Category: Personal

My parents were thrifty people and I desperately wanted a bike.  I was tired of riding behind Charlie, and he didn’t go where I wanted to go.    When I was about 8, my parents traded Charlie’s bike with the neighbors for a full-size girl’s bike.  The bike was taken to a bike shop for a full make over.  It was stripped down, greased up and repainted.  The end result was a shiny blue (my favorite color) girl’s adult size bicycle which I loved.  It was delivered under the tree on Christmas morning.

However, did you catch a full-size adult bike in that description?  In the beginning, it was difficult for me to ride because it was so big.  Our garage had a wooden box built across the back about two feet high.  I would position the pedals and bike, stand on the box , then jump on the bike and pedal like a bat out of hell yelling “Get out of the Way” to anyone in sight as I exited the garage.  I was instructed on how to use the brakes.

 Eventually, I succumbed to the lure of the Western Flyer.  I saved my money and bought a green Western Flyer and am sure that we gave the blue bike away. 

The first bike that I remember belonged to my brother, Charlie.  I don’t remember a lot about the details other than it was a red boy’s bike.  It also had a fender over the rear tire which became my mode of transportation.

Charlie’s bicycle skills were legend in the family.  When he first began riding alone (There was no such thing as training wheels), he circled the block 23 times.   Twenty-three times he circled, past our house, a left by the Halls house, down the street to a left by the Hodel house and then the final left and back to our house.  His proud parents counted as he went around and around the block until he finally fell.  As they helped him up his only comment was “How do you stop?”  His teachers had neglected to share that important information. One wonders why he didn’t shout out “HELP!” on one of those 23 laps.  When Debbie started to ride, everyone made sure that she knew how to stop.

As Charlie grew, he and his friends met up each day on their bicycles to play.   I’m not sure how they knew where to meet (no one had watches or phone) but nevertheless each day they would appear on their bicycles to ride through the town and do stuff.  (I am going to call it stuff because they wouldn’t tell me what they were doing).

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Occasionally, Charlie was told to watch his little sister. I was probably 5 or 6 and Charlie in his early teens. There was no getting out of it the little sister duty.  So, Charlie adjusted and improvised.   He taught me to ride on the back fender of his bike.  The first ride must have been harrowing to watch.  I climbed on the back fender with assistance probably from the higher porch, held on to both sides of Charlie’s shirt, stuck my feet out away from the back wheels and off we wobbled.  Charlie somehow scared the devil out of me because I was convinced my feet would be cut off if they touched the wheels (I still believe this).  I was also never to drag my feet on the ground or we would crash (this might have been proven to be true). 

Once we arrived at the meet up destination, the bikes were often left while the crew went off to play.  Sometimes, I was assigned the duty of guarding the bikes from Judy, a girl 4 or 5 years older than me.  Judy did not have a bike but knew how to ride.  She would sneak up and grab a bike and take off riding.  My job was to jump up and start yelling if I saw her.  I can remember running behind her yelling “Get off the bike”.

Another family legend was Charlie’s bike accident.  He and a friend were riding in the country.  I am not sure what happened, but it involved a bridge, a hill and gravel.  He fell off the bike onto a gravel road.  My parents and I were out and when we came home, Charlie and his friend were waiting.  The car pulled into the driveway, Charlie limped out into the headlights and lifted this shirt to show his stomach as one giant road rash.  I have never seen my parents jump out of the car so fast in my life.  It was spectacular.

Bike Series Post 1 (Like I have another one written)

I visited Lindsey in Oregon in October.  I used to walk 4 or 5 miles a day but have had to cut back.  On the visit, we discovered that I could ride a bike without my leg hurting.  I also realized that we might have a generational misunderstanding when I kept asking didn’t she have a girl’s bike?  Lindsey told me there was no such thing anymore. I was pretty shocked as thought that I had been trotting along the side of Mia’s bike trying to unsuccessfully hold it up a few months ago. Maybe she meant real bikers use the unisex bikes.

 I think that her bike was too tall for me, plus I had to stop a little differently than I normally did on a girl’s bike.  The new way involves braking, tilting the bike and then at a run put my foot down.  Lindsey wouldn’t let me ride in the gravel (probably a good move on her part) so walked me to the paved trail and we agreed she would come back for me.

I have to admit that I was thinking once she leaves I am going to ride anywhere that I want maybe I’ll just ride triumphantly back home uphill on the gravel!  Then I thought “Are you crazy?  Uphill?  No, if it was flat but uphill might be a tad ambitious for the initial ride.   What if you fall and get road rash?  How will you explain that to her?  What if you break something? You don’t want to lose bike privileges do you?”  I have vision….I can play out scenarios in my head (a talent not everyone has).

So, I rode up and down the bike trail practicing.   I practiced braking and slowwwwly putting my foot down on the bike trail. I thought that my stopping skills had improved and was truly impressive.  The other bikers thought I was crazy but they didn’t ring their bells properly so too bad your opinion doesn’t matter.

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Anyway, at the allotted time Lindsey showed up and I rode toward her intent on showing my new stopping skills. (as noted, I had practiced).  The plan was to glide up next to the trash dumpster and stop – TA-DA!

Well, I didn’t exactly glide up it was more a stumble up and there was a 50/50 chance for a while that I was going into the dumpster headfirst . I had a helmet on which came within inches of hitting that dumpster.   I heard Lindsey gasp or maybe it was me.   I did, however, successfully stop next to the dumpster and not in it.  I tried to pretend it was all planned that way but did not insist on riding up the gravel hill and took the car since she had driven it down and everything.

