It will come as no surprise to any of my friends that I really enjoy Facebook status crafting. I enjoy putting weird little thoughts out into the atmosphere and hoping that someone will stumble across one and shake their head and think, "Oh, Brenna...whose bright idea was it to give you access to the Interwebs??"
With the arrival of warm weather, there has been a marked increase in the number of my Facebook statuses concerning my love of bike riding, and I've found that this love has outgrown the restrictive word limit of Facebook. Thus: this.
I am currently riding a Nishiki Navajo bought sometime in...the nineties? Just a second, let me call my mother...
Confirmed! I was nine or ten, which would place the bike's purchase sometime between 1994 and 1995. Which makes this bike just shy of two decades old. And, to clarify, I hit my growth spurt/puberty early, spent a few years in elementary school as not only the only girl with breasts, but the tallest person in class. Junior high came along, everyone else started growing, and I stayed the same. All that to say, I have not outgrown my bike.
I learned to ride on our gravel driveway, in the country. Gravel is just a bunch of pointy little rocks. Riding a bike on a bunch of pointy rocks. Which, when faced with the alternative (a cesspool of clingy mud) is still pretty godawful. But it means you really appreciate those few days in the summer, when it's been sunny enough for long enough that the road is totally bone dry, and the vehicles running straight down the middle of the road have created two perfect, gravel free tracks that feel as smooth as the newest pavement in the city. Still, even with those perfect days, I didn't do a lot of bike riding while I lived at home. Also, I began my horseback riding lessons at about the same age as receiving the bike, and that was clearly the superior mode of transportation in my young mind.
Years passed. I went to University without the bike. I went to New Zealand without the bike. I came back home and rode around in a truck with a Swedish boy, a pair of pink fuzzy dice and a hula girl named Esmerelda stuck to the dash. No bike. I went back to University, spent a year in residence without the bike, and finally, when I rented a little house with my cousin, Darren, my parents brought the bike down.
There was nothing as nerve-wracking as that first moment when I was absolutely sure that everyone who had ever used the 'like riding a bike' metaphor were totally full of shit and I would never be able to pick this skill back up out of my childhood. This worry was allayed a few seconds later when I realized the "like riding a bike" metaphor is so overused because it is so apt. Still....having never ridden anywhere but a deserted gravel road, I wondered if I could navigate through people and vehicles without killing anyone (myself included).
Turns out, it wasn't a problem for me at all. I've never been a particularly 'road rage' type of person. I tend to take after my mother, and leave a good 30 minutes before I actually have to, so I never have that feeling of "OH MY GOD I'M GONNA BE LATE, GET OUTTA MY WAY, DON'T YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW IMPORTANT IT IS FOR ME TO GET TO THIS PLACE AT THIS TIME?????" Anytime something arose that caused me to slow down, I did, and I didn't worry about it at all. I took my time and I always got to where I was going.
But I couldn't have predicted, really, based on my non-bike-enthused childhood, that there would come a time when I went out every night on my bike with absolutely NO destination. That I now ride my bike purely for the pleasure of it? Because it feels good?? Because there is something beautiful and freeing in the speed and balance of this machine? That I see, hear, smell, feel the world differently, and more kindly, when viewed from the seat of my bike? That I can push and pedal and sweat until that moment when I stop my legs, pause my muscles, and allow the bike to keep my body moving forward: floating, flying...
God, the lilacs are blooming right now. And on my bike, I stop beside them, and bury my face into them, and inhale that little piece of heaven. When I kick off again, it's with a glorious grin plastered permanently to my face.
