I’m speaking of the kind of bike that one pedals with their own power. I decided I needed one because the county buses have a cool bike rack in the front. With a bus AND a bike I can get anywhere I need to go within a reasonable time, or so it would seem.

The first adventure was not actually on the bike, but rather buying the bike. I looked on Craigslist and could have spent all day calling people and seeing the one bike they had for sale but, I saw a bunch of bikes advertised by a pawn shop all in one place. Somehow that made sense. And the shop was only about a mile away, even better.  The bikes didn’t look nearly as good in person as they did in the pictures but I finally found one that fit my parameters. It looked light enough to lift onto the rack on the bus. It had brakes.  It wasn’t ridiculously hard to mount. That was about it, oh, and it was cheap. I bought it. The salesman was kind of surprised.

Today, the husband took me and my bike in his truck and dropped us off at work. (My car is presently out of town visiting a relative.) When I finished my daily duties it was nearly 1 pm giving me almost 10 minutes to get to the bus stop. No dallying allowed – I pedalled as fast as I could manage and just barely made it. I am not in shape for racing 2 miles, including up a Florida hill (bridge) so I’m just saying I was mighty glad to sit in a cool bus and catch my breath. I did good putting my bike on the rack and I watched to make sure no one took it off, hoping to steal it. That really does happen sometimes.

The next thing I learned was that when you disembark the bus you must remember to put the bike rack back up if you have the last bike on it. If you forget the driver will honk at you – a bit of an adrenalin rush there.  I had a choice of routes to finish the trip home. One was short and had no sidewalk and sandy shoulders on the road. The other was sidewalk all the way but longer. I chose that one, partly because I had noticed a strange wobble in my front tire and didn’t want to be close to traffic in case I had a “fall over”.  The long way became even longer as I tried to cut through a couple trailer parks that had no cut-throughs. The wind was blowing briskly in which ever way was opposite the way I was going. I don’t think my bike has any gears that make pedalling easier.  It has levers and one of them moves but nothing gets easier.  I was getting seriously tired and didn’t know if the bike was going to make it – kind of like riding a dying horse. But I did get home, right befoe a rain shower, thank you Lord.

I may have to ride the bike again tomorrow. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that.