First Ride of 2019 - Later Than Usual for Spring

It’s almost mid April and I took my inaugural ride of 2019 just this morning not only because of the weather but with street “destruction" tossed in for good measure as well.  In early December a contractor for the water company began digging up our street to install a new water main and by mid month they were in front of my house.  Things were okay until a few days later when I was awakened at 3 AM by a call from the water company asking me to move my car because the old main which was still in use had burst beneath the street.  Crews worked until halfway through the next day but when they’d capped the leak they filled in their dirty work (literally) with just dirt and golf ball sized rocks.  A few days later it snowed and when the plows came, the street looked like a war zone in their wake.  For weeks I’d feared that my car was going to be hit by people driving up the street and not seeing the huge craters in the road next to my car until the last minute.  I called the water company and they sent more dirt and rocks to fill the holes, but again it snowed, again the plows came, and again the street looked as if it had been bombed.

 In mid December the digging began to put in a new water main on our street.

A few days later the old main (still in use) blew right in front of the house.

After their excavation, the water company left the road like this.

And this.

And when it was wet from rain and snow, the road was just a bed of mud leaving the car splattered all the time.

 

January was damned cold and I’d not have taken the scooter out if I could have, but when February arrived with a few nice days I longed to get it out just for the hell of it but wouldn't dare because of the condition of the street.  There was no way I’d have been able to ride over the loose dirt and rocks to get back to the house without dropping the bike and myself as well.

With nothing but dirt and rocks, the scooter's front tire would have had no safe purchase for me to get back home.

With March came the thaw, though to me it seemed that the month was much, much colder than in years past; I have to admit that it might just have been my old bones perceiving it that way but either way I wasn’t taking the scooter out of the yard.  It was rainy as often as snowy and the street was a sea of mud.  I had to wash my car every few days and when there were a few days of dry weather the mud would dry out and every car that went by kicked up a dust cloud that then settled on the car and on the front of the house.  My repeated calls to the water company from December through April got me some really sincere sounding lip service that accomplished nothing.  It wasn’t until Friday just past (April 12^th) that a crew finally arrived to clean up the dirt and large chunks of rock and to put some asphalt patch down.  That made today, the 13^th with temperatures in the mid 70s my very first viable day for a ride and I certainly took advantage of it!

 The contractors finally came back yesterday after my talking to the water company and them repeatedly while the daily mess went on.

When my front wheel rolled out of the alleyway and toward the street, as usual, I had no idea at all where I was going to end up.  My rides are always more about going than being so when I’m off for a ride for the sake of a ride, it doesn't much matter in which direction I turn at any particular intersection.  As it turned out I rode about 14 miles today going nowhere special, yet every rotation of the tires was special because I was finally out and about for the first time since November and I was enjoying every single second of being out there.

 One of the selfies I'd been dying to take for months

Because my left hip and right knee are both in need of replacement and I’m too stubborn to book the surgeries, mounting the scooter isn't as easy as it was some years back.  I could really use a bike with a true step through design at this point but having retired early because of my increasingly poor health it wouldn’t be practical to go shopping for another one so I’ll get by for as long as the Piaggio lasts me and after that it’ll probably be the end of my two wheeling days.

 Here's hoping for days that keep getting warmer one after another!

Wondering what the numbers will look like when November rolls around again.

Back to Where?

For the fifth time since I ended my teaching career school will soon be starting without me, and the feelings are mixed as this time of year rolls around annually with its Back to School advertising, marketing, and store displays that you can’t miss even if you want to avoid them.  Long ago I saw a bumper sticker that summed up work for me perfectly.  It simply read, “A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work.”  Now the most fish I’ve caught in my entire life have been a few sunnies at a lake where my girlfriend’s parents had a small summer place back in the early 70’s, but in spite of the limited fishing experience the sentiment of that quote lives on for me.  Even though I loved teaching, I love retirement even more.

 Yes, there are days when I get up and wonder what I’m going to do all day, but somehow there never seems to be a problem with finding enough to do to pass the time till Jeopardy comes on and the evening officially begins.  Even on the rainy days of which there have been a lot this summer to preclude long adventures on the scooter I don’t have much trouble amusing myself.  

Putzing on Facebook is a major pastime for me, and I get to keep in touch with hundreds of former students who keep me feeling as young as they did when they were in my charge.  The rewards of the profession go on long past my productiveness in it.

 The opportunities for having fun are endless whether they’re biggies like taking trips out of town and out of state, or simply enjoying a snack on the patio chairs on display outside the supermarket.  I figure I’m doing them a favor by modeling the comfort of the items they’re hoping to sell and showing passersby that they’re capable of supporting more than average weight.

 I have the time to really enjoy meals, especially when I treat myself to lunch at some restaurant rather than just grubbing lunch from leftovers in the fridge.  Here I am thoroughly enjoying a plastic straw while the idiots in California and elsewhere in Liberal Land are in a furious rage about how such straws are killing gazillions of sea dwelling creatures.  As if there aren’t enough genuine things to be concerned about!

I have the time to spend in doing silly things purely for my own enjoyment and to make friends and family shake their heads when they see what I’m up to.  I’ve always liked being able to make people laugh in unique ways, and when you carry a camera everywhere you go, making something funny is never an opportunity that’s too far off.

