peewee's Bike Stories Back to the Weeville Home Page
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20 years and two lives ago, I rode a bicycle a very long way a whole lot of times. At the suggestion of a stranger I met out on the road, I started writing about my bike trips and the people and places. Living in Rock Hill, SC at the time, I submitted a couple of draft columns to the Lifestyles editor at the Rock Hill Herald. She LOVED them (thank you for that, Jane Clute. I sure am glad you did). The columns ran every other week in The Herald for about three years.
Along the way, I was all but forced by reputation and constant questions from readers to write a column or two ABOUT bicycling, equipment and such. But my entire intent was for this to be a people-and-places column, and for the most part it was.
After 20 years, all of this stuff is terribly dated. You'll likely have to be an older person to remember some of the news events I referred to. And I received news over time that some of the people I met back then have since passed away. And don't count on the establishments in the stories being there anymore, either. It's been a long time.
These stories will make more sense if you read them in the order in which they are posted, as it's almost like a building plot.
I am now 51 years old, and sometimes unable to get around very well because of how far I rode that bike all those years ago. My knees, my shoulders, my back, my hands, my whole body got beat up over the course of 30,000 miles on a touring bicycle, and age amplifies that. I rode the bike too far too many times, and as the years go by, I realize that I would have done it, anyway. Even if I could see me now, which I couldn't possibly see back then, I would have done it anyway. It was worth it. It still is. In retrospect, this is how I spent my body, at a point in life where time was all I had. Lots of time. Loose time drives people crazy, and this is what I chose to do with it.
So, here we go:
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