Alas, that is where the sheer dumb luck wears out. For most people--even former boondocking hermits--hiking or bicycling with other people makes it five times as much fun. Dogs can serve remarkably well as hiking or mountain biking buddies, but they don't make good "roadies."
It is not easy for early retirees or full time RVers to find outdoors-adventure partners since, demographically, they are between a cholla and a thorny place. There are a few RVers out there who would make good outdoorsy playmates, but how do you get them to stay in one place for more than three days?
That means that you need to go on outings with local yokels, most of whom are working slugs. Their schedules require them (and you) to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, resulting in a lot of unnecessary discomfort. If you point this out, they think you are just being a complainer. They don't understand what it is like to have choices and to see yourself as a professional at making choices!
There have been two springs this year in the Little Pueblo: a false spring in late February and a more recent one. It has been the Winter of my Content (-ment). But the good walking weather is over now, until October. It feels so strange to walk around without bracing against the air, but rather, to relax in it, to let it roll over the skin, and to trust it. It's not so bad to be fat and out-of-shape right now. Watching the improvement on the bicycle will be fun.
Volunteers in the Little Pueblo have made free, yellow, clunker bicycles available for public use. (I wonder if they will be in use a year from now.)
So it appears that the Little Pueblo has developed a bicycle culture like some sophisticated and progressive fancy-places. Indeed we are on the very cutting edge of societal evolution.
But I haven't offered much of a solution to the dilemma of finding bicycle partners when you lie in the demographic no-man's-land betwixt the spandexed and the potluck crowd.
If only I could find a cycling buddy like I had once. She didn't see herself as a racing wannabee. Nor was losing weight or lowering her cholesterol at the top of her agenda. She cycled because, other than cooing over a gaggle of grandkids, it consistently made her happier than anything else. And O to feel young at heart!
