My older brother had a lot of...um... energy. He needed to take things apart, but was significantly less inclined to put them back together. I remember one Saturday morning going out to the shed to see if I was tall enough to ride the bike, but there was no bike. There were clearly the remains of a bike, but no bike. I burst into tears and ran into the house shouting accusations. How could my family have let this happen? I was the only one in the whole stupid house who wanted a bike, and the only one in the whole stupid house for whom the bike was totally inaccessible! My sisters could all have ridden it if they wanted to, but they didn't want to! My brother could have ridden it, even though it was a girl's bike, but instead he had rendered it totally useless for the rest of us! It simply wasn't fair! It was beyond unfair, it was cruel.
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Some time after that, I can't remember how long, my dad began asking me to do odd jobs for him: mostly mowing the lawn, and switching out the ink pens on the plotter (he was a self-employed civil engineer, and back in the 80's and 90's the drawings were done on a huge printer/plotter whose ink had to be switched manually as a drawing was being completed. It meant sitting in front of the plotter for an hour or so watching the ink barrel empty. Pretty tedious for most folk, but I actually enjoyed it.) Little bit by little bit I realized I was becoming rich. Very, very rich. Thoughts of my very own bicycle began to enter my mind. How much did a bicycle cost?...
We lived in a pretty rural area, so all the really big shopping meant driving up to Reno. One particular "drive into town" had us headed to Costco for groceries. I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I remember pulling into the parking lot of Toys'R'Us instead. Besides having an entire section of the store dedicated to Barbie, I knew Toys'R'Us sold bicycles. Lots of bicycles. Knowing this kind of good fortune would probably never happen again, and not wanting to take any time to really consider how the good fortune had come to me in the first place, I ran to check the tags on every bicycle at my eye level. Talk about disappointment. I couldn't afford a single one of them. I didn't even have half the price of the cheepest bike. Beyond unfair.
Now as an adult I can see my parents' scheme clearly. They, of course, helped me choose a mid-priced bike for which I paid all I had, and they paid the difference (just like those stories in The Friend magazine) and I had the luxury of my very own autonomy. I rode that bike for years, even into high school. During the summer months I would head out early in the morning, before everyone else was awake, to see the deer in the melon fields or to investigate uninhabited farm houses. I would leave a note for my mom reading something like, "Left at 7:00, went toward Moody Ln," and then return home when I'd run out of food or water. As a teenager I rode to the pool, to my friends' houses, to ballet lessons. My parents had literally purchased my freedom.
Recently bicycle autonomy has been gifted again. Emma got a new bicycle for her birthday earlier this year, and it's a very, very fine bike. She's been kind enough to let me borrow it, and I've used every opportunity. (Conveniently I'm also in better health now than at any other time of my life! Woohoo!) I've taken a few morning rides out to the San Francisco Bay, and they've been lovely. Each ride I'm proving to be faster and stronger than I thought, and I'm able to go further and see more. It's so exciting! As I finished today's ride (almost 22 miles!) I thought, not for the first time recently, "What else can I do?" I feel, again, as if the price has been paid, and I am free!
