Thanks to all the CABER's for your words of encouragement. Now I have decided to use the old Hawthorne as my delivery bike. I have a ebay store and I sell stuff about every-other day I have to ship it. Most of the stuff is small and I take it to the post office, which is one mile from my house. I currently use my 1980 MGB to deliver the stuff, but now I want to use the bike.
In the barn of my wife's cousin I found a basket for the bike. The cousin said it was on the bike when he got it, but it was not cool, so he took it off. I spent the better part of two hours cleaning it up and putting it on the bike. I have to take this learning to ride pretty slow. For me to ride a mile and then back, would be pretty hard to do. I can almost coast from my house to the post office, but it is all uphill coming back. Google says my house is 59 ft. higher elevation than the PO.
I live at about 13 1/2 street and the PO is on the corner of 2nd and National. That's about 13 blocks one way, downhill going and uphill coming back. To test my durability, I decided to try to go halfway today, and that would be to 6th Street. It's 20 degrees cooler today with a pretty stiff wind out of the north....I put on my sweater and headed out. Before I got to 6th my legs said "turn around", even going downhill, but the wind was in my face, holding me back. I made it to 8th Street and turned around. The wind was now at my back but it didn't seem to be blowing quite so hard. I huffed an puffed my way back to 12th Street where most of the elevation difference takes place. I then got off and pushed the bike the final 2 blocks and put it away in the garage.
This is how it stacks up:
Yesterday to 10th,
Today to 8th,
Tomorrow to 6th,
Tuesday to 4th,
and Wednesday to the PO. (but I will still have to push the last 2 blocks coming back)
I hope i haven't bored you all and thanks for the support!
Pete
