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Photo by Mike Grigsby
Touring with Tim
I started bike riding last July to try to atone for my slothful ways. Over the years, as you can see, I've packed on far too much weight by living a sedentary lifestyle. I considered joining a gym as Marydee, my wife, had done. I was sure I wouldn't do it consistently enough to be worth all the money it would cost.
One of the reasons I wanted to get back to a reasonable weight was so I could ride a bike again. When I was much younger, I rode my bike a lot. After moving to Columbus for college, I stopped because there didn't seem to be many places to do it.
The roads around here are very busy and very few have a shoulder. Although there are some neighborhoods where I tried riding my bike, I couldn't go far enough to make it feel worth driving to do it. Therefore, I stopped for 20 years.
When I started looking into it, I found that there are a lot of bike trails around now. One is even close enough to my house to allow me to go out daily and ride. I decided that I could use bike riding as the means to getting in better shape rather than the goal.
I looked at bikes. At my weight I think riding on a conventional diamond frame, upright "safety" bike would just about split me in half. The riding position, which I always found uncomfortable, would probably do in my middle aged back as well.
I started looking at recumbents and decided I could probably handle one of them. I ended up with a Tour Easy from Easy Racers. I bought it at Bicycle One here in Columbus. It's a great bike and so far I've managed to keep riding regularly when the weather is good.
Last year I didn't keep a record of when I rode, but I've decided it would be nice to do that this year. I'm also planning to make some notes on the places I ride in the hope that it may be useful to someone else in the central Ohio area. Let me know if you've ridden any other paved bike paths in the area that you've enjoyed. I'd like to hear from you.
- Tim Kemp