Bicycle Days
My first bicycle was pre-owned, cost ten dollars, and was delivered to our house on a hot summer afternoon by a teenaged boy named Jackie who looked like a hood. As a matter of fact, Jackie eventually ended up in jail for armed robbery, but I remember him best as the person who tricked me into riding a two-wheeler. He was the only one sufficiently ruthless to promise he would never let go of me and then of course let go. I was at the end of the street before I realized I was sailing on my own. It was a necessary betrayal. He laughed at my outrage.
On the day that the bicycle arrived, we had gone to the beach at Coney Island, but my father hinted of a pending surprise. When we got home I eagerly ran up the stairs to investigate. Someone had draped the bike with a bed sheet and my father announced grandly that it was a special laundry-hanging contraption just for me, which sounded ludicrous even then, but my uncertain heart took a momentary dive. I pulled the sheet off, and there it was: my first bike, a glinting blue Schwinn that instantly expanded the radius of my world and transformed me into a girl of means, a girl who could get around.
Years later, there was Gretel – my Chicago bike, also second-hand. It was turquoise and white, an affable old cruiser with wide rusted fenders and a handle-bar bell. That bike was my only autonomy in an alien life. On Saturdays I would pedal to a city park where I'd sit in the sun being sad, but while I was on the bicycle, I felt competent and mobile -- I was going someplace then, and I was doing it on my own steam.I never really lost that good feeling about bicycles, but they did not figure importantly in my life again until the early 1980s. Shortly after I moved to California I was lucky enough to meet up with a bunch of cyclists who did most of their riding off-road on multi-geared bikes with fat tires. Mountain biking was not a sport then -- it was more like a wonderful secret, a chance to feel like a kid and go exploring outdoors with your friends.
As you can see from the above photo, we were definitely not cool. We often wore knee socks and nylon shorts, tee shirts or polypropylene tops, a bandana or a baseball cap. Here we are about to head up Saddleback via the Harding Truck Trail. Only Richard (in the white and red shirt) has a helmet, which is hanging from his handle bar. He also seems to be wearing some kind of gardening gloves.We enjoyed a long epoch of two-wheeled adventures, but the people I rode with are dear to me still, and my bike remains a trusty companion. Just today I pedaled solo into the hills on my old Mantis, a bicycle that could exist simply as a work of art if it weren't so much more. As I rode, I listened on my i-pod to a piece by Keith Jarrett called The Cure, which turned out to be the perfect soundtrack. Because it was. It usually is.