Thread: Today's Ride
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Old April 3rd 16, 12:56 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
Andrew Chaplin
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Posts: 206
Default Today's Ride

Joy Beeson wrote in
:


1.6 miles to the grocery store, 1.6 back. I wore oxford shoes and got
away with it. (Wikipedia says that "oxford" is a very specific style,
but when I was growing up, it just meant the ordinary lace-up shoe
that everybody wore; if it wasn't buckled or a slip-on, we called it
an oxford.)

Fans will be pleased to know that I got ideas for two half-baked
columns. Since there was one in the buffer, this means that AG: will
continue for three more weeks -- unless I look at one or more and say
"oh, yuk; there are *limits*".

I wonder what my intentions were when I started writing columns?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote the above on Tuesday, 22 March 2016. I don't know why I
didn't send it that night, but I do know why it's been languishing
since Thursday the 24th. Today is the first time I've been able to
spare sitting-at-the-typewriter time for non-essentials.

For a while, any ideas I get will pertain to bicycle-shaped objects,
specifically the "comfort bike" I bought a few years ago for use as a
pedal-powered wheelchair. I have "arthritic changes", as the doctor
delicately phrased it, in a hip-to-spine joint, which late-night
introspection has convinced me is almost certainly due to the terrific
thump my left hip took in the late eighties or early nineties when I
tried to start my bike while standing in a puddle of oil that I had
mistaken for water.

Maybe there's a column: avoid puddles when there hasn't been any
rain.


Avoid puddles in any case, you cannot tell what lies at their bottoms, be
it debris or potholes.

A medical column in the paper said that cycling is a good way to stave
off arthritis, but there's the little matter of getting on and off. I
can't afford to give that hip another thump. (It got bashed again
when I slipped on ice early in the century, and may have been included
in the spectacular array of bruises I collected when I lost my balance
while reading a map a year or three ago. (Dropped a paper, tried to
pick it up without dismounting.))


I was not able to get out on my bicycle until Easter, after setting it
aside 27 December and leaving it idle for 91 days, but that was
exceptionally short winter for Ottawa. Since then I have ridden it to work
or for recreation on all but two days (icy rain or slop).

Today's ride will be a circuitous 21Km to my office to use the gym, more
to prove the route to a bike shop (www.mec.ca) than anything else, then a
further 12Km to my local to counteract the effects of the gym.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)
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