We All Have Angels

I know 'The Great Spirit' is real. I don't know what God is. You can't learn 'it' through books or websites, Everybody loves a good story. My story is not better or more accurate than your story. As I walk through the green woods accompanied by my Labrador, my third Labrador over the last thirty years, all of which walked these same trails with me...I realize; We all have Angels. Angels are protecting us. Angels are cheering for us and rooting us on. They did the same when they were walking on this green earth. Almost all of us have had fans who wish us well and wish the best for us in all of our endeavors. These souls do not just disappear. I believe they hover above us, sometimes wagging their fingers trying to warn us but, always pulling for us. My Labrador angels keep me safe and alert on every hike we take, "Watch that rock, duck that branch. Is that dead tree about to fall? Keep your eye on it. There's a big cat in the woods to your left, just keep walking." It's so reassuring to know that we all have angels.

Losing Friends

One of the shocking side effects that comes with living into a fourth quarter century of your life is losing friends... Did I pay close enough attention to our last few conversations? ...Was I really listening to words and body language?... Was there a plea for help? In your seventies you don't lose friends due to contrary political perspectives, even if you disagree. You don't lose friends because they stood you up on planned adventures. You realize people are going through a lot of different complications...one day good, one day not so good. We have learned to forgive often and repeatedly. I've had some of the same friends for fifty or more years. We don't see the world through the same or similar sets of eyes. We react to what life throws at us in a multitude of different ways. But, we still consider each other as friends. When one of us expires, we all grieve...and say, "Damn, was I really present during that entire friendship?"

Rooted

"Are you leaving the area after you sell your commercial property?", everyone asks. We moved to Chester intentionally in 1985 after a couple of years of talking about a move to higher country, specifically Chester, California. We were married in Greenville and had our reception in Chester in 1983. For me, I missed living in a region that held four distinct seasons each and every year. Low elevation California was boring me. Forty years later, here I am still at 4,600ft. where the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges merge. We built our 1,600ft. cabin in 1991, it's been perfect and we've kept up the maintenance like pros. We love our community, we trust our neighbors and when we adventure off to corners of the hemisphere everyone keeps an eye on our place. We invested fifteen years into Jet-Set vacationing..Europe, Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii and then Europe again, again and again. Burning jet fuel, one of the most environmentally impactful decadences you can foist on your fellow Earthlings. Now, we keep it on the ground and enjoy cleaner air. We are travellers and we're still burning petrol... however, we are more than happy to keep it on the ground...earthbound.

Routinely...

I rise between 5:45 and 6:15am on most days...I find Birkenstocks or Crocs for my stair descent...fourteen of them to the Great Room, where I probably left my pants. Into the kitchen and straight to the coffee pot. I grind my own and get water out of the tap, it's fantastic water...only tainted for one week (after the one million acre Dixie Fire) out of the forty years we've lived in this watershed. While the coffee is brewing I sit down with my Ipad and a cup of yogurt. I look for stories about geologic events, re-wilding, environmental challenges, people surviving cancer and last of all, worldwide political unrest. I struggle to stay out of the Donald Trump 'rabbit hole'. The man loves attention and I'd rather not give it to him. I check facebook to see if my people are OK and then pull on socks and shoes for a hike in the woods outback with my pup. This is how my day starts outdoors, a one or two mile hike with a Black Diamond hiking stick and my Labrador. A small window onto my daily routine.

Little Short on Oxygen

When you relocate from the lowlands to 4,500ft. you definitely notice the lungs laboring to deliver enough oxygen to make the hillclimbing (say, to 8,500ft.) pleasurable again. I love climbing on my bicycle. After a month of high country living and exercising the two percent loss of available oxygen is hardly noticable...unless, let's just say that nearly every tree within a ten mile radius of your town burns, leaving a forest of charcoal statues as far as you can see. The village of Chester harbors a small island of green that processes carbon and delivers oxygen. The Dixie Fire of '21 incinerated 96% of the trees that oxygenated our daily activities previously. The views of Lassen Volcanic National Park are stupendous and panaramic to the north. We really couldn't appreciate the wall of high country that stands proud above Chester when we were enveloped by tall fir, pine and cedars. Now we 'make do' with less oxygen and broader views.

Epiphany While Pedaling

Forty years ago this month, I am pedaling up Hwy 32 out of Chico, Ca. with my friend Ed. At Santos Way we swerve to miss a shattered brown glass bottle with a SNB Pale Ale label still intact. Ed Mc Laughlin was a unique character... His reactions were quick and he vocalized what was on his mind instantaneously. "That sucks, we did that!" I worked at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. for it's initial five years. Ed would fill in on the capper, washer, labeler when we got in a bind and needed more hands, which was often. "This motorist was not only drinking our ale while he was driving, he slammed his empty onto the shoulder of our favorite bicycle ride." We were sure that SNB drinkers were far classier and more intelligent than that. "This was an act of meaness. We made this possible." In five years of running the Fritz Maytag-gifted bottle washer i calculated that I had hefted one million bar bottles into this hungry machine...twelve at a time with grippers in each hand. Of course, Ed was right. We were responsible for this alcohol-primed behavoir and here it was coming back on us as we recreated. During the last six months of my employ at SNB, I couldn't put this realization behind me.

We Need To Invest A Lot More Time Into Foot-Twiddling.

April, nearly every day in the longterm forecast is predicted to be in the 60's, even 70's toward the end of this month. The snow has melted back to the 7,000ft. level, the mud is drying up below that elevation. We have various genres of bicycles, all begging for use. The days are longer and we are working no more than part-time. No excuses. We could easily pedal 100 miles a week. Forty years ago we managed to ride 200 miles a week, even though we worked full-time. Cycling or foot-twiddling is an effective way to unclutter the mind. No need to ride hard or fast, just invest the time...saddle-time. We like Yoga. We love hiking but, there's nothing quite as cleansing as exploring the backroads and trails on two self-propelled wheels. Saddle-time may cause you pain during the first two weeks. Nothing that chamoix-lined shorts and a little Bag Balm can't solve.

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.