Bicycles

 Bicycles

Tomorrow, if the weather permits, I’ll be riding in the Magnolia Bike Tour here in Durant, OK. This will be the fifth time, I think. I’ve also rode in the Red River Bike Tour in Denison, TX, and a couple of times in the Alfalfa Bill Bike Tour in Tishomingo, OK.

I get a lot of questions on when and why I got started on bicycle riding, and why I still do it at almost eighty years old. It’s been a life time thing.

I learned to ride on a old, ugly gimme bike. It was faded red, and worst of all, it was a girl’s bike from a neighbor, Judy Burton, out on Gerard Ave in Merced. But I didn’t complain, I just rode it up and down the road all day.

I don’t remember what happened to that bike. The next one was also a hand-me-down, but it was a boy’s bike with 24” wheels. The handlebars looked like steer horns, and the bolt that held them on was rusted tight, so they stayed that way. Sort of dangerous if you fell on them, and there was no rubber grips on them or even a chain guard. Tying your pant leg was a must if you didn’t want to skid down the road with one leg caught in the chain.

In 1956-7 I got a job as a paper boy delivering the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle to homes and businesses on the south side of Merced. I shared it with my cousin Jim Russell, who delivered on Saturday for me, since I was a Seventh-day Adventist and didn’t work on that day. 

We both delivered on Sunday because those papers ran to 400-500 pages on the Sunday editions, and we used his car on the route. He had a black Volkswagen Convertible, which was ideal for him driving and me tossing the papers. We noted on his odometer that the length of the paper route was thirteen miles.

After a few months I had saved enough money for a new bike, or at least a down payment. I went down the the Herb Brothers Schwinn bicycle shop and bought a shiny green Schwinn Tiger middle weight bicycle with a Sturmy-Archer three speed hub. I put a tandem carrier on the back for the canvas paper bags, and I was the proudest biker in the land. 

On weekdays I woke up at 3:00 AM and rode down to Schroeders’ News office and folded and loaded the newspapers on the bike, then set out on the route. For those familiar with Merced, the route included everything from 21st street across downtown to 1st street out by the fairgrounds between “A” st. and “R” street. Since it was not the local paper, it wasn’t every house, but more like a house on every other block.

There was no freeway then, and many of my customers would now be in the industrial area where Hwy 99 is today. I remember one of my deliveries was to Mitchell House Movers, who covered a whole city block.

I had to finish the deliveries by 7:00 AM so I could ride home to Santa Fe Ave. eat breakfast, and then ride to school, out on Gustine Hwy on “W” drive. 

I needed more gears for the heavier loads on some days, and for going faster when no papers were on board. I went back to the Herb Brothers shop and they showed me something from England called a derailleur that moved the chain to various sprockets to change ratios. They showed me how to disassemble the internal three speed hub and adapt four more sprockets on the outside with the new Olympus derailleur. 

Now I had 12 speeds! 3 x 4 = 12. It was a rather crude affair, since the derailleur did not tension the chain with a double idler, but merely lifted the chain off the lower side of the sprocket. Some care needed to be taken to not over stress the chain, or it would jump the teeth on the sprocket. But it worked well enough that I added another chainwheel to the front and put a derailleur there, too. That’s how I ended up with a 24 speed Schwinn.

The low gears would climb a tree, I think. It was nearly impossible to pedal fast enough to keep your balance in the lowest gear. And the highest gear could only be used going down hill. I used it once riding back one weekend from Cathey’s Valley, where I was able to pass a slow moving car on the old highway coming back to town.

Twice I led groups of kids to Snelling and back to get their merit badges for bicycling. That was for a fifty mile ride. This was for the Pathfinders, a church group similar to Boy Scouts.

I tried to ride it to Lodi Academy, 75 miles north of Merced, but I picked a day when the wind was blowing out of the north at 35+ miles an hour. I stopped in Modesto and called Mom for help. She drove up in the old green Buick and carried me and the bike to Lodi. 

When I went to Walla Walla College, I took my bicycle there and that was my only transportation during that year. I rode from College Place to Walla Walla to visit my friend Don Satterfield and his family, and on some weekends I would ride out east of town into the mountains to enjoy the scenery and get some exercise.

I left that bicycle at my mother’s house when I went in the U. S. Army, and when I returned from Okinawa, my mother had moved in with her sister near Atwater, and the old house was empty. Never saw that bike again.

