We just came home from the airport where we dropped off #1 son after a nice, but short, visit.  As you can see from his attire, we had good weather while he was here and great weather for two days.

    On Thursday, I put some platform pedals on my yellow bike and Nick, Nina, and I rode into Randleman to visit the Richard Petty museum.  We weren’t there very long before the receptionist caught my eye and nodded toward one of the offices.  I walked over to her and she said Richard, the king of NASCAR, had just come in.  A few moments later, he came out of the office and chatted, first with us, and then with another family that was in the museum.  That was quite a treat.

    Richard grew up and still lives in Level Cross which is right next to Randleman and we are just five miles to the east.  He doesn’t hide out or anything so lots of people in the area know him and he has done a lot of nice things for this part of Randolph County so most everyone likes him.  

    One idea I got while walking through the museum is that the whole Petty family likes motor vehicles more than I do.  The place was full of them; mostly cars, but at least three motorcycles too.  So it was fun to meet Richard and it was fun to get back on the bikes and do a little riding.

    Nick’s dad -- that would be me -- was keen on making sure both boys grew up with bicycles so Nick was riding a Schwinn Gremlin well before he was old enough for school.  He went through a few bikes before he and his brother, Dylan, settled on BMX bikes in junior high school.  After high school, both sons moved on to automobiles and they haven’t looked back.  Yet.  

    With that in mind, I wondered how Nick would take to my road bike with its drop bars and down tube friction shifters.  I got him all set up and decided I’d better give the Red Randonneuse a quick wash since it was still pretty grimy from last weekend’s rainy brevet.  While I was washing the bike, Nick rode off on the roadie.  When he came back, I asked if he thought he’d get along with the shifters and he looked at me and said, “No, Dad.  I can’t figure your bike out.  We better drive.”  Then he laughed and I knew he was pulling my leg.

    There has been a lot of chatter between the friction shifters and the STI folks on one of the forums I subscribe to.  I try to stay out of those kinds of arguments and I haven’t read too many of the posts, but I see that the number of them gets longer and longer and some people are very sure that one method or the other is superior.  

    Nick, who doesn’t have much road bike riding behind him, didn’t seem to suffer a moments pause with the down tube shifters.  I heard him shifting away a couple of times as we came up a hill and I heard him trim a noisy deraileur without my mentioning it.  I didn’t offer any instruction and he didn’t ask for any.  I did remember, before we started a long down hill, to mention that I set my bikes up for right hand to front brake and he assured me that he’d figured that one out already.

    All of it pleased me and none of it surprised me because I remember getting Nick going on that little Gremlin seventeen or eighteen years ago.  I tried to convince him that riding on the sidewalk would be easier than the grass that day and he silently replied by riding where he wanted to ride.  Since I could see he wasn’t having any trouble, I watched him for a few minutes and went inside to see if dinner was ready.

    There was one hitch to the day.  There’s a hill at the end of our road.  It isn’t a killer hill, but you notice it.  I figured the old man would drop the young man on that one and I felt pretty good about it.  Nick figured differently and passed me as we came to the top.  Next time I might loosen the nut on the shifters so the deraileur will auto shift, but my guess is Nick would figure that one out pretty quickly.  I think that boys and men and girls and women are just naturally cut out for riding bikes.

    In case you’re wondering, Richard Petty was wearing the wrap around sunglasses, the big cowboy hat, and the even bigger belt buckle that are his trademark.  He looked cool.