The bicycle industry, centered in the enormous Raleigh factory in Nottingham, was one of the most important in the country. The workers who built these bicycles rode the same kind of bicycles to work.<\/em><\/p>\n I dug my bike out of the very organized junk pile in the garage. \u00a0Imagine a bike that will go three speeds fast. \u00a0I took the bike to the bike store to get the gears working. \u00a0\u00a0There were \u00a0strange beasts at the bike store. \u00a0Drop your pants, they have twenty one speed bikes now! \u00a0The bike store bikes were flashy outrageous in their coloring.\u00a0My English bike is dullard dark green.<\/p>\n I took my dullard green bike home and got on.\u00a0I was excited to get my working bike back. \u00a0It wasn’t exciting negotiating the boy’s bike bar, but \u00a0I was excited about getting on a bike. \u00a0How many years has it been? \u00a0I rolled down my street on a bike! \u00a0In a few moments, my hair was flying in the wind and I laughed out-loud. \u00a0I’m young again! \u00a0I’m eighteen years old, riding this bike around my college campus. \u00a0I’m ten years old and riding my bike around the streets of my small town. \u00a0Yee Haw! \u00a0The wind is smoothing out the wrinkles on my face. \u00a0I have traveled about two blocks…a far ride. \u00a0That’s when I met, the upward slope. \u00a0I can’t really call it a hill. \u00a0But, my speed stalled out and I experienced this thing called “struggle”. \u00a0As I was struggling to make the bike wheels turn, my mind went back to the bike store with the flashy pretty things that had twenty one speeds. \u00a0I NEED ONE OF THOSE!<\/p>\n The next day, I was back at the bike store and I bought a flashy yellow with green slashes of color TREK bike. \u00a0I have no idea why I bought a yellow flashy bike. \u00a0It stood there calling my name. The sales person told me it was my size and perfect for me. \u00a0I bought a yellow mountain bike!<\/p>\n The bike and I were posed on the driveway for a brief second and off I went. \u00a0I rode around the block in style. \u00a0I laughed out-loud again. \u00a0I figured out how to shift…tricky things are these gears. \u00a0That took me about ten minutes. \u00a0I was ready to face the slope again. \u00a0Up we went and I shifted down down down until I got to speed twenty one. \u00a0I made it up the slope. \u00a0I sailed home in triumph.The rest of the week, I sailed around my neighborhood. \u00a0Lenexa had a big neighborhood and one hill. \u00a0After a time, I defeated the hill. \u00a0I was able to ride up the hill at speed twenty and arrive at the flat cement alive and undaunted.<\/p>\n I started to become a bike fanatic. \u00a0I read about bikes. \u00a0I studied my bike. \u00a0I decided that my mountain bike tires slowed me down when coming up those hills. \u00a0I took my bike back to the happy store owner and traded my barely used tires to new thinner and flatter tires. \u00a0I did not need deep knobby tread to ride on cement. \u00a0I got nice slightly thinner smoother tires. \u00a0Oh that made a difference! \u00a0I was able to get up the hill at only speed nineteen. I had two speeds left to burn!<\/p>\n Now I was riding all around downtown Lenexa, my neighborhood and another adjoining neighborhood. \u00a0I had conquered Lenexa! Neighborhoods became boring. \u00a0I’ve seen the same yards dozens and dozens of times by now. \u00a0Where to go now?<\/p>\n Shawnee Mission Park beckoned. \u00a0I took a car ride to the park. \u00a0It wasn’t too far away. \u00a0The hills were few and not very steep. \u00a0I am ready!<\/p>\n My water bottle is filled and I head off for Shawnee Mission Park adventure. \u00a0I was so thrilled when I made it to the park entrance! Thrilled! The park entrance was good enough for the first visit. \u00a0I \u00a0rested and made the triumphant return home. \u00a0My body started experiencing something called calf and thigh tightening heading to muscle.<\/p>\n The next day, I biked to the park. \u00a0This time I entered the park. \u00a0The park has a paved road that goes around the entire park. \u00a0I turned right and sailed down a longt hill traveling at least 100 mph. \u00a0Oh wow, now my hair really did sail, all the short curls were straightened in the wind. \u00a0This is wondrous and heady. \u00a0 I sailed down that hill to the big beautiful lake. \u00a0What a thrill!\u00a0In that moment, I became a road biker with a mountain bike with slick tires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was living in Johnson County, Kansas in the city of Lenexa. \u00a0This was the early 90’s. \u00a0My golf obsession had ended and my body was getting thicker, maybe wider would be a better term. Something about a bike caught my attention. \u00a0Something about a weight loss exercise program using a bike! \u00a0I need a thinner body. \u00a0The answer just \u00a0might \u00a0be a bike! I have stored in my garage, a stylish three speed English bike from my college days, a mere thirty year old or so bike. \u00a0Three speed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-biking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2812,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions\/2812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Raleigh](\"http:\/\/sheldonbrown.com\/images\/superbe54.gif\")
<\/em><\/p>\n