July 31, 2012

• The Last Time….I Rode a Bicycle

  The Last Time…I Rode a Bicycle

  

  A while back some of us at work were discussing things we used to do that we don’t do anymore. Forgetting doing favorite things or performing favorite acts because the last time we did that thing or performed that act was the absolutely last time we did it altogether for some reason or another. I’m sure that for everyone there is something you used to do regularly, and which stoked you and stroked your ego, delighted you and took up a lot of your time and was enjoyable to do, but which has, as an activity or pursuit, been forgotten or bypassed, and been pushed so far back to the back of your psyche that you have forgotten all about the activity or pursuit altogether.

  I mentioned that I used to ride a bicycle often, but I haven’t ridden a bicycle for over thirty years!

  Why?

  There’s an old saying that goes: “It’s like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how, no matter how long it takes you to get back on one and start pedaling, you’ll remember how to do it again instantly.” I  not only used to ride a bicycle, but bicycling was a part of my daily exercise for quite a few years back in the 70s. I rode my ten speed regularly, and for long distances.  At some point I stopped, however, and when I really tried hard to remember…

  I remembered that the last time I rode one I got in a pretty bad wreck in the middle of an intersection. The bike was totalled. I don’t recall ever getting on a bike again after that instance, even though I rode motorized scooters and motorcycles in the ensuing years.

  Obviously the reason why the “last time I rode a bicycle” WAS the absolutely last time was because there was some excruciating pain involved in the bothersome outcome which resulted in my never caring to pedal across the street, or across town again.

  Here’s my story.

  Most of my generation, the so called “baby boom”, learned to ‘get around” on a bicycle when in elementary school. Kids graduated from three wheeled tricycles, through two wheeled bicycles, sometimes using training wheels, which could be removed once the kid learned how to balance the bike. The bike racks at Shirpser Elementary in El Monte, California, where I grew up, were filled with bikes. My parents thought bikes were dangerous. School was only three blocks away. And neither me, nor my younger sister and brother had bikes when we were kids. I learned to ride with friends, using their bikes, since I didn’t have one, and wasn’t really allowed on one. At 6th grade “graduation” I knew how to ride a bike, but rarely got the chance. This changed the next year.

  Junior high, where I spent 7th and 8th grades, was physically on the “other side of town”. I either had to take a bus or walk a pretty long distance to get there. The peeps still didn’t get me a bike, but they were more forgiving of my actions away from home.  I was allowed a little more freedom as I got older.

  I spent a lot of time with my best friend Steve. His parents had just bought him a new  “stingray” bike, and when I hung around him, I rode alongside him using his earlier bike.This was before BMX style bikes were popular, but we did jump logs and gulleys, and performed stunts. At home, no bike. But at Steve’s I felt after a while that his early bike was in fact mine, and we had lots of adventures together.

  Because the school was on the north border of town, Steve and I attended different high schools. I made friends with another guy named Steve at Rosemead High, and we became best friends and remained friends after we graduated. In high school, kids in my generation were more interested in cars than bikes as transportation, and I, like a lot of my firends and peers, started driving a car at 16. Steve was a sportsman, however, and he participated in bicycling marathons, taking a train to San Francisco, for example, bike in tow, and then biking down the coast after having arrived.

  Steve interested me in bicycling again after we both graduated. I got a light blue and lightweight 10 speed bicycle from Montgomery Ward, where Steve worked. Along with the bike I got plenty gear, including a bike rack which I could mount on my car, then a 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle. Steve and I could be found bicycling through the mountainous roads in back of Pasadena, or Arcadia. Our longest ride was from Pasadena down to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, and back. My parents moved farther north to Glendora when I was in college, and I’d ride my bike often from Glendora to Rosemead to hook up with Steve and my friends.

  After my parents died, I moved to the beach cities of the South Bay, and my bike came with me. I really enjoyed pedalling along the beach. This was back before all the bike lanes and bicycle awareness in SoCal wasn’t as prevalent as it is today. There was then, and still is, a sizable bicyclist’s population in the South Bay. (I’ve posted blog entries showing how bicyclists and drivers use the same lanes in traffic in portions of Long Beach and other cities.) I also used my ever present ten speed when shuttling from party to party sometimes in the evening, a six pack of beer solidly postioned on the rack behind the seat. One never needs to “drive drunk” if one has a bike handy, although the same precautions should be maintained. Riding drunk can get one in trouble just like driving drunk can. I never had any trouble with my riding.

  The last time I rode a bike I was sober, it was the middle of the afternoon, and the summer sun was baking the concrete on the roads. The year would have been about 1976. I was heading out with my bicycle to meet a friend in Lawndale. The street I rode upon was not a main thoroughfare, but was the street next to the main drag. I could easily maneuver in traffic, and crossed the lights when green, stopping completely at the red. One trick I used to love to do at stoplights was to balance the bike while still astride it, not putting my feet down, but swiveling the front wheel, and jockeying  back and forth a bit.

  While pedalling through an intersection, a car going the other way ran his red light and smashed into me as I crossed. He hit my left calf first, which bored into the screw holding the pedal in place. (My leg still has a scar where the hole appeared.) I was completely catapulted over his hood, and rolled to a stop in the middle of the intersection, where I was a bit woozy at first.

  Good samaratans helped me up from the street and sat me on a curb. My bike was ruined. No cell phones in those days. I used a phone in the corner house to call my buddies, who drove up to collect me. I ended up spending the next few hours in the emergency room of the nearest hospital, where my leg was stitched up, and my concussion monitored. I was released and my broken bike thrown into the trunk of my buddy’s car. As I remember, I just tossed it in the trash and never even cared about making any attempt to fix it.

  I haven’t ridden a bike since then. It’s been over 30 years!

  When taking photographs along the L.A. River last year, I decided that sometime in the near future I’m going to buy another bicycle and I am going to get into bicycling again. There are a few folks who bicycle around our mobile home park when I’m taking my walks. Joel always talked about biking, and he had bikes, which usually just took up space in the garage. (After he died in the summer of 2008, Joel’s brother came by to sort out his belongings. He ended up only taking a few things, letting me deal with disposing of most of his stuff. He took Joel’s best bike of course.)

  Here’s a story about wrecking a motorcycle (in the rain)!

  When was the last time you did something which turned out to be the really last time you did it?

  Posted: July 30, 2012 7:57 AM

  • 10:37 am
  • 10 Comments