I parked my bicycle and left it unlocked with absolutely no fear that it wouldn't be there when I returned.
I was at the front entrance of the Pioneer Valley Lodge, a full-service housing complex dedicated to "Gracious Retirement Living" conveniently located across the street from the Cache Valley Specialty Hospital.
Dozens of seniors are spending their remaining golden years, and their remaining gold, at the Pioneer Valley Lodge, where meals and other amenities, including church on Sunday, are provided.
I was near the end of my weeklong bicycle trip along Highway 89, 40 miles from the final destination at Bear Lake. But before I started up Logan Canyon I wanted to say hi to Maxine, a friend of mine who lives here.
I knocked on her door at No. 212, a three-room apartment that holds about a third of the furnishings she brought with her last January from California. The rest are in storage, along with her 1996 Buick with the 35,000 miles on it.
No one answered. I called her phone number. Still no answer. I retraced my steps past the game room where, at 10 in the morning, one of the residents had just started work on a 5,000-piece puzzle.
At the front office, a friendly woman named Irene said I might want to check the beauty salon on the third floor and stood up to show me the way. As we walked we talked about Maxine, whose Alzheimer's is getting worse. "It's a terrible thing to lose your mind," said Irene, "all you can do is hope it doesn't happen to you."
I first met Maxine 12 years ago when I lived in Santa Barbara. She was 75 then and still working almost every day, as active as a beehive. She'd spent most of her life in California. She and her husband moved there when he retired from the Army. Maxine met him during World War II when she was living in a tent on Guam and he was her commanding officer. She was a major.
She was born in Preston, Idaho, to an optometrist and a housewife and went to school at the University of Utah and the University of Idaho before volunteering to fight in the war. She got her degree in interior design, and when Chick, her husband, died almost 30 years ago, she opened up her own shop on State Street in Santa Barbara and took care of herself.
Talk to her at 87 and she can remember all of the above in amazing detail; it's what happened five minutes ago that's a struggle.
I found her in the beauty parlor sitting under a hair dryer. She beamed when she saw me, although it took her a minute to remember my name.
We talked for about 30 minutes and then I told Maxine I had to go. "Well, be careful," she said as I left, "How's your heart? Is it all right?"
For now, I think.
There was something about seeing Maxine that fit into a completely unexpected but prevalent theme of my bike trip. Tracing Highway 89 — the predecessor to today's freeways — took me through the past much more than the present.
At one point, my twin brother, Dee, joined me for a 90-mile ride from Richfield to Fairview, a stretch of highway we used to travel when we were kids, stuck in the backseat on the way to visit relatives.
We didn't do it on bicycles back then. Part of the reason was Lance Armstrong hadn't yet been invented, or even Greg LeMond, but a bigger part of the reason was we were 10.
As the years pile on you tend to gain an increasing appreciation that they won't pile on forever.
To tell the truth, I wasn't looking forward to the last section of 89. From Logan to the Beaver Mountain Summit overlooking Bear Lake is all uphill, and it was a hot day and I was beat.
But seeing Maxine changed that.
About halfway up the canyon, I pulled over at a place called Ricks Springs to dip my head in the water. Several cars were there. One kid, who looked about 10, passed me as I was getting off my bike and said, "Man, you're nuts."
That comment was countered a few minutes later when I was getting back on my bike and a man getting out of his car asked where I'd been. After I told him, he said, "I'm 48 and I'm 6-8 and weigh 260 and I can't run anymore. I'd like to get on a bike and get down to 240 and then I'd like to ride from Salt Lake to Jackson while I still can."
I knew where he was coming from. Not nuts, just still thinking about pedaling forward.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.