The last couple of days have taken me through memory lane. In 1977, I was 19 years old, taking the last week of summer before matriculating at Occidental College to ride my bike down the coast from San Luis Obispo to La Jolla.
1975 Raleigh Super Course MkII, packed for my first bike tour
The second to last day of that tour took me from a YMCA near LAX down the coast to Laguna Beach where my great aunt Bobby lived. Turning up from the PCH to her road was the only place I had to get off and walk. When I got to her house she had a note on the door telling me to park my bike behind her gate and walk back down the hill to meet her on the beach. She wrote to look for the little old lady with a yellow umbrella and white swim cap. When I got to the beach I found about a dozen women that met the description. Luckily she had told her friends that I was expected, so I got a grand greeting. I asked where aunt Bobby was, and they pointed out to the ocean. I saw three old ladies bobbing up and down in the waves. Bobby saw me and started waving enthusiastically just as a huge wave came pounding down on them. I was aghast, here I'd been riding for a week just to witness her demise! After a few seconds she bobbed back up to the surface, caught the next wave, and body surfed back to the beach.
Bobby was a PE teacher at Fullerton JC for a few decades, when UC Irvine opened up she used to drive over and play pick up doubles tennis with women 3-4 times younger than she was. Today we rode to Del Mar, and I remembered that she used to ride her 3 speed bicycle down to "bet on the ponies"; a girlfriend with a station wagon would drive her back up the coast to home. I think right about then I started to really admire people who kept active when they got older. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm still riding bikes and doing tours with my friends after retirement, and will continue to do so as long as I can.
La dolce vita