Get on your bikes and ride

So goes the line from Queen's immortal song of Fat Bottomed Girls make the world Go Round..
Get on your bikes and ride.
Some years back I took it to heart, I had finished up my years of smoking....hadn't we all at some point gotten to that stage.  I read an article that said you could right yourself physically in your late 40s and 50s if you acted on it. So I began walking and soon I longed for the bicycle again.  I had ridden in my early married life.  My wife had actually given me a Schwinn World Bike , which I wished to have ridden more than I did, it was a beautiful creation of bicycle.  It had a ride unparalleled for its time.

But for a new  I first purchased a Mongoose Mountain Bike, 21 inch frame, and the first time I rode it I was overwhelmed at the advances in technology.  The glide, the rapid fire index shifting. the responsiveness. It was the new form of bike, shimano  had arrived on scene. The world had changed, no more down tube suicide shifters.  When I see someone riding one of those old clunkers I want to grab them throw them in the car and whisk them off to a bike shop. One day I said to a guy, you might be surprised at the new bikes, he told me he had ridden his Peugot about campus 40 years ago and it reminded him of his college girlfriend and the best days of his life.  Oh, okay said I as recoiled from the sadness of his story. If college years are the best of you life I feel really sorry for you. Crazy roomates, crazy professors, hangovers that can stop a train, good grief.  Every time I see the guy on his bike I think to myself , he even rides sadly, even when riding no hands.

I rode that Mongoose  with my young son on rail trails  through out the area, I being more into it than he.  His fear of being eaten by a bear out in the woods was running pretty high in those days, not to mention his aversion to snakes.  My daughter had her own bike and she rarely would ride with us.  My wife rode the bike I bought for her  one time I believe, I gave that one to my brother in law and sister in law in SC. There are bike people and there are others. I the former the family the others.

Bikes came and went, mine never left.  A flat barred road bike was ridden probably 20,000 miles . Every component was replaced , so it was as good as new when I gave it to a friend two years ago.
During that period of time I rode  to the point of becoming pretty comfortable and skilled as a rider.  So it was inevitable that I would come upon the Five Boro Bike Tour in New York City.  40 miles on car free NY roads on the first Sunday in May.  I was hooked on the idea. What a magnificently stupid NY idea, throw 30000 bikers on to the roads and cause three states of traffic gridlock.  As it turns out it really makes no difference for every day is traffic gridlock in the NY Metro Area, being that it is on Sunday Morning, nobody is even awake to notice.

The first time I rode was the 30th anniversary of the tour, 10 years ago. I rode by myself .. I was nervous about my ability to ride that distance so I trained hard.  When the day came I rode with no problem  as I had gotten into great riding shape.  I was amused by the crowd and the carnival atmosphere and the colorful costumes and the cartoon like nonsense that went along with it. Spider-Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy rode that year, as did Dykes on Bikes and a whole host of other characters in one form of sobriety or another.  It was as I said great fun.

So much fun was it that I convinced some friends to come the following year , we had a great time. So the next year we convinced others, but at that point  we discovered that not all riders are really riders, they don't feel the vibe of riding, they only came to see what their friends were seeing and some did not see it at all. One guy referring to me as crazy for wanting to ride it again,  but he is Debbie Downer's brother so I paid him no mind.  Life is best lived with a touch of the adventurous eccentricity after all.

Some of our group were not conditioned properly and groused about the ride, the crowds, the sore butts, legs and hands.  The next year I was convinced to chaperone a group of Boy Scouts seeking their Bicycling Merit Badge-- we promptly lost sight of all of the boys early in the ride, and spent the rest of the ride searching in vain, fearing the phone calls to parents explaining exactly how we lost their kid in NYC.  Thankfully we were able to round them all up at the reunion center and all of them had made it.  But that cured me of the idea of bringing anyone else's kid to this ride.  Picture an NFL Stadium being emptied of all the fans , putting them all on bicycles at the same time and sending them out for a 40 mile ride all at once.  Not a good place for wayward boys.

I did not ride one year, rather I volunteered to assist with the logistics of getting the ride off. Several years of no riding passed , only exacerbating the desire to ride the event one more time. It has that kind of draw. I did ride that one more time this week.  If I ever ride it again, all well and good, but I have extinguished the need to ride one more time.  In the annals of athletic achievement, The Five Borough Bike Tour , is not the Boston Marathon, and neither is it a Sunday morning round of golf.  So I am happy I got the opportunity to shape up and for one more time make the ride up and over the Verrazano. I was happy that the afterwork and early weekend morning training rides through rain and cold and wind got me in shape for this years  40 mile ride through cold and wind and yes, a little spritz of rain.  It was grand.