While I was stationed on Okinawa, I bought a red Fuji Feather bicycle - the first real racing road bike I owned. It was extremely light and easily rode at over thirty mph. For fun I would pass the police cars, since the speed limit all over the island was 35, and I could reach that if I pushed it. They would just laugh and turn away. That bike was a wreck before I left the island. It just couldn’t hold up to the rough roads and salt air.

From 1967 - 1972 I had no bicycles. I owned two CB160 Hondas and then a CL450 Honda. Commuted on motorcycles for a couple of years in southern California, from Huntington Beach to Downey, then a year in Woodland, CA and Silver Springs, NV.

I bought my next bicycle in Nucla, Colorado, where I worked in a coal burning electric generation plant.  It was the most expensive Schwinn available without a special custom order. My boss thought I was nuts for paying $300 for a bicycle. 

Our home was on a hill, and the plant was down in the river valley, so the bicycle commute was wrong way for sure. I could coast downhill to work. Then after a hard day’s work I would have to grind up some steep switchback roads to get home.

 My bicycle was a Schwinn with 12 speeds, I think - two in front and six in back. The shifters were a couple of friction levers on the frame below the fork. No numbers or detents. Fast and accurate shifting was impossible. But it was simple and reliable.

The local clinic sponsored an MS Bike-a-thon one weekend, and both my wife and I decided to ride our bikes. I was for fifty miles, from Naturita to Bedrock, Colorado, and back. First prize was a new bicycle nearly the same as mine. That didn’t interest me, of course. But I went to work with a signup card and got several people to agree to pay me $0.25 a mile for the fifty miles.

The weather was perfect and I was feeling good, so we all started riding together with the group. Soon it was just me and one young boy, who stayed with me as long as he could, but was soon nearly in tears. I realized he wanted that new bike, and thought I was going to win the race. I slowed down and I assured him that the bike was his if he beat everybody but me, because I already had a new bike and didn’t want another one. He got a lot happier.

I sped away and returned to the start well before noon. I asked it it would be OK to do the ride again for 100 miles. They agreed, and gave me a place to check back when I returned to get my card signed. So I passed the rest of the crowd coming back as I rode the course a second time.

The young boy won a new bike, and I was in trouble at work. When I showed the hundred miles on my card to my coworkers they were pissed! They had expected only fifty miles. I calmed them down by explaining that I only signed them up for fifty miles and I wouldn’t hold them to any more than that, but after all, It was me that worked hard for the charity. They were mollified a bit, and eventually they all paid for a hundred mile ride.

When I moved to Winnemucca, Nevada, I kept that bike and maintained it through the years, replacing cables and spokes and bearings and tires as needed. 

In 1984 I took flying lessons and rode my bike to the airport once, 12 miles away by road. In the winter, I could have walked there quicker, I think, because my home was about a mile and a half north of the airport on Jones Ln. If the winds were from the north, I turned crosswind over my house when practicing in the pattern.

When I retired from Sierra Pacific Power Co. in 2006, they gave me a catalog of gifts to peruse, in lieu of just the old gold watch. One of the pages showed a Trek Mountain Bike, so of course, that was my choice.

Winnemucca has a lot of surrounding mountains and several good trails to ride. One on the south side of the high school is called Bloody Shins Trail, and people come from out of town to test themselves on it. It is several miles of rough riding. 

There is also a trail now to the top of Winnemucca Mountain. Unfortunately, when they finished the trail, I had started to show signs of aging. I still had the strength, but was getting short on stamina and balance. The trail is narrow and is on the side of a steep slope. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, they say. I’ve been about halfway up.

In 2014 I won a gold and silver belt buckle for finishing first in my class (plus 65) in the Stewart Ranch sesquicentennial celebration bicycle poker run in Paradise Valley, Nevada. The last mile or so was a fast dash between me and the overall winner (25-65). We were going well over twenty on our mountain bikes. I just beat Maxl Willis, my flight instructor and friend.

When I moved to Durant, OK, I bought a racing road bike from the bicycle shop in Denison TX. They had to show me how to shift the “slap shifters”. The brake calipers swing sideways to shift the derailleurs. Far faster and more sure than even the “trigger” shifters on my mountain bike.

 I still try to keep in shape, but it’s getting tougher. My heart has electrical trouble, but not plumbing problems, according to my cardiologist. He brags on my bike riding to his staff, and says he is going to get a bike when he retires. 

Hey, there are worse things than being an inspiration to someone.