If I were to list the important people in my current life, the three gentlemen in the photograph wouldn’t be far from the top.  The reason?  They keep Laura and me on our bikes.  That is huge.

That’s Jerry Armstrong on the left.  He owns Capp’s Bike Shop on South Topeka Blvd.  His son, Chris, in the middle, manages the shop and Jeremy Hutsell is the chief mechanic.  Thanks to these three and Capp’s great staff, Laura and I ride thousands of miles a year on what I have always believed to be one greatest inventions ever, a bicycle.

A bicycle has always been a freedom machine for me.  I can’t remember how old I was when I first rode a bike.  I know it wasn’t mine.  No training wheels.  I just got on and went.  Buzzing straight from the nearby schoolyard baseball game, I rolled right up to my father and mother as they sat relaxing in the back yard.   The next day my father brought home my very first bike.  My life has always been better since.

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A woman was punched and kicked by another woman when she came to pick up her cousin at a townhouse on the 2000 block of Lake Street at 1:24 p. m. on Sunday. The suspect is a black woman about 5-foot-6 and 190 pounds. The suspect is a black woman about 5-foot tall and 100 pounds. A woman punched someone in the face at the A. J. Mini-Mart on the 1900 block of Church Street at 5:30 p. m. on Monday. A boy walking to the South Boulevard El station to attend school in Chicago was confronted by three males who wished to rob him between 6:50 a. m. and 7:15 a. m. on Monday on the 600 block of Oakton Street. The suspect is a black man about 6-foot tall. A man assaulted someone on the corner of Dodge Avenue and Emerson Street at 8:50 p. m. on Sunday. The suspects are white or Hispanic males wearing black hooded sweatshirts.

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