Getting Back Into Biking
This COVID-19 pandemic has changed nearly everything …. (like the Internet!). One is that many of us are spending more time at home, re-evaluating the things that are worthwhile to us. For me, one development has been to rediscover my bicycle, which was covered with nasty flood water a year and a half ago when a ten inch rain bomb turned our nice little country creek into a true disaster-laden force. The creek rose at least ten feet and obliterated everything in its path. Our barn is located in a natural, beautiful pecan grove. and it was flooded badly. Everything on the first floor, including backup power generation equipment, a lawn mower, several bikes, and lots of tools and books … it all was covered with dirty silt-laden flood water to roughly three feet.
If you look carefully, the barn is only six feet or so higher than the creek bed, at the left of the following picture, lined with large trees.
The interior of the barn, the first floor at least, still is a mess. I'll have to get some skilled help to rip out the ruined cabinets and storage racks on the first floor. Much of the stuff is no longer of use as well as usable. At any rate, finally several weeks ago I loaded the dirty and ignored bicycle into the back of our SUV and took it to our local bike shop, a very good place indeed. Long story short, three weeks later it is back, nice and clean, with a new gear-shifter. With that and a complete go-over, it received a passing grade along with a wash, tire check, lube job, and brake check.
Here’s a photo of the little critter. It’s a nice bike, a solid mid-range item made in the USA with some European parts. I’m looking to get back into some recreational bicycling to complement my “easy-peasy" running regime. Not bad for a seventy-eight year young fella!
The bike, as good as new!
We live in the country, sort of, with forty other households on roughly one hundred and fifty acres that was, a hundred years ago, a farm/ranch owned by the Ireland Family. At the time, the Ireland place was fifteen miles from Austin, and it probably took them a full day to drive a team of horses and a wagon into town, then another day to return over the dirt road. The old Ireland place included two creeks, one large and one small: the smaller one called Cub Creek and the larger Bear Creek. Our little Cub Creek is the one that roared up and nearly swallowed our barn. You can imagine what Bear Creek was doing! Of course I had no way of crossing Cub Creek to find out at the time but the sound alone reminded me of a tornado. The Ireland family is buried, with only rough river stones as markers (that no longer have any markings) on our neighbor’s place.
Our current driveway was, at the time, the only road on the Ireland farm from the lower elevations with the creeks up to a ridge line along the top of the hills, around a one-hundred foot increase in elevation. So I feel a connection with the Irelands. They must have been dirt poor as the land really could not support much more than a few cattle or sheep.
Oh where was I? The neighborhood here is somewhat primitive with a basic asphalt road system, and multiple low-water crossings to connect with the county road. So we have a nice little set of hilly ups and downs along with some flat straight stretches for walking, jogging, and even biking. In the past several years, the county has constructed a nice walking/jogging/biking path along the main roads not far from here, so if I haul the bike over to a parking area, I can connect with “miles and miles” of paved trails. Nice!
So ... off and cycling we go, Mr. Bike and me.
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Enjoy life; it's the only one we will get.
J.K. (Jim) George
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