2017-08-14 – My Facebook friends are going to say, “again?”

Over the weekend I went over 1,000 miles on my bike for the year. I posted Saturday’s ride and I posted Sunday when I actually reached the milestone. And now I’m posting this. Isn’t enough enough?

Actually, no.

I began riding over 60 years ago and I remember most of my bikes. The first one was a hand-me-down, beat-up, blue 16-inch bike with training wheels. I graduated to another hand-me-down 20-inch bike that was repainted maroon. Then a red 24-incher.

My first new bike was black a 3-speed English racer. I got that one when I was 9 (I think). That was the bike I rode on my first extended rides—to the great damns in the Dayton, OH area. Englewood Dam and Huffman Dam. That bike lasted into my college years in Chicago when it became my first bike stolen. Over the years, I’ve had 6 bikes stolen.

My longest-lasting bike was a Raleigh road bike I bought when I came back to Chicago after law school in 1979. It lasted into the 2000s. I began exploring Chicago on that bike and taking some of the longer rides I take today. One summer I was a 3-day-a-week commuter to my job in the loop. It was maybe 12 miles each way and was just as fast as taking the L. My longest ride ever was on the Raleigh—to Zion, IL, about 75 miles round trip.

My riding has been an on-again, off-again thing throughout my life. It was just something I liked to do but, aside from the commuting summer, I never really made much of a point of it—until last summer.

Last summer, I finally realized that biking was one of the things I like doing best. It took 60 years to realize that. (This is a theme in my life. I never seem to acknowledge my deepest interests until I’ve been at them for decades.) Last summer, I put on 1,000 miles for the record (and maybe 300 before I started keeping records). This summer I’m shooting to top that. Doubling that is not beyond possibility.

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