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Uptown Radio

Grabbing Life By the Handlebars


ARNOLDI 1: Welcome to Uptown Radio. I’m Oliver Arnoldi.

HUMBERT 1: And I’m Adele Humbert. When you’re a kid, you’re constantly learning new things. But as you grow older, pushing your limits can be more difficult.

ARNOLDI 2: Bonnie Jean Morris found this out the hard way. More than ten years ago, she tried riding a bike for the first time. But get this — she was in her 60s. Now, Jean recently passed away, but her granddaughter, Sara Smith, remembers that sunny afternoon in San Diego when her grandmother tried to grab life by the handlebars.

ARNOLDI_2WAY_ONE: She never learned how to ride a bike as a child. So, you know, we were out in the driveway as kids, you know, riding the bikes. And she said, “Hey, I want to try it.”   (0:12)

ARNOLDI 3: Jean chose a BMX — you know, the kind of dirt bike that 12-year-olds everywhere ride. The driveway was slanted downhill. And it was filled with parked cars, including her brown truck. But that didn’t stop her.

ARNOLDI_2WAY_TWO:  So we get her on the bike and I’m holding the back of the seat, and I tell her to pedal. And I’m going and going. And I think she has it, but I let go of the bike. And she starts like bouncing on the bike. She comes off the seat. She has her feet on the ground, trying to balance her bike and she’s kind of screaming, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” [laughs] She comes close to her truck, and I don’t know if she just fell or if she decided she was just done. She falls into the tire of her truck. The bike’s laying on top of her. I’m cracking up. I was doubled over, tears coming out of my eyes, laughing so hard at her. [laughs] Because it was just so funny. (0:45)

ARNOLDI 4: Her grandmother thought so, too. Even though she ended up on crutches for two weeks.

ARNOLDI_2WAY_THREE: She just kept saying, “Well, you can’t teach an old dog a new trick.” (0:10)

ARNOLDI 5:  But sometimes old dogs can learn new tricks. Today on Uptown Radio, we have stories of NYC video rental stores staying alive in the age of on-demand streaming. HUMBERT 2: And of struggles to maintain the old, like finding enough pilots to fly aircrafts and the downsides to preserving historic buildings. All that and more in the first part of our show.

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