4 Things I had NEVER done before

1. Ride a Tandem Bicycle.
2. Play Disc Golf (some call it Frisbee Golf).
3. Taught myself how to use the voice-over feature on ProShow Gold software.
4. Ride my bicycle in very cold weather.

Mal and I on his Cannondale Tandem

Over his shoulder shoot with my camera.

OK, so here it was the very last day of 2008, New Year's Eve. I was thinking back over this passing year - I always like to recall if there was something, anything, that I did during the year that I never in my lifetime had done before. It dawned on me that I did four things. It is like breaking through barriers of my brain and body that have not been touched before. Thinking outside the box. With a couple of these I had to widen my comfort zone. Researchers say learning to do something new can keep your brain cells doing good things, and fend off dementia. I don't know about that, my 'senior moments' are getting all too frequent. Here are my 4 never dones that I did in 2008:

1. Riding a tandem bicycle. I have wanted to try that for so long. But no one asked me to ride tandem with them -- so I just figured I would have to wait and see if my DH would get one after he retires. But one day this summer I had volunteered to mark a road route with spray paint for an invitational bike ride. Mal too had volunteered to do this. I was joking when I said, "It would go faster if we rode on your tandem, and I could just lean over at the intersections and spray the arrow on the road." He said, "OK, meet me at Bolivar School and we'll get the job done." Wait a minute! I've never ridden on a tandem before! He said, "Well no time like today to learn." What fun that was. I brought along my spd clipless pedal shoes, as his tandem doesn't have the Look pedals that I use on my Madone. I just took a few deep breaths and trusted Captain Mal up front - just leave the driving to the pilot and stay cool in the stoker's saddle.

We got the job done. We didn't fall over going up the hills. Wheeeee, what a thrill going down the hills! I tried to pedal as hard as I could -- so he would not think I was just sitting back there watching the scenery go. Now this is the kind of Back of the Pack (position) I like to be in. I must have done OK, because Mal asked me to ride on some club rides as the summer/fall went along.

New things #2, #3, and #4:
I'll come back and post on these later. I have a ton of stuff to do to get next month's SCBC ride schedule ready for publication in the club newsletter.