Gary Kirkland, the Gainesville Sun's University & Main columnist, has written several columns detailing his introduction to bicycling over the last couple of months. He jumped into the organized cycling scene with both feet as one of the over 700 persons attending the Suwanee Bicycle Festival in Live Oak in early May. He has given us permission to reprint this last tidbit of his writings from that event:
Finally, one more story from the Suwanee Bike Festival of a near-death experience on the highway. One elderly man was explaining his struggle to make it up his very first hill on his new 10-speed at an event in Georgia. The sweat was flowing freely and his breathing was coming with great difficulty, when a young man on an old-fashioned, low-tech one-speed passed him so effortlessly he barely had time to read the "Gears are for wimps" insult on the boy's shirt.
"If I could have caught him, I'd have killed him," the storyteller said.
Gary Kirkland, umainguy@aol.com