With all the desert terrain and trails out here in Bullhead and one block from my house I purchased two mountain bikes when I retired 18 months ago to get back into bicycling which I have always considered the perfect form of exercise. When stationed in Japan for 5 years 1974-79 I commuted between Yokosuka and Yokohama about 18 miles each way everyday. The great thing about commuting on a bicycle is that once you reach your destination and received your morning exercise, you are committed to an afternoon workout if you wanted to get home no matter how unmotivated you feel. So I have always considered Bicycling to be the perfect form of cardio exercise that provides the perfect low impact workout but is also functional, allowing you to interact with the environment without pounding your joints like running. Anyway I purchase two bikes cause I know bicycling on a regular basis the way I do requires a lot of routine maintenance and some down time. The problem is I procrastinated on the first bike repairs and now the second bike needs a set of freewheel bearings so I am out of a spare bike and not able to get my cardio 6 mile endorphin fix for today making me a very dull boy and feeling like crap. That is the only problem with routine cardio, missing a day or two and not getting that wonderful endorphin fix, is liked not getting a wonder drug, also I don’t have as much drive to motorcycle ride off road in the morning without my cardio fix to kill the pain of the ruts and jumps at 80% race speed. Although there is more then one way to get a cardio fix, only running, bicycling, or swimming gives you that hart pounding stress that releases massive amounts of endorphins from your brain that make your body and mined feel great like a teenager! At 49 running causes more damage to joints then it is worth, walking is a waste of time and swimming requires an Olympic size pool to get any real benefit, although some folks believe they are getting something out of doing U-turns in a 15-foot pool.
Ok enough of what is bothering me today, tomorrow I will go to the bike shop to get either the parts or have at least one bike fixed. Normally I like to share some pictures of what I write in my journal but who need to see another picture of a bicycle. Instead I have included some of the best shots where I ride both my bicycle and my dirt motorcycles every morning.
PS- Another thing that pissed me off today was I tried to summit a photo of myself to AOL to participate in the “BLOG photo banner” they advertise and request everyone to join. Anyway no matter what city or state I submitted or size type photo, AOL’s submission menu kept giving me errors telling me I had the wrong type photo and that the city / state coding was wrong. In actuality everything was correct and it is just one of those things that are broken. I wonder what weenie was working the screening board.
