By Jim Hagarty
2006
There it sat in the neighbour’s driveway. A fine-looking racing bike: All blue with blue fenders. The seat was a bit chewed up but everything else looked fine. Especially the pricetag.
Ten dollars.
The thought, “How could I go wrong?” ran through my head. The fact was, I couldn’t. So I ran home, raided the penny jar and came up with a fistful of coins. I deposited them in the seller’s grateful hands, mounted the best bargain I’d run into in a long time, and rode off towards home.
I only fell off the blasted thing twice – the second time almost hitting my garage door in the process. The first time, on the sidewalk heading home, had I fallen to my right (and into the street) instead of my left (and onto a lawn) I might still be in traction or worse.
When we want to remind ourselves that we’re up to a challenge, we almost always compare it to riding a bike: Once you learn how, you never forget. A theory, I think, that has never been challenged. Even riding a bike is not always just like riding a bike.
Maybe it has something to do, however, with the way you learned to ride. I well remember that day in our farm laneway when my father ran along beside me with his hand on my bike seat till he let go and I was off on my first solo flight. I might still be going, perhaps, had it not been for the fact that a big John Deere harvester jumped out in front of me. Up and over the handlebars I soared and into the guts of the machine which were designed to cut up corn, not kids.
I had learned to ride my bike, all right, but I hadn’t learned to turn. Or stop.
Fifty years later, much the same feelings arose in me as my steel garage door came racing down the driveway towards me. I put the bike away, determined to sell it at the next opportunity. Its wheels were too big and, as I am equipped with notoriously short legs (my ancestors were leprechauns), I just couldn’t fit onto it.
But a Higher Power must have wanted to see me sitting atop a two-wheeler because last week, a bit farther up my street, I hit the jackpot. Another bike, even finer-looking than the first. Silver fenders. Chain guard. Old-style handlebars – not those silly, curved racing ones. Handbrakes that really work. And the best part – a total of three speeds which, even at that, are two more than I need but about 18 fewer than most bikes nowadays.
It also had an almost-new big, fat seat, the better to carry not-so-new big, fat seats.
This time, I got smart and asked the owner if I could take it for a ride before buying it. He agreed, not knowing whether or not he would ever see me or his vehicle again. A few yards down the road, I knew this was the one. Forty dollars came flying out of my pocket like they had wings on and I rode my purchase home.
My family all came out to see Dad tour up and down in front of the house on his new classic bike. The pressure’s been on me for some time to get with the program. Finally, I had made it, without a big cash outlay, to boot.
I didn’t do it for fitness, though it probably won’t hurt in that department, assuming I don’t get run down by an 18-wheeler. I did it for the family. I’ve missed out on too much the past few years as kids and Mom have cycled up and down, all over town.
But after the kids were in bed the night I bought it, I took my bike to a nearby parking lot and practised a few old techniques. Little by little, things started to come back to me. And a couple of nights later, after I finished cutting the lawn, I found myself wanting to go for a ride. Not to please anyone else but me. It was great.
The wind whipping by my ears, the earth moving under my feet. And not a John Deere harvester in sight.
