Today I took a giant leap towards senescence and purchased a recumbent.
I now have a MTB, a tandem, a road bike, and now a 'bent.
The Mayan calendar is correct. The world will indeed come to an end in the very near future. You best get your affairs in order.
For a variety of reasons I've not ridden my bike much this year, and every time I did, it touched off pain in my neck and shoulders. Other activities touch it off as well, and I imagine I have the dreaded cervical disc disease.
Fortunately I have a friend who lent me out a Bacchetta Strada:
Well, other than trying to get the fool thing rolling, and trying to get it up very steep grades, it's a lot of fun. I decided to purchase one when my wife elected to buy some stuff of equal or greater value for her habit, sewing.
The LBS had a demo model of the Giro, similar to the Strada except that the wheels are 26 inch instead of 650c, the drive train is a bit better, and it comes with disc brakes. Given my tendancy to aim bikes at random and hope for the best, I thought it was a good idea to get something with a lot of stopping power.
The demo model also came with the Brain Bag, sufficiently large to carry three weeks of provisions and lots of ammo (for the coming zombie apocalypse), and it accepts a Camelbak so I won't have to fiddle around with bottles at my breakneck speed of 12 MPH.
This is the first bike I've own in fifty years that has a kickstand and I'm darned proud of it.
So I went whistling by the graveyard:
There's something about 'bents that bring out the weird in people, and I don't mean just the riders. A car with three women pulled up next to me and snapped pictures of me with their cell-phones.
Drivers looked at me with expressions that ranged from bemusement to outright terror.
There is one very steep hill towards the end of my ride that I dismounted for and pushed my bike up. At the top there was an elderly lady holding a stick who came up to me and said, "I'm a grandmother and my grandchildren are 36 and 32."
"Wow, that's Awesome!" I replied.
So anyway, I got my 20 miles in, my neck and shoulders feel fine, my knees are a bit sore as I try to get used to climbing in very low gears with a high cadence (which I don't do very well) and life is pretty good at the moment.
That is all.