Bicycles and Me

Bicycles

When I was little, I had the best tricycle anyone could have had: it was quite huge, larger than others, and it had more spokes than others. I spent hours riding up and down the sidewalk in front of our house . . . until the day I came home from school and my trike was not there.

"Your father ran over it with the car. You cannot leave it in the drive way."

"Can it be fixed?", I asked.

"We don't know."

I was devastated. And for several days, I could not pretend to do all my adventures.

Then, one day, I came home and there was a brand new blue bicycle on the porch.

:"It's yours," my mother said.

How would I stay on it, I wondered. I had never been on a bike, had never balanced one. But my Dad became my training wheels: up and down the street, we would go, and he would let go of the bike and I went down like a stone. Then I got better balanced and finally was able to go back and forth on the sidewalk without any support. Then one day, he said "Let's go down the hill." I was totally scared. "don't worry," he said, "I'll hold on to you and off I went, what a ride it was to the bottom of the hill. When I got to the bottom, I turned around to smile, and my Dad was not there. I promptly fell down, skinning my knee, and crying, looked up to see him still standing at the top of the hill. I felt that I had been betrayed. I didn't believe I could do it, but I had.

That weekend, he put my bike, the now-fixed trike, my sister and me in the car and drove to the racetrack at the local fairgrounds. He got me back on the bike and he said "as soon as you go all round the track without falling down, we can go to the Dairy for a double dip ice cream cone."

I started plugging away. Fell. Sister on the now her trike (and it was not broken), laughing every time I fell, making me more and more determined to stay upright.

Finally I did it: all around the track without stopping or falling. "Do it again," my Dad called out. and I did.

"OK," he said, "one more time and it's yours. You'll never have to learn it again." And I did it.

That was the best ice cream I ever had. And I never fell off a bike again.