YAY Phillies

Yippee - the Phillies won! I'm not a true baseball fan - or sports fan for that matter - but when the hometown team finally wins after 25 years without a win, you have to celebrate. The game was televised here at 4:30, so I was able to watch while I started dinner. The looks on their faces - of pure surprise, in a way, that they had really won - was touching. So, congrats, Phillies, and may you win again and again. Just like another hometown team, which was even more years without a win...

Yesterday I had a big adventure. Robert recently bought and installed a Heinzmann hub motor on my bike. The hills here are so straight-up that it's impossible to pedal up. He's been a long-standing fan (for about the last 15 years) of electric hub motors for bikes. The one he got replaces the front wheel and is powered by a rechargeable battery that slips into a bike pantiere attached to the rack on the back. There's a small tab near the shifter on the handle bars which powers it. The motor and the new front wheel add additional weight, so initially it's a little tricky to get used to it.

I needed some things from the grocery less than a mile away at the bottom of the hill. I thought about walking with the "granny cart" for exercise, but then the lure of motoring back up the hill drew me to the garage to see if Robert had taken it to work. He's been alternating between his regular bike and my bike which can be changed to accommodate his height.

There it was - just waiting for me to climb on. So I did and away I went. The hills are straight down, so I needed to brake hard to get on the main road. After I shopped, I loaded the items in the metal basket on the back and then put the rest in the backpack I had worn. Of course, I bought too much and couldn't even zipper the backpack - so the bag of pretzels peeked out. It wasn't raining, so I was fine.

I took off, still pedalling on my own. But when I got to the mammoth hill to go back up, I flicked the control and WWWHHHHRRR the motor purred. I was still pedaling, to help it along, but the motor was doing 95% of the work to get me up the hill. If anyone had been watching, I would have seemed like super woman pedaling serenely up the hill without so much as a pant, pant.

Today it's sunny and gorgeous - the mountain peaks were covered with snow and the mist was flowing around the middle - a sight I hadn't seen before. Then, within a matter of minutes, the mountains were fogged in. Now it's all burned off and I plan to take out the bike before lunch, go downtown in the opposite direction and pick up the bike path that heads south.

More later...