I did want to mention later that we saw a girl’s bike.  I think it was called vintage.

This got me thinking about bikes and my history of bikes so will continue on with a bike series……since we don’t have a travel series yet and am sure everyone has been missing the blog. Some of you will be featured in the series – Lindsey, Charlie, Mia just to name a few.

I realized that many of you (this implies that I have a lot of readers – ha!) may wonder how we fared in the freeze.

Spring has sprung and is now in the 80’s. The freeze memory moves further away each day. We did not lose any weight. We were extremely lucky to only have some issues with our pool and one faucet that had the graciousness to only leak on the top of the sink.

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It did convince Debbie that she doesn’t need to go on a snow vacation.

This week we start our new series “Bikes” (Again – sounds like I have an audience) Start thinking of your bike stories.

First let us start with the statement that this has been a very difficult time for Texas.  Much of what you see on TV is true.  Many people have been impacted by the cold weather.  We are lucky and realize our good fortune.  All we can do is accept what happens with grace and humor.

Today began with power out again.  The rolling blackouts don’t really roll for us.  They just come to our house and stay for 9 hours or so.  So here are some tips that we have learned over the last few days since we have had a lot of time to sit around and think in the dark.

• Some people are able to sleep on the floor longer than others.
• Debbie upgraded her shoes
• Larry can wash his hair with one handful of water and it doesn’t look to bad – Debbie really dislikes this
• Debbie is thinking of trying dreadlocks.
• Girl Scout cookies are emergency food
• Girl Scouts will ship cookies directly to you
• South Africa used to have rolling blackouts 10 years ago and they were a 3rd world nation.
• United States Postal Service creed. The words “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” – doesn’t seem to be true.  We haven’t seen a postal worker in awhile
• The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) needs to change their name

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Tuesday was an auspicious day.  We began the day with power thus hot chocolate. We did not have internet access so I busied myself making faux-Uggs.

I began to work on the jigsaw puzzle and discovered it is 3 dimensional . I discovered the white side is the back of a puzzle piece and not a piece of the picture.  I found that it makes a big difference if you put the puzzle together in the light and are not sulking about power outages. 

Larry came up with a new water collecting project.  We sat buckets out to collect runoff water for the toilets and tried not to slip in the ice.

Today, we began eating meals out of the freezer and led with potato soup for dinner.  On the downside, I had peanut butter and crackers for lunch again.

I can not live off the grid.

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I always thought it would be nice to be warm and toasty inside while the snow drifted softly to the ground.    I would stand at the window sipping hot chocolate and then go back to my jigsaw puzzle.  I would be perfectly dressed in my uggs and matching winter wardrobe.

Recently, it has been brought to my attention that cold weather in Texas doesn’t work that way.   This week every county in Texas had freezing weather. 

We woke up Monday morning to a house with no power and some of our pipes not working.  Larry had the fireplace started up – check for him.  But the room was not really toasty, so I went to find my perfect outfit.  I managed to come up with grey long johns, compression socks, black pants, a sweatshirt that I got flying first class (navy blue), gloves with no fingers, a pink long sleeve long john tops and a magenta hat that I seemed to want to wear like a beret.  I did not have Uggs and had to substitute flip flops.  The flip flops made me very sad – I would look really good in the Uggs.  Fail on the matching winter wardrobe but I was dressed.

Next to the hot chocolate.  No power so fail on the hot chocolate but I ate some chocolate bars as a substitute. I did have a jigsaw puzzle but it was too dark to work on the puzzle and 3-D. 

Larry asked me what was wrong with me as I sat staring at my lunch.  I responded that I was busy lowering the bar of my expectations.

Larry roused himself in the afternoon and came up with some projects.  We cleaned out the refrigerator, placed the items in coolers filled with snow and left them outside in the 17 degree cold.

For dinner, Larry warmed up our leftovers on the grill outside.  We drug a mattress to the front room with multiple quilts ready for bed at 9:00. I left my socks on. Snow is hard work.

At 1:30 AM the power came on, we crawled out of our quilt hovel and did a happy dance (Sans Uggs).

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This is an update as we travel across the nation tracking natural disasters and its impact to some of our family members.

We first go to the Houston area where Tropical Storm “Beta” dumped quite a bit of water. Luckily, we are all in an area that did not flood. Since the pandemic, many school districts did not cancel for the day but just switched to remote learning for a day. (Mia is not sure how she feels about this). Debbie did spend part of her day cleaning out the gutters with a stick. (She calls it saving the neighborhood. Others do not). She also watched for pauses in the rain to drag Parker protesting out for a walk. (Parker prefers dry feet).

Our next stop is Oregon for the Holiday Farm Wildfire. All evacuation orders due to the storm have been cancelled. The containment rate is around 35% much more reassuring than 0%. Lindsey and Aaron are feeling much better about it.

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Thankfully, we have no other stops on the natural disaster tour today.

September 18, 2020

Lindsey reports that visibility is better today.  It has begun to rain which is a good thing.  The containment percent is 10%.  Lindsey said that they feel much better.   We will not be updating every day as things have slowed down.

Thanks to our contributor for the title of the blog. (39 out of 100)

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We will begin tracking hurricanes now.

September 17, 2020

Lindsey has provided two pictures so that you can see the improvement since earlier in the week.  Rain is forecast for tonight.  Here is the web site description for the forecast “Thunderstorms may bring gusty, erratic winds, heavy rain and hail to the fire area. “  (This makes her Mother nervous). 

Containment has hit double digits with 10%. Lindsey and Aaron are still packed and ready to go.

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