 And, of course on the sunny days, there’s plenty of scooting to do!  I don’t usually venture more than 20 or 30 miles away from home, but the valley is sufficiently interesting.  No matter where I decide to go even though I often don’t know where I’m going to end up when I head out, it’s the ride itself that provides the most good for the soul.  With lots of time for good introspection and interesting things to see, hear, and smell at every turn, being on the bike continues to fill me with absolute delight in part because it remains amazing to me that I’m getting around on such a vehicle which I’d never have predicted that someday I’d be riding.

So, next week when my former colleagues are having their opening faculty meeting and then the following Monday starting up a whole ‘nother school year, you just might see me passing by a school somewhere with an ear to ear smile lighting up my face because of the many great memories I have of a fulfilling career, and because of the enigmatic joy of knowing I don’t have to be on the other side of the big desk ever again.

Bang the Drum Slowly

When “I Love a Parade" was composed in 1931 I imagine that its title well expressed the sentiment of many folks who didn’t have cool technology to play with in the air conditioned comfort of their living rooms.  Turning out to watch and to wave at other people walking or riding in formation continues to be a thing in some municipalities, especially small ones that will use a parade to kick off some local event be it the opening of Little League season, a shindig of some sort, or the beloved tradition of many a volunteer fire station, the block party.  And, of course, there are the holiday parades in the big cities with commercial sponsors, and the patriotic varieties that continue to be a tradition in many places.

As with too many things in which the pleasure faded as I grew up parades became more of a nuisance to me as time went by.  By high school during which which I had to lug and play the Sousaphone in countless parades including a L--O--N--G one in Philadelphia in '76 on a day that was about 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade (I exaggerate slightly for effect.) I’d become jaded to whatever charm might have been in any parade when I was a little kid.  For many of my adult years parades seemed to accomplish little more than blocking off main arteries within whatever towns or podunks I'd happen to be traveling through and delaying my progress in getting to wherever I might have been heading.  They came, in my mind, to make much ado about nothing* and I lost whatever ability I might have once had to squeeze some degree of enjoyment from watching local dignitaries of much self-touted importance waving from atop the deck of convertible models of sports or luxury cars and big fire fighting equipment rolling by.

With that preface, imagine me saying, “Yes!" when other members of our local loosely knit scooter group asked if I’d like to ride my scooter in a parade along the main street in their hometown of Exeter, PA, a small borough across the Susquehanna River and a few miles north.  Because our group is small and doesn’t often host events like scooter rallies or big group rides (And I’m not criticizing, because I’m not the sort to roll up my sleeves and pronounce, "Let’s do this!") I do like to participate when we manage to find worthy opportunities to ride together, even if it’s for a parade that would certainly close off Wyoming Avenue in Exeter, a main route through the west side, for an hour or so.  The occasion of the parade was to be the start of the Exeter block party which they're hoping will become an annual tradition, I believe.

Old men with band instruments perform on a float.  If I'd kept up the tuba I might have been one of them.

We met up at the home of the family that asked if I’d join them and after a while rode in formation to the staging area for the parade where we sweated in buckets while waiting for the whistle that I imagined would start the line moving.  Thank God for the fire trucks parked nearby in the shadows of which we found some relief from the unrelenting sun that threatened to bake us.  It was a nice opportunity, though, to catch up on things that had been going on since we last got together.  Though I can’t say I felt any "excitement" at the thought of being in the parade as I did when I was a Cub Scout and we marched in one, there was a certain type of it in the air and I can safely say that I participated in it at least vicariously through the others around me who seemed to be taking delight in the chance to pass in formation before our audience already assembling on the sidewalks along the route.

I enjoyed riding in a group again with some scooter friends and even though it’s not easy to talk to other riders when we’re moving there is a unique connection and camaraderie that’s felt as we scoot along.  Admittedly I paid more attention to the high school cheerleaders directly in front of our group than to whomever lined the roadway to watch us go by because with a lot of starting and stopping, I didn’t want to achieve local notoriety by running over a kid with pom poms.  I’d been somewhat worried about the heat gauge on my bike because at slow speeds and lots of idling bikes tend to run on the hot side and it was a problem with my radiator last summer that had the Piaggio in the shop from April through August.  Thankfully the parade didn’t stress the system and the fan and radiator did their jobs nicely to keep me rolling along like the caissons in yet another parade song.

 

Lunchtime is fast approaching so here’s as good a place as any to put this post to rest.  Yes, I did, after all, find some delight in being in a parade again!  The scooter has afforded me varieties of pleasant experiences I'd not otherwise have had over the past 11 years so I'm still very grateful for having seen the word, "Scooter," used as an example in a tutorial blog tag, remembering my Uncle Andy giving me a ride on a scooter when I was about five years old, and having my brain immediately jump on the subsequent thought of, “I want a scooter!”

There I am on the right leading the scooter pack. 

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* When I say parades came to be much ado about nothing I do not mean to imply that our beloved war heroes shouldn't be honored.  I just fail to see how marching the current members of the Armed Forces and the equipment of war through the streets gives them the rich honor they deserve.