the old-school guestbook archives
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story of my bikes... ~ April 24, 2003 - 9:15 p.m. I bought a bicycle today. oh, it makes me so happy. maybe you have a picture in your head of a mountain bike, a street bike, something grown-up with gear shifters and maybe even a light. but no. I got your classic southeast asian bicycle, what my friend wayne calls a "sit-up-and-beg" bike. it's sparklyshiny red. with a white wire basket in the front. a shiny silver bell that goes ca-ching! ca-ching!. handbrakes. and not one, but two cushy, white seats. the one over the back fender is for your passenger (I have seen entire asian families on one bicycle), and it's paired with-- here's the kicker-- footpegs. no shit. I'm just dying to ride someone around on the back of my bike. there's even a plastic guard to keep their clothes from getting caught in the spokes. me and johanna went down there together and bargained hard, talking the sweet lady at the store down to thirty-five dollars apiece. she also promised to service them for us if anything goes wrong, although she told us we don't do this for lao people, not for cheap bikes like these. she's chinese, I think, and seemed to like us a lot. all of us strangers in this land. johanna and I ended up with the same bike, only hers is blue. I love my bike, I do. it reminds me of nothing so much as the schwinns I rode when I was a kid. my first bike was a blue schwinn, and I loved it beyond reason. my parents didn't believe in training wheels, and so I learned to ride the old fashioned way. my dad took me out on the sidewalk in front of the house and ran along behind me, holding the seat as I pedaled. I never even realized when he let go. I remember red, one of the old folks next door, grinning and waving at me as I called "I'm learning how to ride a bike!" of course, I bailed a couple of times, but I took it bravely, and it wasn't long before I was riding all over the neighborhood. my bike was integrated swiftly into the rich imaginary world I inhabited as a little girl, so much safer than the realities of my life. but truly, I had a dad who loved me, bought me a bike, and taught me to ride. a blessing I've since learned to value highly. my blue schwinn had a name, but I'm sad to say that I don't remember it. I was strangely literal-minded when it came to naming, so it may well have been called blue. most often, it was a horse. I even had a bundle of grasses I tied to the back fender for a tail. I decorated it every year for the fourth of july parade, going down to the ben franklin to buy streamers and spangly things. my execution, however, was sloppy, and there was always some kid who had a bike more like a parade float, so I never won the bike decorating contest. I think I got an honorable mention one year (the year I strapped a vague diorama to the handlebars), and was given a kickball. thinking about those fourth of july celebrations in the park always brings back the tast of vanilla ice cream and disposable wooden spoons, passed out for free by the cupful. that blue schwinn was stolen, sadly, by a weird kid who showed up in the neighborhood one day and started feeling up everyone's bikes in a way that would seem oddly sexual later in life. he stopped me in the alley and tried to mug me for my bike, but he was pretty vague about it and I didn't even realize what was going on. not being terribly sofisticated in the ways of the world, I rode the half a block home and dropped my bike in the yard, the way I often did. I went inside for a snack, came out, and it was gone. surprise. such heartbreak, at that age. my bike. the one I learned to ride on. my horse. on my next birthday, I got a red bike, with a banana seat, and soon all was forgotten. that one, I think, broke down in the end. the way they do. it was my last new bike for a long time. I got a hand-me-down street bike of my sister's when I was in something like 6th grade. it had three speeds, handbrakes, and skinny tires, and it made me feel awfully grown up. I rode it most often to the library and back. my imaginary world still sustained me, but more and more I was diving into my voracious reading habit. by the time I got to middle school, I knew the university library like the back of my hand. I don't remember when that bike fell apart, but I do know that by the time I got my first mountain bike hybrid for my nineteenth birthday, it had been some years since I'd ridden. that bike got me through quitting smoking and getting sober, that summer I worked out at the gym four or five times a week because I didn't know what else to do with myself. my muscles kicked ass, especially the calves that took me the five miles to the Y and back. that one got stripped during my first stint in santa cruz, a co-op job during college at antioch. I left it locked on pacific avenue overnight, and came back in the morning to find that they'd not only taken the seat and the wheel, but the pedals and the handlebars. I was pretty attached to that bike, and shipped its remains across the country a couple of times, thinking I'd get together the money to fix it back up. which turned into an ugly scene in philadelphia, when my boyfriend of three years got sick of having it in the corner of our tiny efficiency apartment and growled (in the absolute wrong tone of voice) that I should get rid of it. he then went into the bathroom to shave, and something inside of me snapped. I went to the corner, picked up the bike frame, carried it down three flights of stairs and threw it out on the sidewalk. five minutes later he came out of the bathroom and I told him what I'd done. he was confused and a little contrite and wanted me to go and get it back. I went back down and it was already gone. god love the addicts of center city philly. I had a good job then, in philadelphia, and one of the more entertaining items on my dali-esque resume: I waited tables in a historic restaurant at which we all had to wear pilgrim costumes and be prepared to spout history at a moment's notice. it was a fine-dining restaurant, and I was the perfect pilgrim girl with my long red braid, and I made bank. so I bought myself a brand new mountain bike, purple of course, and I loved that bike so much. rode it all over philly and almost died more than once. philadelphia drivers are insane. I've seen ambulances with flashing lights stuck in traffic in philly because no one would get out of the way. slow for the yellow light and you get rear-ended. so, my bike. the first one, you'll notice, that I bought with my own money, and that made it extra special. that one made it to california with me, carried me up and down the mountain many times, living up to its word. I sold it, finally, when I sold everything-- somewhere at the beginning of this diary, when I liquidated my life and hit the road. two and a half years ago. and what a road it's been. oh, my. and now I finally have another home. and another bike. on the other side of the world from that house where I first wobbled down the sidewalk, my dad panting and red-faced behind me. who knew it was such a story?
(((rings))) |