Bicycle

Bicycles. I was listening to the radio and a guy was telling a story on This American Life about how when he was twelve, his dad walked downtown with him and bought him a bike. On his bike ride home on his brand new bike, he stopped in a convenient store to play a video game. When he came back out, the bike was gone. He walked home terrified and arrived there to find his father had stolen it to teach him a lesson.

It got me thinking about my various wheels as a kids. At six I would tear up and down our street on my Big Wheels. If they had them in adult size today, I think I might seriously considering investing in one. When I was eight, we took a summer vacation in Poccasset Cape Cod and my cousin Andy, taught me how to ride a two wheeler. I think it may have consisted to sending me down a long gradual hill.

One of my best friends when I was a kid was a boy down the street named Andy. He was two year younger than me and we hung-out all the time. We built forts, played in their family pool, built some more forts. I remember in the winter once, sitting on his porch making a fake fire. We were breaking up sticks and he was yanking at the branch on one of the sticks he was trying to break-up. I knew what was going to happen by the angle of the stick. I don't know if it occurred to me to say anything or if it just happened too fast, but the little part of the stick in one hand broke and the other, he jammed straight up his nose. I remember the blood gushing down his snowsuit while he wailed.

I digress. Come summer, Andy and I lived on our bikes. I likely rode a boys bike, considering I wanted to be a boy at the time. We would ride around the neighborhood and take special pleasure in the back parking lot of the library. It was a tiny place, but there was one step from the back door which had, on the other side, a handicap ramp. Awesome.

A year or so later, my favorite black and yellow checkered Huffy was stolen from the bike rack at front of the library. Another time, I went to the garage to find my bike and it wasn't there. I was convinced someone had stolen it and was a bit embarrassed when I found it in the neighbor's yard where I had left it a few days before when I was playing there.

In high school, or middle school, my ten speed (which I treated like a dirt bike) was stolen again. I went to the police station to report it. The cops told me they had some bikes brought in recently. They took me to their bike holding facility and I spotted it right away. "Can you prove it's yours?" he asked. I wouldn't' thinking I could really, but I immediately remembered the tear on the underside of one of the handle bars. He was impressed. He handed it over to me.

I used to ride my bike for miles to the soccer practice fields. I kind of hated doing that actually. Who wants to ride after they're hot and tired from practice? I rode a bike to school for a while. My friend Rachel and I, when we were particularly attached at the hip in middle and early high school, would ride bikes to meet in between where our two homes met, so we could talk and complain about the trials and tribulations of being in middle school or early high school. Now I ride my mountain bike grudgingly, for excercise.

I wonder when that shift happened; when the freedom and fun my bike gave me became a tiring mode of transportation.