Wheels

When we retired, I badgered and cajoled Henry until he bought us bicycles. He resisted at first, saying that I wouldn’t ride it. This, of course, was not my first bike. In fact, I have a half-century’s worth of biking memories.

I remember my first bicycle, a big red coaster bike I received from Mom and Daddy one year. I imagine that bike was probably used and that Dad had painted and fixed it up before I saw it. I must’ve been at least eight years old when I learned to ride, shakily steering down Bardo Lane after Daddy let go his guiding hand. I don’t remember a lot about those early days, except for clothes-pinning old playing cards to the spokes with my friend Pam, making a satisfying clatter as we pedaled down the street. We also tried riding “no hands,” which worked for awhile, so long as we were going on level pavement. Being able to ride gave us a certain kind of freedom in those days. I could ride to Granddad’s butcher shop to pick up Mom’s order or ride to Granny’s to play Scrabble. Sometimes, Pam and I would ride over to “the ditch” and sit on its bank to eat our lunch; other times we’d ride to the 7Up bottling company where we’d get free samples of the sweet soda. Back then, nobody had heard of bike helmets. We didn’t have bicycle lanes painted on the pavement. We just rode. If we fell off and skinned our knees, we limped back home for Band-Aids and sympathy.

There were some bike mishaps in my experience. One summer our family, Mom, Daddy, three of us kids and Granny, camped for a week in Yosemite. Since our sister was only 13 months old, she stayed back at camp with Granny while the four of us rented bikes for a ride in Yosemite Valley. It wasn’t like riding at home: the scenery was way better, but the traffic was intimidating. Somewhere along the way, I managed to take a tumble where the asphalt met the sandy shoulder. My timing was great. As soon as I crashed the bike, the threatening clouds turned into a downpour. Mom waited with me and my brother Brent in the meadow while Dad pedaled back to get the stationwagon. This wasn’t any skinned-knee tumble: this was a broken collarbone, necessitating a trip to the Yosemite hospital. Once the doctor wrapped my broken wing in a tight figure-eight of first-aid tape, we returned to the campground. The break didn’t spoil our camping or my memories of Yosemite, but I never rode a bicycle there again.

In 1971 when Henry and I were first married, I wanted us to have bikes. “It’ll be fun,” I exclaimed. “We can take rides all around!” We bought matching dark-green Raleigh bicycles, bikes with thin racing tires, hand brakes and six gears. Truth was, we didn’t ride all that much until our friend Al proposed a real bike ride in 1973, one that entailed riding from San Francisco to San Diego.
Actually, I wasn’t really invited on this trip, but I convinced Henry that I could make it, and the boys eventually relented. Some months before our big trip, an acquaintance said, “Oh, you don’t need to get in shape first. You’ll get in shape on the ride!” Clearly, this woman had never ridden her bicycle past her own corner. The guys carefully planned our trip, mapping out 40-50 mile increments, depending on the available campsites and the occasional motel room. I made sure my bike had an old-fashioned squeeze-horn so that if the guys got too far ahead of me, I could squawk at them.

We flew to San Francisco, reassembled our bikes that had been boxed for the trip, and headed away from the airport and up Skyline Drive. The first few miles of our trip portended the rest of the trip: all uphill. A couple of miles up that first road, I watched as my horn came undone and dropped away in the bushes. I would have to squawk on my own, apparently. What I couldn’t do, though, was ride on my own. Dear sweet husband-of-mine figured out quickly enough that I wasn’t going to “get in shape on the ride” and would need the not-so-occasional helping push from behind. That first night we made it to Half Moon Bay. In the next nine days, we traveled on down Highway 1, through Big Sur and the wild boar in our campsite, eating in a cafe with the “No Hippies Allowed” sign posted above its door, down through Cayucos, Morro Bay and points south.

Our last night out, we stayed with our friend, Boomer, in Costa Mesa and the next day rode the remaining 90 miles. Eleven days and more than 700 miles later, we made it home, unscathed, unbroken and happier for having made the trip.

The matching green Raleighs are long-gone, now replaced with something a little comfier. I don’t have one of those really soft seats, but I do have the nice wide handlebars that keep me upright instead of crouched over the front wheel. This bike is great for riding around our neighborhood or with friends. Once, we even rode to the gym. All I need is a horn.