JUST LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE

Billy Powers learned how to ride a two wheeler before I did.  So one day, I hopped on his bike and started pedaling.  It came naturally.  The next thing I knew, I was at the other end of the block.  I didn’t know how to stop, so I just quit pedaling and fell down.  Seemed inefficient, but it was the best I could do.  I picked it up, jumped on, and headed back to his house.  It was a glorious moment.  The neighbors were impressed.  Except for Mrs. Powers, but nothing impressed her.

This was the beginning of an on-again off-again love affair with the bicycle that has lasted my entire life.

In elementary school, an undue influence of pop culture inspired me to crave a Pink Huffy faux-moto cross bike.  My parents bought me one, but the biking gods had other plans for it.  One night I left it unlocked in the driveway.  Instead of it simply getting stolen, it was replaced.  Replaced!  Was I part of some kind of karmic bike exchange?  Left in its place was a little white ten speed.  It had no brand markings.  Only 5 of the gears worked.  I don’t know where it came from.  I don’t know what kind it was.  I don’t know if its original owner wanted my pink Huffy.  When I came out the next morning and found it there, a strange mix of feelings came over me.  Regret that I had not locked up my bike, like my mother insisted, but a much larger sense of relief.  That bike was too pink for someone like me.  This ten speed had character.  The way an old MG is sexier than a new Corvette.  Like a beat up leather jacket you find in a thrift store, like something that’s always belonged to you even though it showed up in your life midway through its own.  I rode the hell out of that bike and eventually started to outgrow it.  So, when we moved to Chicago, it stayed in Miami.  To retire.

A high school job at a t-shirt store, and the desire to be mobile led me to the Cycle Scene on Devon Avenue in Chicago.  The friendly guys there fitted me to a shiny gold Motobecane Mirage, and over the course of the long winter, I paid for it.  $25 here, $10 there, and by spring I was ready to hit the road.  I spent countless weekends pedaling through my adolescent angst up Sheridan Road into the north shore - no helmet, listening to my walkman.  Thank you, guardians of the rider, for watching over me.  The Mirage moved to Boston with me when I came for college, and served as my transport all over the city. 

Delusions of bike commuting led me to Wheel Works where I bought a Bianchi Ocelot.  18 speeds, hybrid style.  The Mirage was feeling at once too clunky and too narrow for the streets of Boston.  I held the maybe 50 bucks I got for it, and felt I had just betrayed an old friend.  I never quite came through on my commitment to ride to work, and the Bianchi spent more time in the basement than on the road.  I bought a car.

When I moved to LA, I sold it to a friend.  She never rode it either.  Upon my returning to Boston, she gave it back to me.  I rode it now and then until last summer when another friend was training for a long distance ride and wanted some company.  I decided that it was time hop back on.  We covered a lot of ground, but it felt too heavy.  Not the kind of bike you cruise 40 miles on.  I set my sites on a road bike.  A real road bike.  A clicky pedal 24 speed (at least), light as air road bike.

Then I started pricing them.  Discouraged, I continued on the Bianchi, cursing it with every hill, angry that I wasn’t pedaling efficiently. 

Then, a chance encounter at EMS, led me to a discounted “last year’s model” sale.  Finally, an affordable bike, a knowledgeable bike tech, and no more excuses.  While Scott bicycles are not a well known brand (hell, neither is Motobecane), they are a pretty cool company based in Idaho, whose bikes are well made, and their “Speedster” fit me perfectly.

On our maiden voyage, I recalled that moment on Billy’s bike, at the corner, in front of the Caspers’ house wanting to stop, not knowing how, and feeling myself fall.  Here I was, nearly 40 years later, on the Minute Man Bikeway, somewhere between Lexington and Bedford, nervously anticipating the cross street.  I got my right foot out of the pedal, but shifted my weight wrong.  I fell to my left.  Hard.  I picked myself up, and assured the people stopped at the red light, talking on their cell phones, who didn’t notice, that I was okay.  Part of me longed for the safety of my hybrid.  I know how to ride that bike.  I know how to finagle around the middle gear shifting problems, I can take my feet off the pedals without thinking about it – whenever I damn well please.  But where’s the pleasure?  That bike was about pragmatism, not joy.  Our relationship was stale, it felt more like a business arrangement.  “I’ll take you where you want to go,” as opposed to, “Let’s go and see where we end up.”  I don’t know how long this love affair is going to last, but it’s bound to be one hell of a ride.


*huffy image courtesy Mt. Ranier Bicycle Co-op, Motobecane off a Vintage bike website, and the Scott comes from the EMS website.  Please don't sue me.