Tuesday afternoon I decided to ride my mountain bike to my doctor’s office so they could scan my new insurance card. The map on my phone says it’s 13 mile to his office. I had done it once before a few years ago, so I thought it would not be too great a challenge. The difference was that back then I was riding a good bit, including up and down the mountain, and now I’m not. It has been around a year and a half since I got on either of my bikes, and at least a couple of months since I used our now-defunct stationary bike. The stationary bike is a poor substitute for actual riding anyway.

But still, I thought it would be a fun ride and would give me a chance to get some real exercise. It turned out to be that, and more.

The first mile and a half is down Fouche Gap Road to the bottom of the mountain. I flew. The next eight or so miles was on Huffaker Road and Technology Parkway, which have gentle ups and downs. That was not bad. I was rolling along pretty well in top gear most of the time.

The end of Technology Parkway is about a half mile from Summerville Park, where I grew up. I avoided my old street, which is now four lanes and fairly busy with hospital traffic, but I got a good look at houses I have seen only from a car for decades, except for that one previous bike ride to my doctor’s office. I took a sidewalk along Martha Berry Boulevard to avoid heavy traffic for about another half mile, and then turned into Fourth Ward, where my father grew up. I rode down to the levee, and then crossed the river into downtown.

I rode a few blocks down Broad Street, where it was easy to keep up with traffic. I turned down First Avenue, which has almost no traffic, and then it was a short hop to my doctor’s office.

I was sweaty but felt pretty good when I got there. It took about a minute for them to scan my insurance card, and then I went out to start back.

When I got back to Broad Street, I crossed the river on an old railroad bridge that has been turned into a walking and bike trail. It’s narrower than I expected.

Some Romans have started putting love locks on the handrails. We don’t take the sad, little excuse for a local newspaper, so I haven’t heard whether city officials discourage it. If they do, it hasn’t worked.

Some people were rafting. That was a surprise, but I guess the rivers are clean these days.

You can still see the color difference between the Oostanaula and the Etowah rivers. The Etowah River used to run red with clay from an upstream mine, but today it’s just another shade of green, like the Oostanaula.

I have seen blue herons around here, but never on the river.

I crossed the river, then went up the walking trail that runs along the levee.

Things were going pretty well when I got back to Summerville Park. I decided to take a look at the steep hill we dreaded when we rode from our house diagonally across the neighborhood to the little city park at the opposite corner. I rode down the hill, and then turned around to ride back up. The mountain has turned into a barely-noticeable bump in the road. It’s not the same one that I still have in my memory.

Back on Technology Parkway my recent lack of riding was catching up to me. With a little headwind, a slight climb, and temperatures in the upper 80’s, I was beginning to struggle. A couple of light showers helped, but I still had to climb Lavender Mountain to get back home.

That was the real struggle. Even in the lowest gear I was having trouble. I wasn’t out of breath, but my legs were really fatigued. I admit it – I had to stop several times to let my legs rest.

I finally made it back home, where I hobbled around with sore quadriceps. I was also dehydrated. A couple of ibuprofens, an ice-cold beer, some orange juice and a bowl of ice cream helped. As did a good night’s sleep.

Wednesday I was fine – not even a sore muscle. I did learn a couple of things. First, I’m not as young as I used to be, and second, I need more time on the bike before I do that again.

When I was still working I used to ride my bicycle in warm weather, when the days were long enough that I could wait for the afternoon rush hour to end. There was a good loop in Cummings Research Park, where I worked, so I waited until around 6 pm and then rode 20 miles. On weekends at home I rode down the mountain one way or the other. Sometimes I rode the loop that the Fouche Gap Road Race used last Saturday. Other days I rode in towards town on Huffaker onto Technology Parkway (a grand name without much to back it up). But when the days got shorter and the weather got colder, I stopped riding outside.

We had bought a NordicTrack stationary bike a few years ago, but I didn’t use it much. Then, when I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy almost two summers ago, I decided to get more serious about it. I figured if my heart was going to get lazy, I was going to push it a little and see what happened. So I started riding about 50 minutes almost every day. Sometimes on Wednesdays I skipped the ride so we could go to our favorite Mexican restaurant for huevos rancheros for lunch, but most of the time I rode.

I wore out the belt that runs from the pedal crank to the resistance mechanism. That was no big deal; I was able to get a replacement for that.

And then a few weeks ago there was a crunch from the innards of the bike, and then no more resistance. I thought I might be able to repair it again, so I tore the bike apart and eventually discovered this.

This is an iron alloy pulley that attaches to the resistance mechanism shaft and is turned by the belt I replaced that runs to the pedal crank. Like a typical bicycle rear wheel hub, the stationary bike has a one-way clutch that engages the resistance mechanism when the pedal is turned, but freewheels when the pedal is not being cranked. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that the pulley has a crack completely through. What you may not be able to see is that the clutch mechanism has disintegrated. It’s on the inside, between two sets of roller bearings. The clutch mechanism was made from plastic. I might be wrong, but it looks like it had little plastic teeth that gripped one way but slipped the other. I assume that the plastic clutch mechanism broke because the pulley cracked and released the pressure that supported the clutch.

OK, I thought, maybe I can get a new pulley. So I went online and found a parts diagram with prices for almost every part in the bike. There was an identification number for the pulley, but no price for it. I emailed the service department to ask whether the pulley was available as a separate replacement part. The answer was that I would have to buy the entire resistance mechanism. Sorry.

That wouldn’t be a big deal, except that the resistance mechanism costs about twice what the entire stationary bike costs. It’s more than $800.

I was pretty disappointed with NordicTrack. Iron is a pretty strong material. Steel pulley wheels on automobile engines almost always last for the lifetime of the engine. I probably used the bike more than a typical buyer, but still, I doubt that I actually wore it out. I thought a failure of this type would almost certainly be a manufacturing defect, so I emailed the photo to my brother, who was a materials scientist in a previous lifetime (now he’s a Presbyterian minister). He said it seemed pretty clear that the crack started on the outside of the pulley and propagated inwards. He also thinks the cause was a defect either in machining or possibly in casting.

In the meantime, I started using a rowing machine I bought about 25 years ago and almost never used. I row for about an hour pretty much every day. Leah is also rowing; she’s at about 30 minutes and climbing. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m getting as much benefit from the rowing machine as I did from the bike. The bike had a calorie display, which could, at least in principle, be pretty accurate, so I had a good idea of how much work I was doing. The rowing machine does not, but based on how I feel using it, I think it’s considerably less energy intensive.

Riding the bike and rowing are both pretty boring. I watch television as I exercise, but with the rower, I can’t flip channels without stopping. Even with satellite, it’s hard to find anything interesting to watch, especially in the daytime.

My brother wants me to keep the part so he can look at it the next time he comes down from Chattanooga. It is an interesting failure, if you want to look at it academically. I don’t much.

I will probably end up buying another stationary bike. I don’t know what type to buy. NordicTrack seems to have a reasonably good reputation, or at least name recognition, but I would hate to buy one and then have the damned thing break again.