I’m not quite sure where the bike fits in the arc of my story, because its everywhere. One day I went to my best friends house and his dad taught me how to ride a red sparkly bike, and then it was just always there.
There was something weird about bikes, because I rode to school alone staring in 4th grade. The bike rack had one bike on it… mine. I was the only kid riding to school for 4th and 5th grade … i had a little bit of company in the 6th grade. The parents almost went insane, because I had to cross a huge highway – the start of I-95 that snaked its way from Miami, Florida all the way to Augusta, Maine. It was about 6 or 8 lanes but really it was just a big traffic light. I only had one problem, when some idiot one morning didn’t see me and nicked me in slow motion because he was turning right, as in right into me crossing I-95.
Other than that most bike injuries were self inflicted or the result of faulty maintenance standards on my part. A chain falling off, or just basically riding in a spot I shouldn’t have and falling off. Scrapes and bruises showed up when I was riding in unfamiliar terrain like in Maine, but I seldom fell or crashed once I got the hang of it. I was a pretty cautious rider.
A part of riding is you become aware of all. The dog that juts on the sidewalk, the hidden driveways, the cracks and bumps and potholes. I wonder how many good drivers started as good bikers when they were kids.
I can remember riding my bike to the Miami Seaquarium over this gigantic bridge that went over the ocean. You had to take this causeway that started with a toll booth out on this string of islands with a bunch of bridges. My brother sat in a bike seat latched on to a bigger bike ridden by some non-descript nanny or baby sitter. He was having the time of his life, and the view was spectacular. I was terrified.
It was probably one of the earliest times I remember fear.
Not fear in the sense that I was scared or couldn’t do it, because I knew I could get over that bridge. But more in the sense of “hey, you had better focus here, or else this could go really badly.”
That idea of “Focus Fear” – fear that makes you buckle down and get singularity on the situation at hand – always served me well throughout life. It was right after I scrapped my pedal on the side of the wall and my bike started to go sideways on the descent of the biggest bridge, that I discovered “focus fear” for the first time. I can remember riding over the grate on the bridge and looking down and just seeing boats and frothy water.
Focus Fear.
But those were outliers for the bike, more often the bike just brought joy. In a weird way, it was independence at a very early age. I rode my bike home from school every day as fast or as slow as I wanted. I could daydream, or sing songs, or play random made up games where the bike was actually a spaceship. I was an intergalactic hero-spy that had to destroy trucks and car by shooting lasers out of my handlebars. Big trucks and semis were always bonuses.
I explained this game one day in detail to a massive crush – Veronica with the beautiful long black hair. She actually seemed quite interested, and asked me about it several times later. I just lied and said I didn’t play the space game anymore. I was embarrassed. Now I wish I would have just told her the truth, that I had just gotten a new high score, because in retrospect she seemed down with intergalactic bikes.
When I got placed in some hippy dippy advanced school two days a week in elementary school, it got even more interesting, because I had to learn a new route, and so Mondays and Thursdays would be a ride to the “gifted” school, and Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays I would ride to the boring old main elementary school, terrifying two sets of parents.
I think my mom actually enjoyed the “controversy” and dirty looks she got from other parents about my travels. She really didn’t give a fuck. She knew I was a good rider. So I wasn’t just the loner latch-key kid, but a lonely latch-key kid riding a bike by myself for an hour a day.
I chose my first musical instrument, the flute, because it would fit on the bike. I would grab two red and blue bungie cords and strap the flute and the music stand case to the center of the mast. There was definitely a few times where the bungie cords weren’t quite set right, and my music career would come crashing down on the sidewalk while in motion. For the most part it was a pretty good system. If I had band in the mornings, then you just strapped on the flute and hit the road.
I rode my bike to school quite a bit in the 10th grade, until I realized how colossally uncool this was, even though by this time the flute had been long left in a drawer. I was so cool in 10th grade I would ride my bike to school, then over to the golf course to practice holding my spot as the worst player on the golf team.
10th grade was a bit of a rough year for me. In 11th grade I got a car, which helped a bit, but not much.
But wherever I ended up, a bike normally followed. Some of my happiest moments in college were not some silly keg party, but riding a random bike into town slightly buzzed with a friend after one of those silly keg parties to hit the 24 hour supermarket.
Maybe that’s why New York never quite worked. Not that it wasn’t fun, or full of parties and debauchery, but you just couldn’t ride a bike. Well I mean, you could, if you wanted to have about a 50% chance of getting smushed in Manhattan. But really it was either walk or the subway, there wasn’t really ever a bike. After I left NYC, all of those blue bike share stations cropped up like weeds. Maybe it would have been different, but the Citibank logo never felt quite right.
When I first moved to Seattle I got a bike before I got a car. I think I grabbed a used on for 100 bucks at the bike shop. I can remember for some reason riding my bike waaay too far to try a computer at Best Buy. It was some huge long massive ride and I had no idea where anything was, but it was almost an intro to the city. I rode my bike to work downtown as a contractor for Microsoft. And I rode to work as a “security guard” at a dive bar on second ave, with the security mostly consisting of emptying ashtrays and picking up empty glasses.
The bike was always there.
Many people tried to steal my bike, once they even got a tire. And a bunch of lights have gone missing. But all in all the bike was always there. I ride it twice a week, and occasionally to work, although I do enjoy walking more now that I am an older lad. Now there are audio books and podcasts to replace having to shoot all of those galactic uhaul trucks with my old rusted out lasers.
If things go right, the daughter and I have a standing date on Friday nights for a bike ride, weather permitting. We even rode our bikes to school together a few times in Kindergarten last year.
I imagined the faces on some of the parents watching us cross over I-95’s sister on the west coast [I-5] were as shocked as they were in 4th grade. But my mom looked down smiling, because she knew my daughter could handle it.
It always seems to come back around after long enough – you might as well hop on a bike and enjoy historys ride.
Simpletition - Shawn D. Madden 