I started riding my MTB in 2010 at 61 years young. Got my first road bike in April 2013 blew my knee out in May was off my my bike till September and started back riding again.

3 Thoughts to consider:

This year I turned 65 years young and this thought came to me as I was riding one day, "Today is the youngest you'll ever be for the rest of your life so enjoy you're youth today while you still have it."

A man once said, "I'm not so much concerned where you're at as much as what direction you're headed in."

"No More Excuses," I went to the Redlands Classic Bike Race a couple of weeks ago and one of the classes of riders was the "Physically Disable" and to see those Men and Women putting forth the effort to ride a bike let alone compete in a race was inspiring awesome and humbling. One young Vet was missing both feet and 1 1/2 arms but he had a Huge Heart. After seeing that all of my excuses for why I can't do something are very very small.

I hope these expressions can help somebody see the glass as half full instead of half empty.

Phil

Ride Safe

Thanks for those comments. I was lucky to adopt a cycling lifestyle in my 20’s about 40 years ago, including touring and commuting.

About 20 years ago I was having lunch with a couple doctors, and the conversation turned to the vicissitudes of life, like sudden death, and trivial symptoms as harbingers of serious disease. We eventually came around to that old chestnut, every day to “live life to the fullest." As we were leaving, the surgeon, a marathon runner, said, “Well, any day with a run it is a good day for me.” It suddenly clicked that any day with a ride in it is a good day for me.

That aphorism became even more important to me two years ago after a cycling accident and the uncertainty that I would ride again (I have, and on a sweet new carbon fiber bike).

Thank you Phil. You just gave me a new motto to live by.

As a vet every time I go to the VA Hospital I try and share this thought with 1 person on my way out, "Any day you can walk out of the VA it's a good day and then there will come a time that any day you can be wheeled out of the VA it's a good day but in reality any day you wake up is a good day." The choice is ours. Make it a good day.

Phil

Ride Safe

Welcome!

Beaumont, eh? When you're ready, how about coming out for a ride to Baldy?

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers. It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low, I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not, And restless and lost on a road that I know. Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.

Of course, I don't always feel that way.

Do you want to ride to the "Village" or the "The Lifts"

https://www.bikeforums.net/clydesdale...out-shoes.html

Beaumont, oy, That's the first checkpoint on Breathless Agony, just before the Oak Glenn climb and right after Jack Rabbit Trail!

Rick / OCRR

Great post!

Right now, just to the Village would be fine. That climb to the lifts always kicks my butt, even in decent shoes.

I just noted that the OP posts from Beaumont, CA. Back in 1977, my wife and I did an eight-week cross country honeymoon cycle tour from Laguna Beach to Washington, DC. Day 1 was to Lake Elsinore and on Day 2 (? maybe Day 3) we passed through Beaumont to Banning.

We were originally from Michigan, and that was our first experience riding in mountains with switchbacks, along the Ortega highway. My vivid recollection about Beaumont was stopping at a restaurant for lunch and ordering sodas after sodas because we were so thirsty.

As I mentioned in my reply to the thread, I was lucky to discover the cycling lifestyle so early, and have the time to do such a long tour, and share it with my then-new (and still) wife.

Hi Phil, You probably already know about this since it looks like Karen Johnson (mostly) hidden in your photo on the shoe thread but just in case you'd like to join us . . . .

Karen's 2014 High Mountain Crazy Climbfest #2

We're starting from Encanto Park in Duarte at 8:30AM going up the SGRT to Hwy 39 to Crystal Lake Cafe. From there we will descend to East Fork, visit Camp Williams, then climb Little GMR to the GMR/GRR junction, turn left and take GRR to Mt. Baldy Village.

From there (some of us) we'll ride to the Ski Lifts for some bonus miles and feet of elevation. Then it will be back to The Village, back on GRR to GMR to Sierra Madre and the SGRT back to Encanto. Hope to see you there!

Rick / OCRR

Hi Dudelsack,

Is that your own personal quote? Heavy, man; is it published?

Rick,

I can't even follow that on paper let alone on my Have fun and have a safe ride.

Phil

Ride Safe

You need to be an old hippie. It is Khalil Gibran.

Groovy, man. Of course if I could remember the Sixties, I wouldn’t have been there.

Funny though you should mention Kahil Gibran. About 30 years ago we lived in an apartment on Marlborough Street and were told that KG lived there. I can’t verify that, but there is a stone monument to him in Copley Square right across the street from the architecturally famous Boston Public Library.

(Our preceding rental unit was the second floor of the home of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on Commonwealth Ave.)

Cripes. I thought Dudel was just hitting the sauce again.

I saw this isn't new but I liked the mesage

The biggest thing I need to remember is this is supposed to be fun, and it's ok if the young fire breathers on their carboluminum featherweights pass me on my old steel race bike.

I wonder where their plastic bikes will be in 30 yrs.

Hi Phil,

It's easier to follow on Garmin! https://connect.garmin.com/activity/483164797
Rick / OCRR