Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Geezercycles!!

Well today was rather a landmark occasion--we bought bicycles!  Most of my friends know that I had a serious accident while riding my bike home from work in 1980 when the driver of a car tried to beat a light and broadsided me, and I was very fortunate just to survive it.  At that time my family all asked me  never to ride a bike again, so the only ones I've ridden since have been of the stationary variety.  Well, time tends to sand off the sharper edges of memories, and the kids have since softened their opposition to the cycle idea.  We had talked about getting bikes before we left, but Trisha wasn't sure we'd really use them, but every campground we've been tons of folks are riding all over.  When we got to Dauphin Island, the campground had bikes to rent, and the island has these wonderful wide paved bike/walking paths that are separated for the auto road way; we rented a couple of bikes and rode for a while and we got hooked.  Especially since we're not towing a car with our RV this can be a good way to get around, and I rented one to go to the grocery store here the other day.  So Trisha said so long as we only ride where there are these kind of paths off roadways, this would be a good thing.

So today we got what the bike manufacturer euphemistically  calls "comfort bikes," that respect the needs of  those of us "of a certain age!" No leaning over those low handle bars, no special shoes, a nice wide cushioned seat, simple gears to operate--definitely not the kind of bike that's likely to be seen in the Tour de France,  but they're great for us, and when we got back to the campground we went out for a wonderful ride right around sunset.  Fortunately there was a Camping World not too far from the bike shop, so while they were putting ours together we dashed down there to get the RV bike rack, which I was able to assemble enough that the bikes didn't fall off on the way home!  Tomorrow we plan to take our bikes on the ferry to Ft. Morgan and ride around that area and then ferry back to our campground, so hope the weather is decent tomorrow.

En  route to the Camping World store in Robertsdale, we found a fantastic farmers market where we loaded up on lots of beautiful fresh veggies!  We also found a health food store in Fairhope that had some of the other supplies we need for many of our vegan recipes, so it was a great day.  We both remarked on how different it is to not be tied to a schedule--typically we would only have a finite amount of time to run errands, do shopping, etc., and having to drive back and forth to several different places like we did today was often quite frustrating.  But, since we didn't have to be finished at any particular time, and since we have the carhouse with us, we could just decide to come out to the parking lot and fix lunch, and take our time.  Wonderful!  Can feel my blood pressure dropping!

3 comments:

  1. Excited to wake up this AM to read your latest post. I was not disappointed.........Now my day is off to a good start as I plan my day doing my volunteer work at church.

    Hope your weather is good today.

    Rod

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  2. I love reading your posts, but every time you write carhouse, I read past it so fast I think you wrote cat house, and then I am confused about what a minister and her other would be doing at a "cat house" - perhaps a weakness in my character.
    Bill Curtis

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  3. Missionary work takes many forms, Bill! LOL!

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