Just before Christmas I bought a shiny new road bike. No not for either of my kids, for me, the big kid, and when I say road bike I don’t mean motorcycle I mean bicycle. The sit on a very small seat peddle till you sweat and slobber kind. Why you may ask, unless you’re a member of my family then you’ve tired of asking why years ago, well because it looked like fun.

The idea came to me while I was training for the marathon I ran this past year, maybe I’ll bore you with that story further down the road. While I was out running day in and day out I began to notice that the people I met on bicycles seemed to be much happier than my fellow runners. They would peddle towards me smiling and give a hardy hello, while us runners generally exchange dismal glances followed by a pained grunt. For those of you that don’t run the grunt means something different for everyone, “Hi there, I don’t like running, but I have a class reunion coming up, I just turned 40, and my bald spot and belly are having a friendly competition to see who can cover the most area.” Or maybe, “My scrawny doctor’s professional opinion is that I should run at least three days a week, maybe I’ll run my key along his Mercedes.” Still others, like myself, are training to run a race of some sort simply because, well, just because.

Anyway back to why a 32 year old man, a former paperboy I might add, would want to buy a bicycle. I had never had a remote interest in cycling until this past summer. Up until then I would point and giggle at the people pushin’ peddles in the tight shorts, now as fate would have it I am at the other end of the giggle. The tight shorts must affect your hearing though because I don’t hear a thing, other than disturbing chaffing noises.

I am into history though, and this past summer Lance Armstrong was going for a historic 6th straight Tour De France win, so I decided to tune in and see what all the hubbub was about. I was hooked. There a very few things that will get me out of bed at 6:00 in the morning, but there I was every morning, enthralled as a bunch of guys with names I couldn’t pronounce turned themselves inside out for 23 days for a yellow jersey. For those of you that have never watched much or any cycling races, I’ll tell you that you would be hard pressed to find another professional sport with as much sportsmanship among its participants.

No, I don’t have a delusional idea of becoming a professional cyclist. Just want to stay in shape, give my feet a rest from running, and possibly compete with other people in tight shorts. Besides something about going 45 mph down a hill on a bicycle makes me grin like an idiot.…the same idiot that used to deliver your paper 20 years ago.

As Doc Stevens always said, as he dropped a rutabaga in my newspaper bag, “See ya in the funny papers.”