I enjoyed this summer more than any summer in recent memory. I took plenty of walks, visited plenty of places with my camera in hand, spent plenty of evenings on the deck reading, and took plenty of weekend day trips.
The one thing I didn’t do until just the other day, however, is ride my bike. I’m not entirely sure why I waited so long. I love to ride my bike, a vintage 3-speed. Last year I even had it mechanically restored. But then we had the hottest summer anybody could remember, and I hardly ever rode it because the extreme heat robbed rides of all their fun. It was often dangerously hot for a bike ride. So you’d think I would have been chomping at the bit to get my bike out this year. But fortunately, when I finally got it down and blew off a year’s accumulated dust, it rode as great as it did when I got it back from the shop.
Riding my bike was one of my great childhood pleasures. I lived on my bike when I was a kid! And as a young adult I used to take rides all over Terre Haute, where I lived then. There must be more Dairy Queens per capita in Terre Haute than in any other U.S. city, because I could easily pass two or three on a single bike ride. Well, except that I usually stopped at one of those Dairy Queens during the ride, and headed home sucking on a chocolate malt. So much for the calories I burned!
So what did I do on my first bike ride of the season? I rode two miles to the Dairy Queen nearest my Indianapolis home, naturally.
I rode so much as a boy that I had legs of steel. Read that story.
