More on bicycles … And redbuds

I saw some tweets today from a guy at a baseball game.  Baseball never really had much of a chance with me.  My father made a half-hearted attempt to interest me in it—hung a tire in the back yard as a pitching target for me, took me to a ballgame in Clinton, Iowa’s stadium (site, by the way, of my one junior high football game, but that will be another entry).  Anyway, I don’t think he was a huge baseball fan himself, he didn’t push the game too hard and I never got caught up in it.

There weren’t that many passions we shared.  Maybe bicycling came closest.  When he had to move to Iowa several months before the family did in 1966, he bought a red Schwinn 1-speed and used it to commute until the family drove the VW van across country.  When we all got to Clinton, he presented the bike to me.

His personal bike, purchased several years before, was then a rather exotic type, a light yellow English 10-speed with the droop handlebars.  He had used that bicycle to commute in California.

We didn’t bike a lot together, but one time he took me with him on a short jaunt out into the countryside.  That was a magical Saturday for me.  We didn’t really do anything all that special, but I was still a California kid and we stopped and went for a short stroll in a corn field.  It must have been late summer because I remember the corn being taller than he was, and he was 5 11.  (The bike ride must have been about 2 years after we moved—we were already living on Seventh Avenue rather than the rental on Third Avenue, and I was big enough for a several-mile bike ride, which meant I wasn’t 8 anymore like I was when we moved from California.  Still, I distinctly remember the bike ride as being one of my first “close encounters’ with corn, and I think it was one of his reasons for taking the ride with me—perhaps I had said something which let him know, Ohio farm boy that he had been at one time, it was time to show the son some crops.)

Anyway, he wasn’t riding his 10-speed anymore by the time I bought my Continental in 1974.  Not too much of a surprise, I suppose—he was in his mid 50s by then (although I’m 50 now and probably biking as much or more than I every did).

The red Schwinn was a trusty companion until I replaced it.  Compared to it, the Continental was light, speedy and better for longer trips—some high school friends and I would sometimes cross the Mississippi on the Norbert F. Beckey bridge to ride 15 miles or so to a park on Lake George where one could rent canoes.  Cars paid 50 cents on the bridge, but a bike could cross for a quarter.

So it was rather sad when the Continental met what is probably its final fate just a few days ago.  As I’ve blogged before, I started riding that bike again when my regular commuting bike had to be taken to the shop.  One Thursday recently I was on the way home when the back brake suddenly stopped functioning.  I managed to safely come to a halt, and discovered that the cross piece holding the brake between two prongs of the frame had completely snapped away.

Just glad it happened on F Avenue on a flat stretch.  It could have snapped while I was headed down the Mount Mercy hill.

The Trek is back, so on good days I’m on two wheels again.  And it is nice to have my “wiked witch of the west” basket in front for my briefcase.

But I do feel a little wistful about the Continental.  I think my father’s 1960s 10 speed was probably a fancier bike—I remember it as being lighter than the Continental, and it had the harder, narrower seat of a more serious biker.  The Continental, however, looked a little bit like a blue version of my father’s bike.

Unrelated aside—I blogged before about redbuds.  I happened to be listening to “horticulture day” on Iowa Public Radio this week, and the subject of redbuds came up—someone was calling about a redbud whose top had died.  Turns out to be a common thing in Iowa—we’re really just north of redbud’s natural range, and it’s luck of the draw whether any individual tree might weather an Iowa winter.  In fact, one of the two younger redbuds in our yard is pulling a “Mama” this spring—it’s top is dead, but it’s starting to bud out at the base.