Goodbye, Old FriendBy: Phil BlumenkrantzI’m suffering separation anxiety - not from a girlfriend or job or my recently-deceased cat. From my Panasonic PT-3500. It’s been six months since I parted ways with the touring bike I’d ridden almost exclusively since the mid 80s. My sense of loss hasn’t softened. Each time I would complete a trip, I would tell myself it would be the last on a bike with 35-year-old technology. Yet come the next ride, I’d invariably find myself on the same geezer. There were reasons for my reticence. I am mechanically disinclined. It took me 25 years to learn - more like make - an uneasy peace with the bike’s mechanics. This old dog - me, not the bike - was not about to learn new tricks. I’d kept the relationship alive through makeshift repairs that added up to well more than the cost of a new bicycle. Spokes, as my friend Fred called him - the name oddly stuck - had been my trusty companion for 15,000-plus miles of touring. We survived 110 degree spring days in Shamrock, Texas, summer hail in Creole, Louisiana; a dust-up with a Chevy Silverado in Traverse City, Michigan; a nasty fall outside of Cranberry Portage, Manitoba. Spokes was treated coarsely by countless air cargo personnel and, worse, by decades of my own inattention to basic maintenance.
|
