Yesterday afternoon I arrived at my intended location on a rather significantly sloped parking lot.\u00a0 The space next to the sidewalk was open so I took it.\u00a0 It was easy backing the Valkyrie into the space as I had pulled past it and rolled it backwards downhill.\u00a0 As I let it over onto the sidestand I noticed I was parking with a fair amount of the slope still down to the left of the bike.\u00a0 This isn’t good, I thought.\u00a0 My Interstate has somewhat taller shocks and the slope of the bike on the stand is deep.<\/p>\n
I did what I intended and came back out to the bike.\u00a0 I threw a leg over, turned the fork to the right and pulled.\u00a0 Didn’t do it.\u00a0 Pulled again with a strong jerk.\u00a0 Nope, not going to happen.<\/p>\n
I dismounted so that I could have both legs on the low side of the bike and easily stood it up.\u00a0 There I was standing next to the Valkyrie, holding it upright and feeling a bit uncomfortable with the thought of throwing a leg across the saddle with two hands on the bars and the bike standing, maybe unsteadily, on that slope.\u00a0 I stood there for what seemed several minutes.\u00a0 I remembered I was wearing my steel toed boots.\u00a0 I almost always do when I ride.\u00a0 Interestingly I was wearing those boots when I came off on the highway and they say I still broke my big toe.<\/p>\n
I slipped my left foot under the base of the sidestand being careful to ascertain it would sit on the steel toe and not on my instep.\u00a0 I easily threw my right leg over the saddle and pulled the bike back upright.<\/p>\n
This morning I had two of my grandchildren in the upstairs office with me.\u00a0 The grandboy said something that didn’t make sense and I told him he was crazy.\u00a0 “I’m not crazy!\u00a0 You’re cray cray,” he said.<\/p>\n
What ensued was a rather heated discussion among the three of us as to who was and who was not insane.\u00a0 The grandgirl pulled out her pretend phone.\u00a0 It’s an old cell phone that no longer contains a battery.<\/p>\n
“I’m going to call Mom and ask her if Paw Paw’s crazy.\u00a0 Hello, Mom?\u00a0 Is Paw Paw crazy?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Kaden says he is.”<\/p>\n
“She says Paw Paw is not crazy.”<\/p>\n
Her grandmother had just walked into the room during the pretend telephone conversation.\u00a0 “She said he’s not crazy?\u00a0 That’s not your mom!”<\/p>\n
Sometimes there are difficulties involved in the process of getting older, getting weaker, and in some ways the slipping away of one’s mind.\u00a0 Isn’t it great, though, to have been given the opportunity?\u00a0 There have been times when I thought for sure that I wouldn’t but I did.\u00a0 It was a gift.\u00a0 I didn’t earn it nor trade anything for it.\u00a0 It just happened and it was given to me freely.<\/p>\n
I’m glad to be here getting older.<\/p>\n
I’m sorry.\u00a0 What is it we were talking about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday afternoon I arrived at my intended location on a rather significantly sloped parking lot.\u00a0 The space next to the sidewalk was open so I took it.\u00a0 It was easy backing the Valkyrie into the space as I had pulled …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willowinthewind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}