Koyote

When my wife and I decided that we had become financially secure, even 'well-off,' I had just one request for her: that any more furniture that never again purchase Ikea furnitire.

​​​​Bazinga!

88ss

It was back in the mid-1960s, probably the same for as it was for any other kid.

CAT7RDR

My, best lessons learned for me about cycling after a 20 year hiatus?
1. Learned to embrace hills rather than avoid them.
2. Learned to develop safer routes through exploring my local area rather than drive, then ride to/on MUPS.
3. increased my scanning and avoidance of potential hazards.
4. Tune out the couch potatoes warning me of all the dangers related to cycling as they continue to develop health problems.

a1a

Yea...l I need to relearn those lessons. Thankfully the bus driver had quicker reflexes than me when I was a kid!

a1a

Ah yes...; I've quickly learned the evils of Strava. I still use it. But I am always turning off the speed racer (or whatever you call it). I am amused when I get a new PR without trying... simply by focusing on my HR, cadence, etc.

I'm still working on hydration, lytes and nutrition. I know consuming carbs during riding is not carb loading. When I started to ride for real it was this past summer during the heat wave in Florida. Bonked hard. I added carbs and lytes to my hydration during my rides. Prolly more than I needed. I have cut out the carbs over the past week without consequence (rides between 21-32 miles) and cut out the lytes for this mornings ride. Lytes seem to make consuming a lot of fluids at once easier... but I'll see how it goes. Straight H20 caused some cramps this morning but I also varied my ride a bit and rehydrated at different mileages/times. I need to learn to make small changes to better track responses to training.

Bottom line. I'm having fun while working out at the same time. I don't listen to music... listening to my own thoughts can be just as distracting though!

Recent thoughts have been about nutrition, glucose and glycogen.

So... maybe some experts here can look at my numbers.

Lets say average blood glucose is 100 mg/dl. That's 1000 mg/L and if there are 5 L of blood in our body than there are 5000 mg of glucose, or 5 g of glucose in our blood. That's a whopping 20 Kcal. The amount of work the body has to do to keep our energy stores in check is pretty amazing.

On glycogen. Quick search revealed 100g of glycogen in the liver and 500g in muscles (on average... I could be wrong). Let's assume there's a straight 1:1 mass of glycogen to glucose. That's 600g of glucose. 2400 Kcal of energy. Enough to fuel my body (plus or minus) for one day. Assuming our body doesn't (or can't) release all those reserves over 1 day then it's important to replenish carbs/fat/protein in a sensible manner.

I know I'm a novice at this. But it's fun to engage the brain. And definitely better than watching cat videos on facebook or tiktok. I gotta say the cat/Tyson video was pretty funny though!

Repack Rider

When my car died in 1970 I was desperate enough for transportation that I accepted a gift of a worn out Schwinn Varsity. First day I rode it, I went OTB and got bitten by a dog. With no alternative, I kept riding it, but found an equally worn out Peugeot UO-8 and upgraded only slightly. Took my first hundred mile ride on it, knew nothing of nutrition and bonked badly.

Noticed that even though I was new at bicycling, I rode faster than most other people I saw on bikes. Saw a guy on a Mondia, the most amazing bike I had ever seen, and grilled him for 20 minutes about it. I bought a Peugeot PX-10 that was a turkey, but it bridged me up to buying a Colnago.

Took part in founding a bicycle club, and raced enough to find out that I was never going to win. Started riding trails on my old Schwinn balloon tire town bike. Later modified it to add gears. Started organizing downhill races for my friends on similar bikes. Talked a friend into building a custom balloon tire frame.

Started building balloon tire bikes built on custom frames with my friend Gary Fisher. We called our company "MountainBikes." Big companies copied our design. We went bankrupt, but at least I had some nice bikes.

dennis336

While I've been doing at least some riding since I was a child (high school and college years excepted), I got what I consider my first "serious" road bike in my mid-fifties. Every couple of seasons, I'd fall over un-clipping. Usually at the most embarrassing time:

1) At a red light when I, too late, realized I wasn't going to be able to keep my balance while clipped in until the light turned green.


2) In front of a couple of young female riders. I'm a happily, faithfully married old man and shouldn't have cared. But still ......


I'm still bad at falling over

dennis336

Whenever we have any kind of home project or "assembly requird' thing and I say "I think I can do that", my wife's response ranges from skepticism to sadness to an outright "there is NO WAY we're taking a chance on you doing this project". She doesn't actually say those words out loud (she's much too nice) but I know that's what she's thinking .

a1a

Good read... thank you

Wildwood 

When I was about 7 or 8, I was almost tall enough to ride the 'family bike', just couldn't quite sit and pedal. An old single speed, heavy, balloon tired, step thru something. My father had ridden it to work occasionally when he was a younger man. Older brothers had fun teaching me balance - the old-fashioned way, a strong push to get started down the grassy hill - and laughing all the way through the inevitable crash.

What I remember was learning to rebuild coaster brakes and how to vulcanize patches on the thick tubes. That involved a metal clamp, rubber patch 'package' and lighting a match to the back of the tube patch to burn it in place. Horrible smell. That was late '50s. In the '60s it was my paper route bike, 2 paperboy bags hung off the rear rack, on Sundays an extra bag was hung from the handlebars.

Learning curve = I remember pushing (when loaded) up anything that could be called a hill was better than 'climbing' with a cadence around 20rpm.

But it was freedom and much faster than walking places. No lock. Never got stolen.
Something like this but without the tank, and the saddle wasn't as nice. Even had the broken front light with no top cover, wiring, or bulb.

edit: Maybe this old klunker is why in retirement I have had as many as 20 vintage Euro/UK lightweight race bikes all shiny and ready to ride. Down to about a dozen vintage euros, plus the newer USA framed brifter bikes. Over-compensation is not to be under-estimated.

rumrunn6

my middle brother taught me. my Dad was too busy working

ShannonM

Things I learned in my cycling newbieness:

Suffering.
How derailleur drivetrains actually work, and why "Nth gear" is a meaningless phrase for any value of "N" other than "1".
Suffering.
How to get my feet into and out of toe clips. (This made clipless pedals a no-brainer when I switched. I've since switched back, for reasons which are out-of-scope for this discussion.)
Suffering.
How to glue a tire onto a rim without getting sticky red goop all over the wheel, the tire, and my hair.
Suffering.
How to fix a flat in the rain.
Suffering.
How to ride in a group.
Suffering.
Don't half-wheel in a paceline.
Suffering.
There's no such thing as too low of a gear.
Suffering.
The tool / spare / thing you totally didn't need to bring is, in fact, the tool /spare / thing you totally needed to bring.
Suffering.
Crashing sucks.
Suffering.
Everybody crashes.
Suffering.

--Shannon