| TRAVELS OF DURSMIRG VOLUME IV THE ROGUES OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHER SOCIAL MISFITS Chapter 35 |
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We rode our bikes; we did it for fun, pleasure, convenience and tranquility. This is where we got our therapy
sessions and resolved our problems in a two person think-tank, just Jane and I.
It felt so very good to be free of our stinking automobile that I had come to feel trapped in before I had sold my
wholesale distributing business back in Wisconsin where I was driving an average 250 miles a day for twelve and a
half years.
At least I hadn’t been trapped in an office and chained to a desk.
Previously I had never ever considered riding a bicycle for pleasure as an adult. Then one day my Jane came home
from work with some news from a doctor she had been to see regarding her painful leg condition.
At work Jane had spent much of her working day standing in front of a computer terminal and the rest of her day
sitting at a typewriter. Well the doctor told Jane that she had to get some other type of employment that allowed her
to move around more and also that she should take up serious bicycle riding and playing tennis.
With Jane’s last check from work she headed directly to the bicycle shop to get started with the doctor’s advice.
She asked if I would like to ride along and I hesitatingly said; “why not!”
I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in bicycles at the time and had even told Jane that we would pack some
small motor cycles onboard our boat Dursmirg when we set sail.
That night we came home with two brand new shiny bicycles loaded with all the do-dads and this opened a new
world to us and made our close relationship even closer.
Next to sailing, bicycling gives a special quiet quality of life and a silent freedom of movement that opens up new
horizons in life from a perspective only visible to free-spirited escape artists like us.
We didn’t buy these things to park them and every spare moment we had from that time on we were on the new
bikes and rolling peacefully along to get another perspective on life and open up new avenues of adventure we had
somehow missed in our pressed for time hurried lives.
One very cold and frosty October morning back in Wisconsin Jane and I struck off on an 83 mile bike trip from
Superior to Bayfield to go sailing with friends amongst the Apostle Islands out in the big-sea waters of Lake Superior.
(This was the very same place that I previously used to give sailing lessons.)
After partying heavily each night with our Bayfield friends we even managed to bicycle back to Superior to work the
following Monday morning.
(Somehow that exhilaratingly exhaustive pace of life we led back then we left behind in our youthful years. The
consolation is that now we do at least have those fabulous memories to remember. Someway we can’t believe that
we really participated in those physically exuberant and extensive activities.)
It has turned out our bicycle purchase was one of the best investments we have ever made and has paid us back
countless dividends of improved fitness plus led us to explore numerous countries for more than forty years now.
Those bicycles opened new horizons to us and made our wonderful sailing years even better…and our glorious
dream came true.
We soon discovered that we had the best of the best that life had to offer. Our bicycles that I referred to as our
“caballitos”, or “little horses”, in Spanish, were far better than walking for the huge distances that we traverse, loads
we could transport and the scenery we could see.
It was true that the automobile could transport passengers at high speeds down freeways and across continents but
we had no desire for that and besides the bikes would go aboard buses and boats. The bicycles would also go
places that cars couldn’t like through parks and forests and even out to remote islands.
With out a doubt, the biggest advantage that our bicycles had over automobiles especially back in the 1970s was
that we glided past long lines of parked cars waiting for their 5 gallon allotment of gasoline during two back to back
Arab oil embargos.
This is when gasoline went from around 25 cents a gallon up to over $2.00 and change per gallon.
Well, the crafty oil companies got the gullible Gringos to not only pay the inflated prices but also to patiently stand in
line in order to get ripped off.
Needless to say the high gasoline prices back then definitely helped boost bicycle sales.
With our bicycles, Jane and I were definitely in a small minority on the streets of the “Old City” of St. Augustine. We
were only outnumbered by pedestrians and nobody seemed to take notice or even care in this place of rogues and
social misfits that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the world.
In the spring and fall we were joined on the streets of St. Augustine by out of town bikers. The transient yachters
that laid over at the City Yacht Pier for a few days to take in the sightseeing would be seen on their shiny rust free
fancy folding bikes visiting the historical sights and picking up their mail at the post office general delivery.
The anchored out sailors on the other hand, who were few in number, almost all used bicycles for their shore-side
transportation. The unmistakable difference was that anchored out boaters bikes tended to be real rattling rusted
out beaters that definitely showed signs of low maintenance, heavy hard use and squeaked unmercifully from
regular salt spray that left them red with rust.
The other older bicyclers navigating the streets of the Old City were notoriously known to be “DWIs”, (driving while
intoxicated), drunken drivers with no drivers license and hence “Bikers”, but not by choice.
We weren’t the only nut cases riding bicycles in quaint quiet little old St. Augustine. One young man with an
unmistakable cannabis grin cruised the streets for several years toting a huge cast plaster religious statue and
never said a word to anybody, just grinned and self-righteously glided along.
