Balance

The older I get the more I realize the need to balance my schedule with regular exercise, but I struggle with time and motivation. I’ve never been one who enjoys exercise just for the sake of it. I prefer an activity where getting a workout is a benefit, not the sole purpose; things like playing sports, splitting wood, and bike riding come to mind.

My wife, Rhonda, and I have some good friends who live near a bike trail, and last week Mark and Lynn invited us (and our bikes) to their house. It was a beautiful Saturday, like so many we have enjoyed this October.  

Before we left home there were a few things I had to attend to. First, I had to give the bikes the once over and see what they needed. My skill set for bicycle maintenance is putting air in the tires, spaying some silicone on the moving parts, and wiping off the dust. After that I put the rack on the truck and the bikes on the rack and us in the truck and trekked over to do some biking.

Mark and I have been friends since childhood, but it had been four decades since we had rode bikes together. After he got his license in 1974 we rode around together on four wheels instead. But up until then the preferred conveyance was a bicycle.

Often we would be part of pack of boys on their ten-speed bikes moving through town. It took a couple trips to learn that changes in direction need to be agreed upon by the group in advance of the change. Abrupt, unannounced alterations often resulted in a pile of bikes and boys blaming each other in the middle of the street. 

We also biked around town at two and three in the morning. There were a few summers when several of us would set up a large tent in one of our backyards for a sleepover, except there was no sleeping. In the early evening we would eat junk food, drink pop and laugh, and later, after the parents in the house were sure to be asleep, we would push our bikes off the property and ride into the night.

During those years there were no police in town, other than infrequent visits by the county patrol car, so biking around town in the middle of the night was never challenged. Sometimes we would ditch our bikes a couple blocks from the swimming pool and jump the fence. Eventually, the noise level would wake the neighbors and they would alert the authorities. Running through backyards in the dark with your head down was a necessary posture to avoid being clothes-lined.

Later, as I got older, slower, and wiser swimming lost its adventurous appeal. However, I kept on biking through the years, but not with any of my childhood friends. It was as if we had outgrown it.

Last week boys and bikes were back together again and this time we had a designated trail to follow. Mark and I rode side by side, just like the old days and several yards behind us our wives happily conversed. The trail pushed through the woods and leaves crackled under the tires – so thick in spots that the trail would almost disappear. The lake, sparkling with the autumn sun, was just off our shoulders. Of course, it helps to have a destination, a reason for biking.  Someone had wisely opened a winery just off the trail and our bikes rolled in without much coaxing.

I will continue to bike, to exercise, because a sedentary life leads to a sloth-like existence.

”Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein.