One ride I won't ever forget was on that date. I had purchased my Cannondale Mt. Bike the prior May, and was really into long rides that summer, BTW, I still have that bike, it's in great shape, had it updated last summer, rode it several times last week, it's still one sweet ride.
It was a beautiful summer day of the type we often have here after a cold front sweeps through and brings in cool, dry continental polar air masses from Canada -- blue skies with puffy white cumulus clouds causing alternating sun and shadow, temps starting out upper 50's warming into the mid 70's, low humidity, fresh breeze out of the WNW. Just a perfect summer day.
I drove out to Kensington Metropark in Brighton, Michigan, which has great trails both paved and gravel. Kind of hilly, it sits on the old glacial terminal morraines, a series of large hills that sweep southwest from Michigan's thumb down into Ohio and Indiana, and are gravel piles left behind by the melting glaciers, 14,000 years ago or so they were the shoreline of Glacial Lake Maumee, which covered areas now shoreline land along the western end of Lakes Erie and St. Clair. Wildflowers galore, wildlife, etc. Nice place. Got there around 9 am, and rode all day until about 6 pm. I think I ended up doing about 45 miles, with a lot of stops for R&R. By myself. Peaceful.
But, why it's memorable, aside from the cycling? -- I had an early "Sony Walkman" AM/FM radio with cassette tape player. Rode with earphones like a total idiot, NOT advised. Nonstop news coverage on AM radio, and even most of the FM stations were going with news coverage that day. I did pop in a tape or two, one I remember listening to was 'New Jersey' by Bon Jovi, an irony considering I listened to that as I rode last night.
And, what happened that day in world history, early in the AM our time here in Eastern N. America? Why, the attempted coup d'etat against Mikhail Gorbachev by Soviet hardliners who were unhappy with Perestroika and his improvement of relations with the West. I rode around all day listening to our local all-news station's live coverage from CBS News of ongoing developments in Moscow and elsewhere. It was a tense day in a string of a few tense days for the world, as it was feared the hardliners would win out and reverse the clock on reforms, perhaps even going so far as to try to seize back Eastern Europe, which had just gained it's freedom 2 years earlier, causing another world war, this time with nukes flying.
Tense day internationally in political and military circles. Awesome day for me. Something I will never forget.
It was a beautiful summer day of the type we often have here after a cold front sweeps through and brings in cool, dry continental polar air masses from Canada -- blue skies with puffy white cumulus clouds causing alternating sun and shadow, temps starting out upper 50's warming into the mid 70's, low humidity, fresh breeze out of the WNW. Just a perfect summer day.
I drove out to Kensington Metropark in Brighton, Michigan, which has great trails both paved and gravel. Kind of hilly, it sits on the old glacial terminal morraines, a series of large hills that sweep southwest from Michigan's thumb down into Ohio and Indiana, and are gravel piles left behind by the melting glaciers, 14,000 years ago or so they were the shoreline of Glacial Lake Maumee, which covered areas now shoreline land along the western end of Lakes Erie and St. Clair. Wildflowers galore, wildlife, etc. Nice place. Got there around 9 am, and rode all day until about 6 pm. I think I ended up doing about 45 miles, with a lot of stops for R&R. By myself. Peaceful.
But, why it's memorable, aside from the cycling? -- I had an early "Sony Walkman" AM/FM radio with cassette tape player. Rode with earphones like a total idiot, NOT advised. Nonstop news coverage on AM radio, and even most of the FM stations were going with news coverage that day. I did pop in a tape or two, one I remember listening to was 'New Jersey' by Bon Jovi, an irony considering I listened to that as I rode last night.
And, what happened that day in world history, early in the AM our time here in Eastern N. America? Why, the attempted coup d'etat against Mikhail Gorbachev by Soviet hardliners who were unhappy with Perestroika and his improvement of relations with the West. I rode around all day listening to our local all-news station's live coverage from CBS News of ongoing developments in Moscow and elsewhere. It was a tense day in a string of a few tense days for the world, as it was feared the hardliners would win out and reverse the clock on reforms, perhaps even going so far as to try to seize back Eastern Europe, which had just gained it's freedom 2 years earlier, causing another world war, this time with nukes flying.
Tense day internationally in political and military circles. Awesome day for me. Something I will never forget.
