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                                    Post-Pandemic537that had any appeal. It was too much like shooting baskets over and over, and I%u2019ve never been able to keep doing the same thing repeatedly. So I considered getting a bicycle. Our dead-end road had been paved a few months earlier, so it was perfectly smooth, and biking up and down it would a good way to get some exercise and lose weight. Most of the road follows a ridge top which has a fair amount of up-and-down rolling terrain. There%u2019s only one long hill%u2014at the south end where the road tees into Highway 46. In doing some on-line research, I learned that there was some controversy about exercise designed to target specific parts of the body. For example, because bicycling primarily uses leg muscles, would it help in reducing fat around the waist? It seemed like it would, that any exercise would burn fat anywhere in the body%u2014to a certain extent.Lynn and I had bought his-and-hers Schwinn ten-speed bikes in the early 70s, but had quit riding them and sold both in the early aughts. Which meant neither one of us had ridden in over 20 years. But you never forget how to ride a bike. After I decided a used one would be fine, and began looking online, I discovered a place called the Bloomington Community Bike Project. They had non-profit status, and accepted monetary donations, as well as donated bikes, bike parts, and shop tools. Once repaired and tuned up, the donated bikes were offered for sale to pay expenses like rent and utilities. One of their popular programs is Earn-A-Bike, whereby a volunteer can donate a certain amount of time to repairing bikes for sale, then they receive one of the donated bikes to repair for themselves. Being former Industrial Arts teachers, Lynn and I both liked what they were doing. After all, teaching someone how to wield a wrench is always a good thing.The Bike Project was housed in a small shop near downtown, and was open for a few hours, three evenings a week, as well as Saturday afternoons. So, one Saturday, after we returned from a book sale at the Terre Haute Library, we stopped by. A young man got up from working on a bicycle, and offered to help us. After a brief discussion about my needs, he pulled a bike off a wall rack, and suggested I take it for a quick spin. It had flat handlebars, which I liked, while most of the ones on the rack had drop handlebars. There was one imme-
                                
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