Diane... Portland is known for its bike friendliness. If you drive through Portland city limits on any warm day you will see as many bikes as cars. Even in the rain and cold there are still a lot of bikes. It is as much like Europe as any place I have ever been. In town there are bike paths that span the city and all over the country side. There are streets designated for bikes. Out in the country there is this one bike path that is 42 miles round trip, mostly level and is a PAVED bike path through the woods. It is amazing. I have become such a biker since 2 years ago that I now have two bikes. One is a racing (very fast) road bike that is also very delicate. The other is the one you see here. It is a tour/cyclo bike and can go off-road. I chose this one today because it has a triplecrank and allows me to go into some amazing slow gears for those big hills.
Tracy: It is a very happy realization because it empowers me to embrace even more my health and my life in my senior years. I actually thought about Mahler and how fit he is in his age and of course this old woman I once saw who had the body of a Godess and the spring of youth in her steps. Like all things in life, how we spend our later years is a matter of choice. If I had continued to just accept my body and the extra pounds and the lack of flexibility my quality of life would already be much poorer. I am ever grateful for my new awareness and drive to be the most I can be.
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