Susan Taylor

By Dave Taylor

A funny thing happened to Susan Taylor on her way to becoming a senior: daily life. Taylor, 66, likes to stay active but she’s also built a reputation as a bit of a comedian and she finds entertainment and comedic anecdotes from her daily bike rides and just from the process of aging.
“I call it my therapy,” Taylor said of her nearly daily bike rides. “I love the scenery and it just helps my general mental and physical health.”
She walks and rides her bike on Muddy Gut Road where she lives, riding for exercise on a loop that begins at her house, runs along River Road, and enters back on the other end of Muddy Gut. It’s about a nine mile trip.
Occasionally she goes much farther.
“About once or twice a year I ride to Lewisport and back just so I can say I did,” she said. “Once a year to Lewisport’s enough for a little old lady… This has always been my only hobby from the time I was a little girl and I’m just real proud of myself to be able to do it at 66.”
She’s feeling good, partly due to trying to eat right, but also because of the rides.
“It helps everything,” she said. “It builds up my muscle tone, it helps my stamina. I feel stronger when I ride every day.”
But even though she’s riding on country roads it doesn’t mean there’s not excitement. Nearby dogs have decided she might be an occasional threat to their territory.
“I was going in Emmick Landing and I carry vinegar in a bottle for the dogs, if I decide I’m riding in there,” she said.
The dogs aren’t always there because they roam, but they make it interesting when they are there.
“When there’s three of them it’s a pack, see, and they get real brave,” she said. “So I have the vinegar spray and that gets their attention, it gets them away from me… They keep barking but they stop and they make a face.”
But she sees the same dogs on other parts of the road away from their home and it’s a whole different story.
“If I meet them there before they get on their territory, they don’t even look at me or pay any attention to me. All three of them, they just trot on by,” she said.
Other animal encounters are much sweeter.
“A mama deer and a baby deer came out the other day when I was riding my bike, and the baby deer chased me down the road,” she said. “The mom deer went in the corn and the baby deer thought I was the mom. I said it saw my skinny brown legs and thought I was the deer and started chasing after them.”
“I hollered back ‘your mom is in the corn! I’m not your mom!’” she said. “It finally stopped but it was catching up to me because those little things are fast.”
That something funny would happen is par for the course for Taylor, who performed a stand-up comedy routine a couple of years ago at a fundraiser in Lewisport and people still talk about it to this day.
“I think up something funny every day,” she said.
But she doesn’t usually write it down so she forgets it. But for that show she did write things down, where she talked about being a woman and getting older.
“Reality is funnier than anything you can make up,” she said. “That time was from 20 to 60. Now it’ll be from 60 on.”
“I have a t-shirt I had somebody make for me that says ‘what’s not dried up is leaking,’” she said. “But the young men go ‘ewww’ and the women think it’s hilarious, especially us older women. “That’s why I said my comedy will have to be for 50 and over.
“You won’t be able to handle it,” she said, “because I’ve seen the future. It’s not pretty, and you better have a sense of humor. That helps, anyway.”
dave.hancockclarion
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