BICYCLING IN THE RELAXED STYLE--

The bicycle wheels went round and round as that day morphed from frigid to tepid to nice.

Our skinny tires are sometimes stuffed with 100 pounds of air pressure or more. They rumble and swish as the mostly tar and chip country roads coax us by lots of Amish farms with spring flowers blooming everywhere.

A tapestry of laundry dries in the brisk morning air up ahead, suspended on long lines with pulleys so the laundress of the home can retrieve it like a fisherman wrestling with his catch.

My friend Gary Courtright and I were rolling up the state highway from Ontario to Shelby earlier that morning when it dawned on us we were supposed to meet our companions in Lexington for a caravan to our cycling launch site near the reservoir North of Shelby.

We grinned as Gary, via cell phone, confessed our mistake to our assembling companions who ultimately joined us as planned.

Old guys are allowed to do that, we mused.

There were nine of us that morning; Joe and Edie Humphrey and Tom Hadley and Lynn Rush and our leader Ken Johnson towing a tiny and ultra-light trailer behind his bicycle. That was to be used to haul back to our vehicles any treasures we collected along the way.

In addition to Gary and me, Ute Volk and Tammy Petersen rounded out our relatively ambitious population.

We trundled East on London West Road to North on Bowman St. Road to East on Kaster to Ganges Five Points, crossed state route 603, whizzed around the corner on Free Rd., and ambushed the Planktown Country Market—as only a squadron of cyclists in bike costumes can.

That’s Gary in the top photo (left) while Tom reveals my camera to Lynn who is putting a cheerful hex on my photography and Ken retrieves something from the floor. Tammy (also in blue) seems to be pondering our silliness at the market’s very nice deli counter.

After lunch we stashed the remainder of our purchases in Ken’s trailer and we rolled along roads with names like Free and Wells and Rome-Greenwich and Rome South and ultimately Shelby-Ganges back to the reservoir.

We compared bicycle odometers and concluded it was most likely our ride was a bit over 22 miles.

At some point there Ken was kidding Ute about her having trouble climbing some of the hills by explaining, “Obviously her bike is two tired.”

The rest of us groaned.

Good naturedly, of course.

Gently undulating roads coursed us through the farm belt of Northern Richland County as nine of us recently rode the component of the Mid Ohio Bikers known as the 1020 group. We do not go much over 10 mph and hardly travel more than 20 miles (most of the time); a very civilized approach to this timeless sport, in our view.