I remember the moment I learned how to ride a bicycle. I didn’t have training wheels, I had a hill. Anyone who knows basic physics can put that together. If you started at the top and rode down, the momentum would keep you rolling and in balance. I thought that was a fabulous idea and I rode like that for weeks. My brother, on the other hand, was not quite so impressed when, years later, I tried to teach him to ride the same way. (And he still blames me for not riding a bike.) But the technique worked for me and, as long as I didn’t actually need to go anywhere, I would have been fine indefinitely. But bicycles are modes of transportation, vehicles, and (if you are under the age of sixteen) a way of life. So one day, at the bottom of the hill I put my right foot on the pedal, pushed down with the entire weight of my body, and in one fluid motion the bike started to move. I marvel to think on it now. It’s fascinating that a person’s brain can so accurately calculate the correct speed and balance with their specific center of gravity to keep a two wheeled, un-motorized machine moving.
I rode my bike everywhere. I spent hours imagining it as a race car, a prized jumping stallion, a motorcycle. I rode to my best friend’s house so that we could go to the park and library. At night I parked it in the garage to keep it out of the rain. When, at the age of ten, we moved out of our small Canadian town and into rural Minnesota I was once again reminded that if you can’t catch a city bus you have to find alternate transportation. New bike, new friends and new memories. Including heartlessly hurling my brother down the only hill in town.
I have always owned a bike and it appears that they have been a part of my past. The story could end there but for one thing.
I started work in a bike shop a little while ago, and was asked one day very casually by a co-worker what significance bikes had in my life. To my surprise, the question really stopped me in my tracks. When I took this job I had been completely ready to wait on customers, tackle the computer system, learn bike repair … but I hadn’t been prepared to answer a philosophical question about bicycling. I spent all day thinking about it. I looked at bikes, rode bikes, talked to people about bikes. Fast forward to the part of the day that I am standing in the shop with a puzzled look on my face, covered in grease as I try ineptly to reassemble the gears on a wheel hub when I hear what I have been told is the bike repair creed… Right tighty, lefty loosy. Seems like a simple concept but then at first glance a bike seems like a simple machine. To ride a bike you need to be intelligent, coordinated and fit. Most of the people on the planet know how to ride a bike. In China there a significantly more bikes than cars. And just like anything else you can easily find the bike equivalent of a Porsche or Metro.
To say that a bike is only a mode of transportation is to say that Aris Allens are only shoes or the Gruyere is only a cheese. Isn’t it the simplest things that usually work the best and bring us the most joy? Be nice to people, smile at everyone, share. So, here is my answer… I own a classic, baby blue Schwinn tandem bike. It has those great big seats with the huge springs under them and since you have to put the bigger person on the front sometimes I can get away with lifting me feet of the pedals and seeing if the guy in front notices. The great thing about a tandem is that it requires two people and everyone always seem to smile and wave at you when you ride one.
That doesn’t usually happen when I climb into my Oldsmobile.
