Doesn't break any Dad rules

Spent Fathers' Day upstate with my folks and my grandfather, playing boccie and pinochle, cursing, and generally having a fantastic time.

While in town at a farmers market with my mother, she made a suggestion that I liked--namely that when the lease in Brooklyn runs out in a year, I spend the summer upstate. It would cost almost nothing, and would be remarkably relaxing, to get a job waiting tables in Cooperstown and spend the remainder of my time reading and writing hundreds of miles away from any big city. I just may do that.

Anyway, my father performed an emblematic act of dad-hood when, as I was getting ready to leave for the city, he looked at the bent and dented hood of my Volvo and decided to pull it back into shape using, almost exclusively, his bare hands. That's the spirit of fathers' day, right there.

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Took the bike upstate with me, where the terrain is absolutely brutal and challenges the gearing on the little Raleigh. I rolled into the first downhill I found at about 20mph. I went into an aggressive tuck, and was very quickly catapulted to 41mph. My highest gear, about 105 gear inches, was completely useless, and all I could do was tuck and coast. I kept a pace of about 25mph on the flat roads, ducked around the neighboring village and came back up the hill from the another angle. The uphill was just as relentless, with my smallest gear (65ish gear inches) quickly becoming equally useless torture. I made it though, and that ridiculously painful loop should serve nicely as my benchmark course for a while. I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to understand why modern bikes have 7000 gears.