Author: Susan (Page 3 of 103)

Bicycles certainly deserve to have at least one day set aside to honor them.

Admit it though, every time you ride one of your bikes you celebrate the almighty bicycle in some way. Plus, while we are being truthful here, you may as well tell us you have a few bicycles and love them all equally, like children. Although they are likely all aware you ride one way more than the others. 🤔

---

Speaking of multiple bikes, the “bike boom” of 2020 is continuing into our post-Covid world and hopefully will just continue to boom. Bikes of all types are in high demand, as well as related gear, and difficult to come by according to two bike shops I frequent here in northeast Ohio.

E-bikes are becoming much more popular as well as becoming a bigger part of the market share for bike purchases. For those of us who ride *regular* bikes aka *self-propelled* we know it all too well when a moped-looking bike passes us on the road or trail. Although they are beginning to look more and more like regular bikes so it is getting harder to tell. If you are like me however, when someone zooms past you just assume they must be riding an e-bike to be going that much faster.

The best thing to come out of the e-bike explosion is how they are opening up cycling to a whole new population and consequently increasing the number of people who ride bikes.

More people riding bikes – motor assist or not – makes it safer for all of us on the road. Study after study has shown the more people who ride, the safer conditions are for all. Drivers know to expect encountering cyclists and most adjust accordingly. Here in the east of Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls, drivers will avoid driving on Chagrin River Road I am told because of the number of cyclists riding this very popular road. On some early morning rides I have encountered more cyclists than cars and that my cycling, bike worshiping friends, is utopia.

So here is to World Bicycle Day, may every day be a day we appreciate the bicycle.

Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of my second love affair with cycling. I was in my 30’s then, nearly half my current age – holy sht – when I got another bike and fell in love. I have ridden ever since. Honestly every bike I have ever owned I have loved. Bikes and cycling are like that – easy to love, easy to commit.

I had a record breaking year last year and since it is Memorial Day today I rode again, and most days now that the weather is warm.

So I am still at it. Still doing the thing I love. Still riding my bike.

Life is good. Happy Memorial Day!🚴‍♀️🇺🇸

---

Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial beginning of summer, always brings to mind the rebirth of my love for cycling. Like most everyone else I practically lived on a bike during my childhood and even teen years. When I was in college, not owning a car, I biked to class and work.  Biking actually wasn’t that prevalent when I was in college not like it is today.

Once adulthood set in (parenthood and work) I put away my bike.  For exercise I ran some, played a little tennis, but rarely considered biking and I’m not sure why. That changed when one Memorial Day weekend my then 10 year old daughter said, “Mom, let’s ride bikes to my school”.  Her school was 7 miles away and partly over dirt and gravel roads, but it sounded fun so I said sure!

I remember I packed for that first bike ride like I would pack now for an all day ride – several snacks and a lot of water and we set off.  I rode my old Sears Free Spirit bike, the same bike I had ridden in college. The old 10speed-drop-handlebar-skinny-tire bike that wasn’t really intended to be ridden on gravel, but we took our time and made it to the school. 

Like kids do, after we had been there for a little while, my daughter was ready to ride  home.  I on the other hand was not.  I stalled like any mother worth her salt until I was rested and fairly confident I could make it back. Although I was only 35 years old at the time, I thought 35 was pretty old, the way people in their 20’s and 30’s do until they get to their 40’s and beyond. I also wasn’t doing any kind of cardio exercise on a regular basis plus, I am ashamed to admit, I still smoked.

After a while we got back on our bikes and headed home.  We both felt a sense of accomplishment and pride that we had ridden our bikes 14 miles! Unfortunately I didn’t get back to riding after that. But lo and behold the next Memorial Day weekend my daughter gets up and says excitedly, “it’s our annual ride our bikes to school day”! I had completely forgotten about the previous year’s trek, but of course she had not.  My response to her was something like I’m too old to ride a bike that far… and the rest as they say is history.

The first time I rode my bike on Free Wheel and all the other years I rode it she reminded me of my “I’m too old” whine. The time I rode the MS 150, 150 miles in 2 days, she reminded me, and each and every time she did, we had a good laugh!

I learned that you’re never too old to begin again, and that in many ways I’m younger now than I was then. 

The following September I got a Schwin hybrid to ride around the neighborhood and on any future treks to schools or wherever with my daughter. That bike is the bike that as an adult I fell in love with cycling. I couldn’t get enough of riding then and I still can’t. In many ways I owe my profound love of cycling to my daughter Jessica, and that first bike ride to her school – thank you Jessica!  

Since that inaugural ride I’ve logged tens of thousands of miles on one bike or another: rides across Missouri, from Burlington, VT to Quebec City, through California Wine County and California’s Central Coast, the Texas Hill Country and along the Massachusetts coast, and most recently, France’s Provence region – as well as many cities across the US utilizing bike share or rentals.

And to commemorate my rediscovery of cycling, every Memorial Day weekend I go for some sort of ride and I always think back to that first ride and smile – that I am still at it and still love it. 

That’s my story. What’s yours? 

*Updated 05/31/2021

*Image is not the property of For the Love of Bikes, but is shared here. Creator of image is unknown.