Tour de Grandma's House

Kevin's memories of bucolic Oklahoma days got me reminiscing too, so back we go to 1972, when Stan Poe and I tackled the Tour de Grandma's House. I was 14 and Stan was 15.

I had been riding my new Ross 10 speed for a few months. It looked something like this, except that mine was white:
















How I had longed for the sleek Peugeot model displayed at the Burbank bike shop where I purchased the Ross, but it was too expensive. The Ross was expensive enough - my father was fond of amortizing its $130 purchase price over the miles reported by my hub mounted mechanical odometer. I had raised half of the purchase price somehow, but Mom and Dad paid for the balance. When I later logged 600 miles and got the cost down to $.22 per mile, Dad let up a bit with his kindhearted harassment, although he continued to make fun of my fixation with the "POOOOOOzhow". I rode that Ross all through college.

Here's the route (approximately) of that first bike tour. We carried small backpacks with a change of clothes and pedalled in T Shirts, cutoff jeans and Jack Purcell tennies. Grandma took care of feeding us and gave us a place to sleep in her ancestral Claremont home. We pedaled back to La Crescenta the next day.

I don't remember all that much about the ride itself, except for some fleeting images of Foothill Blvd. stoplights and craftsman style Pasadena homes. We never did the ride again. Even so, I think that such adventures have a huge effect on our lives, and I'm sure the Tour de Grandma's House cemented my lifelong love of cycling.