Steel is REAL Baby!!

What a great afternoon to be out on a bike.

In this morning's Sunday school lesson, (John 4) Jesus is sitting by a well in Sychar, waiting for someone to come by and get him a drink (this leads Him into a teaching moment about temporary thirst quenching and the permanent kind). He's tired from a full morning of walking up from Jerusalem. I am positive that Jesus would have been thrilled to have a country bike available for the trip. As it happens, I was ON a country bike myself this afternoon, covering more miles (33) in 2 hours +/- than a hiker could normally travel in a full day. He would have been a basic steel frame kind of guy too, I believe. It's rugged, adaptable, very wide ranging in application. Of course, you don't get to stop as much and have deep conversations that get taught to others 2,000 years later when you zip by on a bike. So maybe Jesus was okay with the walking part.

Therese and I were both on our steel steeds today. She had Halloween socks on, but I didn't get a picture. Here is a picture of our rendezvous point though. It gets frequent mention but has not appeared in a blog photo yet. There is a gazebo in view, and a band shell out of range to the left. A 3/4 mile walking path goes around the edge and it is used pretty regularly. Small, but pleasant, and a taste of small town, USA.

Our turn around point today was the same as last Sunday, The Boy's Store. It's close to Lake Jordan and on a morning ride, where there is more time, we continue on to Lake Jordan and cross it. There are some pictures of this in earlier posts. Local retail tycoon, Keith Holley calls most of his locations "Holley Marts" but this one keeps a peculiarly sexist moniker. Here it is:

Keith owns the store across the street too. It's called, anyone? anyone? Buehler? "The Girl's Store."

As we often do, we turned up past Holtville HS and then down the lovely Hogan Rd. Wide areas of cotton fields are showing white and ready to harvest. The cattle are out and active and there is a red tinge now in the maple leaves. It was uphill and into the wind on the way out, but it was good work. I was on the Saluki and this was the frist real excursion on new rubber. I got Grand Bois Oursons in another deal and they are very comfortable. The size is 1 1/2" which is FAT, but they roll about 2 mph faster, on average, than the Col deLa Vies that I decided were too slow for me, and sluggish up hills.

On the way back, which was downhill and with the wind behind us, we made much better time. Nestled in a corner of Millbrook is the old community of Sand Town. Coming through it, we saw some locals on bikes and I had to turn around and get a picture of this one:

The rider didn't give me his name, but the bike is a cool collection of various parts and sub assemblies that he said he's "gotta finish someday." Uh, the frame is STEEL, Baby! You know, it's great that you can pedal through a different neighborhood than your own and stop a total stranger on his bike and ask to take his picture, and he is cool with that. It's a bike thing. I like it. More people need to ride bikes and stop and talk (maybe about being thirsty and so forth) and show some interest by taking each others pictures. One thing I like is the high spoke count and fat tires this guy uses too.

Have a great week everyone!

Tailwinds.