gina's bike walter

On Thursday between trips to the store on his bike and trips to the store in his car, he struggled with a plan for his future. He managed to fill his cabinets with canned food for a rainy day. Literally he had shopped for days when he could not ride the bike to the store. In the back of his mind was the idea of changing his lifestyle to eliminate the need for an automobile. It was just a pipe dream, he told himself. Still it was an idea with some merit.

On Friday he tried to ride his bike across town. It was his longest trip up to that time. A couple of the hills kicked his butt. Walter came to a startling realization. He was not as young as he used to be so the bike thing might not be practical after all. That realization might have knocked him back into a deep funk except he was more optimistic than he had been even a couple of months before.

Instead of withdrawing into a shell and bemoaning his shortcomings, Walter took stock of his new life. Fact one: Walter was only 58 years old and already retired. Fact two: he was reasonably healthy. As a matter of fact since taking up the daily bike ride he had lost eight pounds. He could stand to lose more, but it was a start. Not only was it a start it was painless. He still ate the same things he always ate. He was getting regular, though limited, exercise on the bike. That and he shopped a little more carefully because it was more difficult to get to the store on the bike. Fact three: he wasn't wealthy but he also did not need to have profit enter into his plan for a new life. Mostly because he didn't live extravagantly, nor did he wish to do so. Fact four: Walter was not only intelligent, he was adaptable. Being adaptable might be the biggest advantage in a lifestyle change. Walter was open to new ideas which could only help.

The one thing weighing on Walter's mind was simply that, if he wanted to go to bikes only, Gina's bike just wasn't powerful enough. So Walter, being adaptable, began to wonder if the design of Gina's bike was also adaptable. Since Gina's bike was based on a simple friction drive system, there was no reason that it couldn't be modified to accept a more powerful engine.

At first Walter thought about replacing the engine with a more powerful one. After more thought he decided that to do so would be a bad idea. Gina's bike was front wheel drive. Front wheel drive needed a light weight engine he decided. A larger engine would be heavier he decided. However all the basic principles of Gina's bike would work just fine on any bike with any engine. He would just need to be open minded in his adaptation of the basics.