Day Two Hundred Eleven: Four wheels vs. Two

I know I have been going on and on about my love affair with my bike. It has been there as long as I can remember. My first bike was red and white with red grips and training wheels. I rode those training wheels into the ground. I remember pedaling along at top speed, braids blowing, hands gripping handlebars, all with wicked lean to first one creaky little wheel then turn and lean on the other one. I used them both as crutch and tool. Eventually the aluminum supports got bent and the rubber wheels wore down on the gravel roads I cruised on. 


Finally came the day my dad decided it was time for me to ride like a big girl, without training wheels. I could hardly wait, hurry up daddy. 


The front yard had a slope to it, providing a launching pad for me and the now two wheeled red bike. My dad gave me a shove and I careened across the yard, out on to the driveway, weeee "I am riding Daddy! Look!". I sailed on past the house, out the back way and just when I was going good I hit a stone and veered to the right and into the thistle patch growing on the side of the road. Luckily it was dense and I was little, I got jabbed a bit but my dad pulled me and my bike out of the mess. And off I went, my love affair in full bloom. 


And next it was the blue girls bike hand me down from my sister who never rode it. Then the red tax return money bike my mom bought me in ninth grade. Then the white Panasonic that I bought with dish washer wages to ride from coast to coast the summer after high school. In college I got a Peugeot bicycle and rode that around campus and the Palouse until I graduated and moved to San Diego. There, I got hit by a car and the settlement bought me a new Cannondale worthy of a few triathlons along the ocean. That did fine until I hit the mean streets of New York City and I bought a hybrid. I loved that bike and took it to Europe where it was stolen from the vestible of a pension in Grand Canaria. Once back in the states and Idaho, I bought a mountain bike, a Gary Fisher, so I could ride around Gisborne Mountain while I was a fire lookout. Since then I also picked up a new Cannondale road bike that goes like the wind.


Whew, that was awesome for me. How was it for you?

Friday, July 30: I vote two wheels.