Looks Can Be Deceiving

Monkette and I headed over to Starbucks to grab some coffee before heading over to the big street demonstration that Councilman Scott Galvin had organized to protest Florida Power & Light's plan to run high tension lines on 80 foot tall concrete poles through North Miami's residential neighborhoods. When we got there Doug was having breakfast and invited us to join him.

We run into him a few days a week. He always chides me for reading "that worthless paper", the Miami Herald. He reads the New York Times. He doesn't trust anybody else's world or national news. After I've flipped through the Herald's Section A we usually spend some time discussing the latest misadventures of our bumbling president.

Doug rides everyplace on his bike, sometimes riding the forty miles south to Homestead, other times the twenty-five miles north to Fort Lauderdale, and back again, of course. Rain or shine. He's in amazing shape for 73. He also has a job being resident manager and handyman for a row of warehouse bays. He lives in one of them.

Every morning he has the same breakfast, coffee and a bagel. Somehow he manages to bite off chunks and chew them up without any teeth. His gums must have some pretty tough calouses on them!

He keeps telling me that he's got a bike for me, all I have to do is go pick it up and it's mine for free. It's all adjusted, oiled and greased, a 26 inch wheel mountain bike with good tires. I plan on doing just that as soon as the weather cools off a bit. The four or five blocks from my house to Starbucks would be no problem. It might be awhile, though, before I'm in shape for the Homestead trek.