OK, screw philosophy. Let's talk bikes.

This is me on my first recumbent. That was circa 1947. I've been riding bikes for quite a while.

There was a decade or so after high school when I didn't ride. Then, in the late 60s, I started to get concerned about weight and exercise, and bought a bike. That was a brown Schwinn road bike with lever shifters. It had a little mechanical odometer that was driven by a peg on a front spoke, going tick, tick, tick as it counted distance. I was living in Daly City, and several times a week I would ride up the road toward the top of Mt. San Bruno (tick..... tick..... tick.....). At a certain point I would be completely exhausted, and would turn around and coast back home (tiktiktiktik!). However, each week I could ride a little higher on the hill before pooping out. I can still remember the triumph of the day when I got all the way to the top.

Another cycling hiatus followed through most of the 70s. But by the late 70s, once again concerned about my body, I bought another bike, a Raleigh, and later a second, better one, and began commuting to work by bike.

In 1988 I bought a beautiful Miyata with Ultegra components. I bought it because (I later wrote) "it felt light as a feather and as precise as a scalpel." It was really a criterium racer and completely inappropriate for my abilities, but after I had changed its gearing to match my leg strength I used it for commuting for five years.

In 1994 I commissioned a custom bike, a Rock Lobster by Paul Sadoff in Santa Cruz. I rode many thousands of miles on the Rock Lobster, commuting, weekend fun rides, and organized centuries. I wrecked it badly and Paul rebuilt it. A few years later I wrecked it again.

By that time I was interested in recumbents. Marian approved; she figured if I was closer to the ground I'd have less distance to fall. So I bought a Tour Easy. Here I am with the TE embarking on a solo tour through Marin County. I put over 6,600 miles on this bike in three years.

In 1998 I bought a new recumbent, an Easy Racers Gold Rush. It was almost the same as the Tour Easy, only made of aluminum instead of steel, and painted white instead of black.

I'm sorry to say that I seem to have no pictures of this bike, even though I've been riding it for more than a decade and for more than 17,300 miles. That sounds like a lot of miles, and it is, although it works out less than 1,500 miles per year. After that many miles and years, the bike was looking ratty. The white paint was chipped and scratched, there was ground-in dirt in all the working parts, the rubber bits were tattered, there were scars on the right brake and the fairing from where I wiped out taking a corner too fast. And you know? I wasn't feeling good about cycling, either.

So when we came back from a six-week trip last fall, I just sort of didn't start riding again. Why? Well... let's go to another post for that.