This One Is "Real Time"

...so to speak. This one's going to be a little different, too.

It's Labor Day and we just got back from our third bike ride in the last eight days, second in the last two. The weather here is at its loveliest.

My goal with riding is to have my next ride be without incident. Two weeks ago we rode for the first time in a long time and I found my old bike shoes would not do anymore. They had always been snug, but now they tend to cause some numbness after a while. Went to REI and found some great shoes, very comfortable, that it turned out would not fit in my toe clips.

Back to REI. The solution, it seemed, was to get new pedals and set up my shoes to clip in. I'd never really trusted that set up, but it seemed my only choice. The only other shoes were as tight as my old ones. Home with the pedals and a pedal wrench--this is beginning to add up--and the reminder that "righty-tighty" works on one of the pedals, but the other is the opposite. A few hunts for the right size allen wrench later and everything was assembled. We went out for a ride. I seemed to be able to get out of the clips with a little effort, though the left one didn't seem to go in or come out as easily.

Coming back on a steep uphill section I shifted my front chain down and threw the chain and as I came to a stop desperately trying to get my left foot free I went down, cursing loudly. Mostly just a left knee thoroughly road rashed and hurt pride.

Back to the drawing board. Or as it was more properly, when all else fails, read the instructions. I cranked down the tension to a low point.

Yesterday's ride went much better until at some point I was trying to get my left foot free--I had stopped and was standing on my right foot--and I literally had to twist it almost 90 degrees before I got lose, only to see the the clip fitting had come off of my shoe and was affixed to the pedal. At least no road rash this time. Back to REI with shoes and bike.

In the shop they reinstalled the clips in both shoes, taking out the shim that the salesperson had said I needed (the guy reinstalling the clips said they should not be used), and tightening them down.

Today's ride: the clips worked really well. Much easier in and out, and I was feeling pretty confident until in one careless stop I didn't release my foot quickly enough and acquired a road rashed elbow diagonally opposite last week's knee. Well the guy in the shop and the guy who helped me up today both said the same thing: "Everybody falls." Be a little nicer if it wasn't onto concrete or asphalt.

I used to ride a lot. Not macho stuff. Just a 15 mile or so ride most mornings along a river where I lived. A friend and I used to compare notes every day and push each other a bit. She was a real athlete. Around the same time I used to cycle in New York with a woman I was seeing at the time. We went all over the city on bikes.

A couple of years after that my younger son and I did a bike trip through Denmark. I was on the same bike I was on today, one purchased to have on the west coast where I was commuting for work every month. My son rode the Peugot that I had bought in the seventies. He still rides, now on a much newer pretty upscale machine, and distances I will probably never do, but it has been good to get back on two wheels.

The thing this has made me think about is that an orientation to physical activity is something that I wish I had learned at a much younger age. It takes effort to instill it at my age. It took effort to do it twenty-five years ago on my east coast river, but it got me in better shape than I had ever been. My father never did much with me in the way of physical activity and I regret that I never did much with my sons, though I did get the older one into paintball when he was in his late teens.

It's good to see my grandchildren doing things. The boy skis and started T-ball this year, and the two girls dance, and lately the older girl has taken up cycling, complete with her own facebook post about road rash. Life's a circle.