What A Great Run We've Made

Thirty-one years on April 2 since we made our first lease payment on Bodfish Bicycles and Quiet Mtn. Sports. We moved across the street nine years later, purchased a building that had previously catered to automobiles. Independant bicycles dealers are on the ropes, as are most independant small businesses. Big Box, catelog and Internet based sellers have won the customers. The corporate suppliers are struggling to live up to the arrangements they promised their Asian 'overlords'. So, they really don't care as much as they used to about America's privately owned bicycle shops. In fact, they are working as hard as they can to cancel the independant bicycle dealer. The Trek Corporation is buying up the larger college- town shops and they're selling their wares through their professionally designed websites, sometimes at lower prices than they charge their small dealers. None of it makes sense to me. I suppose everyone can learn to fix their own bicycle challenges on YouTube. We did perform services from our hearts and with skilled hands and alert minds for over three decades...and that makes me proud.

Pranayama and Foot Twiddling, On My Bicycle

My bicycle rides have been short but frequent this Winter. Two miles or twenty miles can provide plenty of time for deep breathing and meditation. Smooth pedaling and less effort feels right. I'm thinking that riding my e-assist 'fitness bike' has taught me to do less pushing and more gliding. I'm realizing that I've experienced a certain degree of 'hill dread' over these last ten years. However, I've always said that 'I love hills'. Fitness bicycles (flat-bar road bikes) with liberal gearing have always allowed me to enjoy climbs. Class 1 electric-assist bicycles (no throttle) have encouraged better breathing and a more relaxed mind while cranking upward. Riding bicycles for 70+ years seems natural and safe. I prefer cycling over walking, running or driving. It's always been my favorite means of locomotion. I am hoping to continue cycling well into my eighties. Better breathing and smoother rolling should help guarantee hundreds of miles of two-wheel adventures in the years to come.

In My Studio...Here In California

Three days a week, six hours a day, I hangout in my Bodfish Bicycle Studio. Yes, I get visitors. Many only have a need for conversation, directions and (less often) advise. There are those who have material needs...I sell a few items each week and I am honored to fondle their steeds. I love installing fresh equipment and watching it perform flawlessly. I am so happy to send people out of here on leg-powered adventures....real or imagined. I believe they are on their way to new self-discovery. Wind in the hair, even through the helmet I sold them. Super-charged blood circulation and a winding down of tension and inflammations. This is how I make the world a better place...spreading the joys of self-propulsion and freedom, if only for a few hours. The best of these friends and customers return on a regular basis to share stories of successful explorations and revelations. I look forward to each new day at the Bodfish Bicycle Studio because each day holds one of these nuggets of happiness and positive feedback.

First Baseball Broadcast of 2025

Yes, it's a distraction I look forward to every year...SF Giants on KNBR. They've been a .500 club these last couple of years including only a handful of outstanding performances while being bullied by the Dodgers and Padres in their league. There's always the underlying hope that they'll break-out with a secret weapon that will launch them back into the playoffs and World Series. We know how well the SF Giants can excell in the World Series..2010, 2012 and 2014 and not that far out of our rear view mirror. What's ten years? Actually, the entire roster has changed, with the exception of Buster Posey...President of Baseball Operations. Buster knows!

So Much For New Years' Resolutions

I tried to put politics on the back burner, I really did but....This dude is 'out there', so far beyond right field...all the way over the Lefty O'Doul Bridge. Brings back the old Barry McGuire song, 'Eve Of Destruction'. Extreme-ism is seldom rewarded in America and I do not believe this attempt to destroy the humanitarian vein that we have nurtured and exercised in our fair country these last sixty years is going to be wiped away easily. We have learned to care about all of our friends and neighbors, no matter their handicap, no matter their color, no matter their country of origin. We all want the same perks of life in America. White Supremeism bares it's ugly head every few decades and then scurries under the sink and floorboards like a wave of cockroaches. What will it take to change America's negative spiral into the mindless depths of ninety years ago. The parallels are so obvious. Wake-up America, Wake-up Germany...we are better than that. Do it for the children.

Offroad Explorer... On My Bicycle

It was 1973, I stepped into a bicycle shop in southern Michigan and bought a Motobecane Grand Jubilee. Battle Creek Bicycles was partially owned by my best friend from grade school who'd just returned from Vietnam and wanted to marry my sister. Yes, he gave me a special price because it was my twenty-third birthday and I had just graduated from Cal State Fresno and, he wanted to marry my sister. I took that bike and a duffle and hitched back to California. I set up camp at the south end of The Sierra Nevada, found a small cabin that I traded for ranch hand labor on Erskine Creek. Winter was not very serious that year at 2,000ft. I put a rack and a sleeping bag on the back of that French steed and explored the dirt roads within a twenty-five mile radius of Bodfish, Kern County California. Kelso Valley, Saddle Springs, Sherman Pass, Breckenridge Lookout. I was curious, healthy and enjoying self-propelled adventuring. My tires were narrow and the roads were rough but dumb-luck was with me, I had a pump and a patchkit, never once did I flat. That Winter, I met a girl, Franny...said she was curious about pedaling up the California coast. After a few rides with her I said, Let's do it. She said a friend would take us to San Luis Obispo in his truck and we could start from there. I said, This highway is all downhill to Bakersfield, Let's just ride to San Luis Obispo.