So, Spring is here. Right now, I am looking out my living room window and all I see is a blanket of fog. Welcome to Spring? Yes, in a few hours the sun will burn through it all and then I can rejoice in my sunny morning. But that will have to wait.

Yesterday, we bought my wife a brand new shiny bicycle. A Giant Escape 3L, a hybrid, a nice piece of machinery. They adjusted it to her size, they added a few things I requested/suggested. After all, I’m the lifelong bike rider in the family – as if that is a qualification, or even necessary to point out. I was trying to add a few things I knew she would appreciate down the road. Like a water bottle holder.

I also asked them to remove the kickstand. We’re in our 60s, not 6 years old. Kickstands add only one thing to a lightweight bike with all the latest fancy alloys – weight. When not being ridden, bikes usually do one of two things: rest in the bike rack attached to the car or hang on the garage wall by a couple of hooks. Wow, another space saver! So kickstands? Sorry, don’t remember the last time I parked my bike at 7-Eleven to go in and get a Slurpee. Oh yeah, now I remember – it was 1965.

Jorge, our bike expert, works at South Mountain Cycle in Emmaus, PA and he was fantastic. No BS, just full of good advice and insights. Jorge made all the adjustments during our second visit when we came back to make the purchase. Adjustments are always necessary to get the right custom fit and he wanted to accommodate my wife’s long legs and arms. He installed a handlebar extension and of course raised the seat. He then gave her a few lessons regarding proper hand-braking techniques and how to change the gears as you are riding. Mounting and dismounting was a whole lesson too. My wife went for a ride after all the adjustments and rode around the block. She seemed pretty comfortable.

Then we got home and headed to one of our trails we normally walk. Many railroads used to traverse the area when it was a hub for transporting coal and a hub for Bethlehem_Steel. Put these two together and you have a network – Bethlehem Steel required tons of coal to fire up the steel mill and lo, miles and miles of track were laid to get the coal from the mines to the steel plant. Since we live only eleven miles from Bethlehem, we are surrounded by many rails-to-trails and it is great to have such variety in different hiking and biking trails.

Many of the tracks are long gone – but interestingly, the old railroads have retained their rights of way in case there is ever a need to build a new railroad. Across the nation, there is much interest in “bringing back the railroad” as transportation, freighting and commuter hubs to alleviate our crowded roadways. The railroads typically pay $1.00 or so in rights and fees to keep their land but allow local townships, burroughs and cities to lay down cinders or gravel upon the pathways covering the former railroad beds. After all, many of these beds were created along rivers and low-lying lands to avoid trains having to climb steep grades. So, these old train beds are ideal for hikers and bikers since they provide exercise and often beautiful scenic views along all the rivers and streams.

As we arrived at our trail, we removed the bikes from the car and rode off. We circled the parking lot a bit to allow my wife to get the hang of the bike and its various controls. After all, we were about to pilot a Boeing 767 and we just wanted to run through our last minute checks before taxiing onto the runway.

Then we hit the trail. I had promised I would ride slow and not go racing off. So I pedaled slowly and waited for her to catch up to me. Then I looked behind me. She was far back and I realized she was just trying to get into a rhythm and get the hang of it all. I realize it can be a lot even though we’ve all been riding bikes since we all were children. Back then, you pedaled or reverse-pedaled to brake and that was it.

Now you get fitted, you use two brakes, not one like in every car I’ve ever owned. Two brakes for something that has no motor, one seat and just a frame – and only one brake for the 2,000 pound car or 3,000 pound SUV we drive every day?

And if you do have a car where you shift a manual transmission, well, you get four gears. Five gears if you were lucky enough to have, as your first car, an MG. But five gears is a lot to master when you are first learning to drive. 24 gears for a new bike?!? Again, no motor, one seat and just a frame. Yeah, it’s a lot to take on at age 64.

So I was real patient yesterday. My wife is a quick learner but something just wasn’t quite right. After a bit of riding, she announced that it just wasn’t comfortable. I looked at her posture and the way she was reaching out to the handlebars and I suggested that perhaps Jorge (remember Jorge?) had set the seat a bit too high, even though my wife has those long legs I mentioned. Hey, Jorge, they’re not that long. Even the handlebar extension that seemed so smart in the cycle shop was somehow not working so well anymore.

So she got back onto her shiny new bike but I could tell she just wasn’t digging it. The way I could tell is she told me she wasn’t comfortable and was afraid of dismounting and her feet were about a mile above the ground. And then she had a revelation. When she was taking her test ride outside with Jorge, each time she got on or off the bike, she was using a curb since they were on a street. In other words, it was easy to step on or off the curb and onto the bike. On the trail, without a curb, the bike was inaccessible. Sigh. But an important discovery.

We’ll take a car ride back to Emmaus tomorrow with the Giant Escape 3L and call on Jorge to make some more adjustments and get some more advice. Then we’ll come back home and after the fog lifts, we’ll go for another amazing bike ride.

I know it’s a process, an act of familiarizing oneself with all the brakes, gears, trail choices, hydrating choices and more.

Ahh, a ride in the country. Sounds pastoral, doesn’t it?

Chris Ebel
4/5/23

Photo credit: @jupiterimages