disregard for my own safety. Then, I clacked into the Chadwick general store wearing Italian bike cleats and woolen bike shorts to silence. It’s a wonder I was not run out of the place as an alien. These days, I raise a dither in South Georgia with my Mizzou jersey and count myself lucky to not be run off the road. A remarkable, disturbing number of people are busy taking selfies and posting them to Instagram on today’s road. Curves and hills are less extreme in North Florida and customers at the combo hardware story and café in Climax, Georgia, have seen Lycra before.
Here’s to realizing your fondest dreams. And adulthood. I like adulthood. Adulthood, with bike riding.
Three more items to further gobsmack 15-year-old Paul:
Two words: Tallahassee, Florida.
Four words: Dick Tracy wrist phone
Take a look at your dad. Reflect on his shape. This is how you will look.