Turning 50 and How Did The Ground Get So Hard?

Well here I am 2 1/2 weeks into being 50 years old. Not bad, not bad. In some ways the party is still going on.

The *BIG* present for my 50th B'day wasn't really big at all. We came across Megan's bicycle in the storage building and I decided that was what I wanted for my birthday. Not a new bicycle, but to fix up her old bicycle (which she hadn't ridden since she learned to drive) and ride it. It took a few $$, but not as much as a new bike would have cost.

Riding it was a WHOLE different experience. I got the bike back from the bike shop on a Wednesday, the Wednesday before we went on vacation to be exact. It was a busy week with rain coming in at nearly any moment.

But I just HAD to ride my bike when I got it back. The seat was set too high and I couldn't find the correct tool to fix it, but a small thing like that wasn't going to deter me. The ride wasn't bad, in fact I did very well. I later discovered I rode nearly a mile.

The problem came when I got back to my front yard and stopped. My foot hit a brick along the front flowerbed and I toppled over. The seat was too high and my feet didn't actually reach the ground while I was sitting on the bike, that coupled with catching my foot on a brick sent me into the rose bush.

My imediate reaction (as I was still laying on the ground, in the rose bush, looking up at the sky) was, "OH Lord, don't let me break anything (bones) before vacation!"

My next thought was, "OH Lord, I hope the neighbors aren't home and watching me!"

At that point I tried to jump up (and out of the rose bush) as if this wasn't a major event, causing me to trip over more bricks and land again, in the rose bush looking up at the sky. This time I'm scrapped up, and something is *stabbing* me in the back (yeah, it was the rose bush), but I lay there a couple of minutes to catch my breath, get my bearings so that I DON'T fall again.

By the time I got in the house my back had a major scrape/scratch on it and was bleeding. One knee was scrapped and bleeding and I could already tell there was going to be a nasty bruise there, and my other ankle was scrapped and bleeding. All-in-all I was *ok* but maybe riding bikes is for kids who can bounce better than I can.

This hasn't stopped me from riding though. After we got back from vacation I'm riding again. I'm doing just over a mile a day (hey, I'm working my way up). At some point I plan on riding over to the nice hike and bike trail on Phelan. I figure it's a couple of miles just getting there, then I'd ride about three miles and then back home. So I'm working my way up to that.

As far as the ground being harder than it used to be. One Monday spouse was out trimming the bushes in the front yard, it was a really nice day outside, so I sat out under the red maple tree and watched. After sitting there about 40 minutes, I started getting up and it was hard to get up, knees creaking and it occurred to me that the ground was harder than it was, say, 35 -40 years ago. How can that be?