One of the places I ride is around the professional park. They recently added a playscape to the back parking lot, and now they have the parking lot dug up in front of the basketball court. Riding through the basketball court and around the basketball hoop is my favorite place to ride in that area. Now that the playscape lot reconstruction is going on, I can't do that.
Playscape, basketball court, and reconstruction
When Donna, my Connecticut sister, learned of the playscape, she said, "What a great idea! Leave the kids outside playing while the adults are inside shopping!" Well, that's wrong on several levels. One really shouldn't leave their children outside playing unattended in parking lots. It's easy for Donna to say, since her children are close to middle age. (OK, that's a gross exaggeration; her children are not that old.) And, this is a professional park, not a shopping mall, so there's no shopping going on. It's a fun idea, but so far I haven't seen any playing going on.
You're probably wondering what's so great about riding through and around a basketball court. I just enjoy it. When I was about 12 years old, my favorite place to ride was down the 4th Avenue hill with no hands on the handlebars. We lived on 5th Avenue, which had a better and steeper hill, but I couldn't ride down there because invariably my mother was home and if she saw me, she surely would have had something to say about safety. I guess. This is the same mother who gave away my two favorite board games (Monopoly and Life) and my bike that I loved without ever asking or telling me!
Haven't reached the point where I can ride with no hands. I see the kids doing it all the time while texting. I tried to get the cap off my water bottle and almost crashed into someone's mailbox. Whatever! I'm just glad I'm riding. My first bike as an adult was a 12 speed Schwinn. I took it out of the store for a test drive, went about 10 feet, and promptly fell. Must have been the skinny tires and all those gears tripping me up. Never fell again on the bike, but never really liked it or got the hang of it. Oh, Donna did just fine. I would jog and she would join me on the Schwinn. To hear her tell it, we went 20 miles at a time. Hmmmm, she might have been able to ride 20 miles, but I know for a fact that I couldn't jog 20 miles.
It was the green bike in the Regions Bank ads that caused the biking fever to burn again. I wanted a bike just like that with fat tires. After much net searching, I found the Nirve Island Flower one speed cruiser and I was in love. The rest is history!
When I was 12 years old, I wonder if I realized I'd be riding a bike and loving it again after all these years. Of course, when I was 12, I could only picture myself at 16 when I could drive a car and then at 18 when I would be a high school graduate. At various times I pictured myself as a lawyer, a teacher, and a nun. I just can't say I remember ever picturing myself this OLD. Oh God, now I'm thoroughly depressed so I think I'll go to bed...or perhaps I'll go on a bike ride.
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