That 70’s Show

The 1970’s were the decade that I changed the most. In January 1970 I was 14 years old and in 8th grade. Ten years later on New Year’s Eve 1979, I had just finished my first year of employment with a consulting firm in Washington DC. During those ten years I graduated high school and university. I fell in love twice and got dropped by both women, causing me much angst. But now I’m so grateful for those two, because they paved the way for Stoker and a subsequent 39 years of marital harmony.

The 1970’s were a pretty traumatic decade for our country. There was the Vietnam War. Oil boycotts and gas lines. Iranian students took hostages at our embassy, a crisis that lasted more than a year. Inflation in the US reached 15%. By the end of the decade President Carter urged us to deal with the energy crisis by putting on a sweater and lamented our “national malaise”. Good times!

The 1970’s are well behind us, but for me ‘Age 70’ is just ahead. And many of my cycling buddies have either turned 70 or will shortly. The latest is Dean, who crosses that threshold today. So yesterday 4 of us decided to join him in a 70 mile bike ride to commemorate the occasion.

We started in Linden with our fellow Stockton Bike Club members for the Jenny Lind Pancake ride. We rode to the Jenny Lind Odd Fellows Hall for their fundraising pancake breakfast. Coffee, tomato juice (Bloody Mary jokes abound) eggs, sausage or ham, and two hotcakes for $7. This is one of our favorite mid ride refuel stops for certain!

That got us to mile 20. Instead of back tracking to Linden we headed south towards Milton. The five riders who decided to ‘go long’ were Birthday Boy Dean, Kent (age 66), Bill (70+), Marlin (70+) and me (65). Kent had laid out a route which was basically the Pedaling Paths to Independence Ride backwards. That would get us to 62 miles, and we would add a short Linden loop to get to the required total.

When we got to the intersection of Hwy 26 and Duncan Road, we had 62 miles in the books. It was time for me to apply my local knowledge of the roads to get us to something close to 70 miles, but certainly over that magic number. No one wants to roll around a parking lot for 3-5 minutes to get the odometer to turn over. I did a pretty good job; we did a little loop and pulled into the Orlando’s parking lot with 70.7 miles on our Garmins.

The miles=age tradition on our birthdays gets a little more daunting each passing year, but Dean had absolutely no problem with 70, and since I’m only 65 I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to manage 66 miles come next June. I hope I have companions like these gentlemen to accompany me. No pancakes though, my birthday is at the end of the month and the Odd Fellows breakfast is the second Sunday. Can’t have everything…