I wanted to go Green but.......

I really wanted to go green this week during Bike to Work day, honestly. I have ridden Harley Davidson motorcycles a lot in the past. No, I don’t have a bicycle of my own, at least not one without a motor. A friend of mine has a the nicest bicycle in storage with two flat tires.  I decided to help out and inflate the tires for her. Trouble started almost immediately when I saw the valve stems. I had never seen a presto valve stem before and couldn’t figure out how to use either of the two hand pumps she had, also in storage. I headed back upstairs to get on the internet and read up on presto valve operation and inflation. What did we do before the internet? You can become or do anything using the information on the web it’s fantastic. I reviewed the information for about ten minutes and now I was an expert on bicycle tire inflation using a hand pump with presto valve stems. It took all of about five minutes to inflate the tires to the “feel right” pressure. I didn’t have a gauge and I had no idea what the correct pressure was for the tires I was inflating. They felt good though. I couldn’t just fill the tires up and put the bike back in storage without a test run.   I was inside a parking garage so I didn’t have to venture onto the dangerous streets of San Francisco. The first thing I noticed when I straddled the seat was that the bike was way to small for me, the handle bars were narrower than my shoulders and the pedals made my legs bend excessively. They flared out like airplane wings. I started pedaling and the bike started wobbling. I was skimming cars in the garage and skirting what felt like every cement support I came near, maybe it would have been safer on the street. The bike kept slowing down on turns (you have to keep pedaling I guess).  At any rate, I nearly fell over when I stopped because I was not used to the brakes. It’s probably been forty years since I rode a bicycle.  This dang thing needs a motor!