Though I like to think of myself as a young pup, it's becoming more evident each passing day that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth. This past weekend, as I was nearing the end of a second ten-hour day in a row thrashin' on the Budget Beater roadster, I realized that not only had I worked up a pretty good sweat, but I was beginning to suffer from some aches and pains that I'd, up until that point, tried to ignore.
I have a sneaking suspicion the mitigating factor for owning up to these minor pre-existing maladies is the combination of my wife's concern and incessant chiding about the constant cigarette in my mouth and the results of my latest medical check-up by the more than thorough Dr. Turnyor Hedncoff. The good doctor kindly informed me that not only was I not as young as I used to be, but I also suffer from a relatively high bad-cholesterol count, and worse, an extremely low good-cholesterol count. Hmmm, how about that. I'd heard about cholesterol being bad for you, but never had a clue there was such a thing as "good" cholesterol.
Well, he informed me that there is indeed both good and bad cholesterol and proceeded to explain what each is and how they differ. So, as a sort of public health service to all you car guys out there who ignore anything that doesn't relate to hot rods, here's a quick explanation of what I think they are and how we may possibly help ourselves keep them in balance.
Bad cholesterol is kinda like the sludge you'd find in the pan of a newly discovered flathead just unearthed from a backwoods bone yard. a thick, oozing mass of semi-gelatinous crud that will clog your arteries as surely as it did the oil galleys of said 8BA. Good cholesterol is the equivalent of cross between Prolong and Slick-50. It dilutes that sludge and coats those arteries with a veneer that's slicker than snot precluding the goop from sticking to walls and clogging your galleys.
Okay, now that we've gotten a bit of info in terms that we can all understand, here's a few suggestions on how to help get these two conflicting culprits closer in balance. Since I've been told that the bad sludge is caused by an excess of fairground, cruise-night, and club meeting burgers, fries, and other assorted junk food. I've figured you could help matters by cutting out most of the junk food and drink more beer. Unfortunately, I was informed that raising the good cholesterol is achieved by, get this, exercise!
It's hard to believe that we don't get enough exercise out in the garage. With all that bending, stretching, lifting, stooping, swearing, lying, and exaggerating that goes on, you'd think we'd have an abundance of the good stuff in our systems. Alas, I guess more exercise is needed. It's to this end that I've come up with a solution I think will work for me- bicycling!
That's right, making some time for riding a bike is how I'm gonna get myself a bit of real exercise. Of course, being the rodder I am, I've not settled for some ordinary run-of-the-mill bike, I'm going for a hot rod two-wheeler. I've found a company on the Web that makes an array of bike models any car guy or car kid would love to be seen on. The company's called Nirve, and their Web site is www.nirve.com. I've pretty much decided on a new model they call the Switchblade. Check out the rendering shown here. Now this is a two-wheeler that I'd happily cruise down the road to check out the local cruise night on-heck, I may even start a local "old fart on custom bike" trend while I pedal my way back to health. -RIZ