Wednesday afternoon walking through downtown you felt as if you were trapped inside a pizza oven. Thus the late afternoon rain provided a welcome finish to the day, even if you were riding a bike on the Riverwalk, as I happened to be.
It was my first bike ride on the Riverwalk and my first look at the 1,000-foot extension that snakes under the twin river bridges and ends at an undeveloped trail that leads towards the Columbus Lake. It’s lovely, especially during a soft, cooling rain at the end of a hot day.
It’s been years since I’ve done any bike riding. You do something early in life and then, as your life changes, you put it aside; decades pass and you bump into that thing again.
My brother Stephen and I came home from summer camp where we had learned to play tennis. Our enthusiasm for the game reignited in my father a long dormant interest, and within months there was a clay tennis court in the woods where we had once built forts.
We took lessons, and he revived friendships with Jake Propst and a group of local men who played the game. My best tennis memory was when my father decided to pave the tennis court. My brothers and I would no longer have to water, roll and sweep the lines of that cursed clay court.
In those days, I was a free bird on my Schwinn cruiser. My buddies and I would pedal all over town, across the river past the honky-tonks and curb markets or to the trestle over the Tombigbee where we would climb down on the center pier and watch the river flow or to the clay bank overlooking the Lee High practice field where we would build fires and sit around and discuss whatever it was kids talked about.
Seems hard to believe now, but I rode my bike several miles from Chickasaw Drive to Demonstration School on The W campus to attend elementary school. Kids did such as that in those days.
This summer on a trip to a large city with a grandchild, we signed on for a three-hour tour with Fat Bike Bicycle Tours. It was exhilarating, one of the best things we did on our trip. Pedaling a bicycle is great way to engage with a city and its history. Don’t take my word for it; grab a bike and head for the Riverwalk, Friendship Cemetery or Lake Lowndes. See for yourself.
Sunday I was pulling weeds in a side flowerbed when an old friend leaving the Catholic Church stopped his truck in the middle of the street, got out and walked over. I can’t remember his exact words, but he said something to the effect of, “When you get our age and you see someone you’ve not seen in a long time, you’d better not pass the chance to say hello.”
Good advice. At any age.
Birney Imes ([email protected]) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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