A couple of years after I got back into cycling, I had been "training" 3 or 4 times a week on a 18 km ride with a few big hills. I thought I was getting into pretty good shape and happened to run into a neighbour down the street. Well, he was an older German guy, late 60's, maybe 70 and he mentioned he'd seen me on my bike and that he used to ride. I suggested we go out for a ride, he agreed and the next day we got together.

Well he hadn't ridden his bike for 3 years and it was looking kind of rusty when he dug it out of his garden shed, and I was really having second thoughts when he put on his "helmet" which was made out of these thin tubes of leather. We started off and then had to stop while he found some oil because the chain was all but seized-up. Then the front derailleur cable broke, so he tied it off on his top tube.

Well to make a long story short after he finished "my" 18 km training ride, he graciously rode back to join me at roughly the halfway mark.

I'm still too intimidated to ask him for a second chance, even though I regularly do that ride in half the time I used to.

I later found out that he's Incredibly fit, used to do amazing long distance rides and even today swims across the lake (a few km.) in front of our house every morning at 5 AM.