Back in the Naughty-Aughties, a goateed guy named Ro used to ride bikes (and sometimes, on camping trips, a motorcycle) with us; he was 67 IIRC, which to me, a wee lad in my early 50s at the time, seemed legitimately old. During the same period, there were a handful of minors who came out on Thursdays as well; the youngest, Alec, was probably seventeen; charmingly, he would sometimes wait like a faithful puppy outside whatever bar we had holed up in, to join the inebriated for the group ride home.
So figure a span of fifty years between the senior and junior members of said crew; that’s surely the record.
Last night, though, did pretty good: there was, me, yours truly, at, as Fancy Fred pointed out, sixty one-derful years, and our young tag-along capture, Windy City Carlos, who boldly admitted he was just sixteen years old, meaning there was a four and a half decade age span between the firstborn and lastborn riders in attendance.
It’s kind of amazing, and surely heartwarming, as well, that the delights of two-wheeled shenanigans can be enjoyed by folks so far apart chronologically, (in marked contrast, for example, to whatever pleasures attend to one’s choices in music, a point brought home particularly uncomfortably when the youngster kept blasting N-word filled rap songs from his backpack speaker as all us white folk pedaled past houses which—during my lifetime (but not his, admittedly)—only white-skinned people were permitted by neighborhood covenant to own.)
But I guess back in 1973, when I ductaped a transistor radio to the handlebars of my Raleigh Record and blared Led Zepplin’s “The Lemon Song” while riding through the quaint streets of Pittsburgh’s Highland Park district, some guy born 45 years before me, in 1912, wouldn’t have liked it, either.
On the other hand, I’ll bet if he hopped on his penny-farthing and joined in careening down winding streets on two wheels, we'd have both felt like kids.
So figure a span of fifty years between the senior and junior members of said crew; that’s surely the record.
Last night, though, did pretty good: there was, me, yours truly, at, as Fancy Fred pointed out, sixty one-derful years, and our young tag-along capture, Windy City Carlos, who boldly admitted he was just sixteen years old, meaning there was a four and a half decade age span between the firstborn and lastborn riders in attendance.
It’s kind of amazing, and surely heartwarming, as well, that the delights of two-wheeled shenanigans can be enjoyed by folks so far apart chronologically, (in marked contrast, for example, to whatever pleasures attend to one’s choices in music, a point brought home particularly uncomfortably when the youngster kept blasting N-word filled rap songs from his backpack speaker as all us white folk pedaled past houses which—during my lifetime (but not his, admittedly)—only white-skinned people were permitted by neighborhood covenant to own.)
But I guess back in 1973, when I ductaped a transistor radio to the handlebars of my Raleigh Record and blared Led Zepplin’s “The Lemon Song” while riding through the quaint streets of Pittsburgh’s Highland Park district, some guy born 45 years before me, in 1912, wouldn’t have liked it, either.
On the other hand, I’ll bet if he hopped on his penny-farthing and joined in careening down winding streets on two wheels, we'd have both felt like kids.
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