Biking: Not What It Used to Be

As a teenager I would bike all over without a problem. To ride 16 - 20 miles at a time was a normal occurrence. Once I got to college, my biking days pretty much came to an end. The problem is that my memory doesn't account for all of those years of inactivity. So this morning when I decided to venture out on a seemingly harmless 10 mile ride, I found myself in for a very rude awakening. Now being in the mid-west I figured that since the terrain is mostly flat, that there really should be no problems. While the "mostly flat" part is true, there are some decent "bumps" that need to be traversed. Add to that my mostly forgotten knowledge of how/when to adjust the gears on the bike, and what you get is a rather poor old guy struggling to get up one bump just so he can coast down the other side. Age has a funny way of catching up to us.

So before I decide to start biking to class (I made it 85% of the way to the seminary before turning back), I will need to do some more practice runs to get my legs back into shape. It will do me absolutely no good to arrive at school ready for a nap! My hope is that come fall, when the temps get out of the 90s and back into something a little more manageable, my legs will be ready for the task at hand. In the meantime, I'm going to get a haircut so I can try to survive the heat.