We are still biking together in Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico after 40 years of peddling.
next chapter
sessions and resolved our problems in a two person think-tank, just Jane and I.
It felt so very good to be free of our stinking automobile that I had come to feel trapped in before I had sold my
wholesale distributing business back in Wisconsin where I was driving an average 250 miles a day for twelve and a
half years.
At least I hadn’t been trapped in an office and chained to a desk.
Previously I had never ever considered riding a bicycle for pleasure as an adult. Then one day my Jane came home
from work with some news from a doctor she had been to see regarding her painful leg condition.
At work Jane had spent much of her working day standing in front of a computer terminal and the rest of her day
sitting at a typewriter. Well the doctor told Jane that she had to get some other type of employment that allowed her
to move around more and also that she should take up serious bicycle riding and playing tennis.
With Jane’s last check from work she headed directly to the bicycle shop to get started with the doctor’s advice.
She asked if I would like to ride along and I hesitatingly said; “why not!”
I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in bicycles at the time and had even told Jane that we would pack some
small motor cycles onboard our boat Dursmirg when we set sail.
That night we came home with two brand new shiny bicycles loaded with all the do-dads and this opened a new
world to us and made our close relationship even closer.
Next to sailing, bicycling gives a special quiet quality of life and a silent freedom of movement that opens up new
horizons in life from a perspective only visible to free-spirited escape artists like us.
We didn’t buy these things to park them and every spare moment we had from that time on we were on the new
bikes and rolling peacefully along to get another perspective on life and open up new avenues of adventure we had
somehow missed in our pressed for time hurried lives.
One very cold and frosty October morning back in Wisconsin Jane and I struck off on an 83 mile bike trip from
Superior to Bayfield to go sailing with friends amongst the Apostle Islands out in the big-sea waters of Lake Superior.
(This was the very same place that I previously used to give sailing lessons.)
After partying heavily each night with our Bayfield friends we even managed to bicycle back to Superior to work the
following Monday morning.
(Somehow that exhilaratingly exhaustive pace of life we led back then we left behind in our youthful years. The
consolation is that now we do at least have those fabulous memories to remember. Someway we can’t believe that
we really participated in those physically exuberant and extensive activities.)
It has turned out our bicycle purchase was one of the best investments we have ever made and has paid us back
countless dividends of improved fitness plus led us to explore numerous countries for more than forty years now.
Those bicycles opened new horizons to us and made our wonderful sailing years even better…and our glorious
dream came true.
We soon discovered that we had the best of the best that life had to offer. Our bicycles that I referred to as our
“caballitos”, or “little horses”, in Spanish, were far better than walking for the huge distances that we traverse, loads
we could transport and the scenery we could see.
It was true that the automobile could transport passengers at high speeds down freeways and across continents but
we had no desire for that and besides the bikes would go aboard buses and boats. The bicycles would also go
places that cars couldn’t like through parks and forests and even out to remote islands.
With out a doubt, the biggest advantage that our bicycles had over automobiles especially back in the 1970s was
that we glided past long lines of parked cars waiting for their 5 gallon allotment of gasoline during two back to back
Arab oil embargos.
This is when gasoline went from around 25 cents a gallon up to over $2.00 and change per gallon.
Well, the crafty oil companies got the gullible Gringos to not only pay the inflated prices but also to patiently stand in
line in order to get ripped off.
Needless to say the high gasoline prices back then definitely helped boost bicycle sales.
With our bicycles, Jane and I were definitely in a small minority on the streets of the “Old City” of St. Augustine. We
were only outnumbered by pedestrians and nobody seemed to take notice or even care in this place of rogues and
social misfits that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the world.
In the spring and fall we were joined on the streets of St. Augustine by out of town bikers. The transient yachters
that laid over at the City Yacht Pier for a few days to take in the sightseeing would be seen on their shiny rust free
fancy folding bikes visiting the historical sights and picking up their mail at the post office general delivery.
The anchored out sailors on the other hand, who were few in number, almost all used bicycles for their shore-side
transportation. The unmistakable difference was that anchored out boaters bikes tended to be real rattling rusted
out beaters that definitely showed signs of low maintenance, heavy hard use and squeaked unmercifully from
regular salt spray that left them red with rust.
The other older bicyclers navigating the streets of the Old City were notoriously known to be “DWIs”, (driving while
intoxicated), drunken drivers with no drivers license and hence “Bikers”, but not by choice.
We weren’t the only nut cases riding bicycles in quaint quiet little old St. Augustine. One young man with an
unmistakable cannabis grin cruised the streets for several years toting a huge cast plaster religious statue and
never said a word to anybody, just grinned and self-righteously glided along.
We are still biking together in Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico after 40 years of peddling.
next chapter
