I know I have used the photo on the left on this blog many times before, but since it is prime biking weather, and one of my favorite memories from childhood is biking around the south side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago during summer break, I will use it again. I also used this photograph on the cover of my international bestseller The Journey Home: Returning to Chicago (feel free to check that tome out at https://www.blurb.com/b/1361398-the-journey-home-returning-to-chicago). In this photo, I am posing with my Grandmother Spillard (my mother Mary's mother), not to mention with our huge 1957, two tone Pontiac. I can vividly remember biking to Brainerd Park, and when feeling adventurous, would bike through the Dan Ryan Woods and the Beverly neighborhood to Evergreen Park, where there were several golf courses to meander around.
And of course, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I am once again am doing a lot of biking, and hopefully will continue biking as long as the weather holds up. I took the self-portrait on the right a few days ago during a bike ride from my condo across the street from the University of Denver to Lower Downtown Denver (aka LoDo). I am posing in front of Denver's Union Station, which was remodeled a few years ago into one of the city's top gathering spots for hipsters. I used to bike from my condo to Evergreen, a suburb in the mountains west of Denver, but that was a long time ago. Even back then, it took all summer to get to the point where that ride would not kill me, although I did enjoy it. Of course, these days it would take me all year to get in shape for a ride like that, and would probably kill me anyway. Perhaps I will put off training for that particular ride until next year. In any case, isn't it amazing how little I have changed over the past 60 years or so. Shades of Dorian Gray.
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