BIKE RIDING THROUGH LIFE: YOU CRASH AND YOU GET UP

The big part of bike riding, of biking, is staying upright, staying balanced.

Is it a stretch to say the same thing about life and the experiences we collect along the way.

We take the good and the bad, and remember the bike we were on; we remember the path we were on and what we learned.

Is that you?

BIKE #1

The general rule of matching a bike to a rider is whether both feet touch the ground when you stand over the top tube.

When I was a little bike riding kid, maybe eight, my dad brought us big boy bikes for Christmas, twenty-six inch single speed road monsters. It was almost too heavy to lift off the ground and roll to the curb, which was the only way I could get on.

Once I was on, I tipped over the first few days and scraped it up before I quit trying. I could ride a bike, just not a huge bike. A few years after the fad died off, I got an off-brand stingray instead of an off-brand ten speed to ride through junior high.

I wasn’t the cool guy in new fashion, either.

BIKE #2

I traded a camera for a red Schwinn LeTour II after I sold my college car during my junior year at UofO. My girlfriend rode a silver Fuji.

That bike crashed at night, crashed on trails, crashed in parking lots, and I never got hurt. My lucky bike. I left it in a safe place when I left town and it was stolen.

Stolen, or sold, I never saw Big Red again, and it took a long time before I got a new camera.

BIKE #3

Two years later the silver Fuji of love rode away, and I missed it. So I bought my own silver Fuji and named in memory of the Big Red’s partner.

I rode my Fuji thorough Portland, across every bridge including the Hawthorne when the walkway was uneven rotted wood. I rode with traffic down NW Everett, rode with traffic up SW Broadway, and rode it to Portland State to finish my bachelors.

I strapped that Fuji to my stepdad’s truck for a drive to Eugene, then rode it back to NW Lovejoy in nine hours.

On the way from Portland to Eugene my mom asked, “What sort of girl do you think you’ll date on a bike?”

I knew what sort of girl I’d date, a bike riding girl. I dated a woman who didn’t have a bike; one of our first dates was getting her a bike.

I married her thirty-four years ago; my bike is on the local scrap pile, her’s is a vintage ride with few miles on the original tires.

Did I attract her by riding a bike? Did she attract me by buying a bike?

I’ll break it down so you can use it in your relationship. Love is a venn diagram, two circles pushed together with a shared no-mans’ land in the middle.

Bikes were a part of our shared ground, then came commitment, marriage, kids, and now their bikes are next to their mom’s, and they still met great girls.

Tell me a bike riding story in comments if you have one, and you do. You know you do.