Amit, Sounds like all of us agree you should snap up the Saluki, now on to the more complex question of motivating your 70 year old Dad.
I'm closing in on 67 and have spent a good chunk of the last decade motivating my wife (64) to ride more with me. So I can write from experience. As we age, no matter how well we stay active and in shape, we begin to loose power and speed. There's good biological explanations for this but that would be a lengthy digression. We can hold onto endurance a bit later in life but eventually that will also begin to wane. And, perhaps most importantly, our recovery time increases significantly. Ten years ago I could ride five days a week, finishing up with a century and a couple of mountain passes. Now I find that trying to ride three days in a row overloads my body, and four hours of riding is all that I really enjoy doing. With my wife, the most important rule I follow is never to leave her feeling stiff, sore, and exhausted. She will likely remember that feeling more than the joy she felt during the ride. As a result she has gradually increased her riding strength from 15 to 50 mile trips. She is "vertically challenged" so I usually try to avoid any really long mountain climbs (that in itself is a challenge in Vermont!) and when we do go up hill I use the Canadian Goose method - I honk and cheer her all the way to the top. But if she does need to stop and walk; I do too. Her bike is outfitted with BE shifters, because they are the most ergonomic choice. You move the shifter in the same direction as the chain, and the brain seems to catch on to that pretty quickly. She also has pretty low gearing, (46/36/26 mated to a 13-27 7 spd freewheel) since she is not comfortable really screaming downhill. I have also worked with her on riding technique, but gently, and pretty much only one thing at a time, to avoid sounding like a nag. After she learned shifting, we started working on riding downhill more aggressively so that she would have more momentum going into the next inevitable Vt uphill. After she mastered that we began working to get her to spin smaller gears faster. That took a long time but this year she is much better at it and we are beginning to talk about improving her cornering. I also claim that riding with my wife is like riding with Lance Armstrong! Lance says my tires are soft and someone rushes to put air in them; Lance says, my brake is rubbing, and some one rushes to adjust them! But I would bet your dad would not like that kind of treatment; we men have such fragile egos! So you probably need to be extra cautious giving advice or offering help. I have been riding with my two children (now in their late 30s) and still consider it the best. Fortunately they can remember all the years I waited for them on hikes & bike rides and now do the same for me, with real grace. Oh and BTW, last year we bought a tandem and now it's pretty much all Pat wants to ride. michael, take care of Self; it's one of a kind and irreplaceable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/oWU4xR5J9ZsJ. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
