[Reprint] Old Bikes, Rusty Parts
As I approach another birthday, I am sharing a piece I wrote last May. There are many more readers here now. Enjoy.
My road bike is broken. And it may not be fixable. I am in mourning.
Let me explain.
When I was three years old, I asked my dad if I could get a bigger bike, with no training wheels. He laughed at me.
“No, Carrie, you’re too little.”
I went down the street to where the 7 and 9-year-old sisters had been letting me ride their much bigger bikes - which I could do, as long as I didn’t sit on the seat. The younger sister let me ride hers back to my house, where my dad was mowing the lawn.
“Hi dad!” I waved.
He bought me a bigger bike.
A year later, when we moved to Vegas, my bike was my lifeline in the place I had dubbed “the city of walls” both for the 6-foot high block fences that surrounded all the backyards, and for the less-than-friendly attitudes of our neighbors.
I raced around the neighborhood. My friends and I popped wheelies, rode up and down stairs and launched off ramps. These were the days of Evel Kneivel and ET.
We wanted our bikes to fly.
At one point, after I had been gifted a bike that was more of a road bike than a jumping bike, I took the training wheels off my brother’s bike so I could jump.
My brother told on me. I got the angry mom face. And probably some punishment that I can’t remember.
In my late teens, I started riding long distances, trekking down Eastern Ave., past the airport to where nothing else existed but the road and dirt. At some point I would loop around and find Russell Road, which was long and curvy as it cut through the desert. A perfect racing track. You have no idea how disappointed I was to move back to Vegas in 2014 and find that Russell Road had been straightened. And it had strip malls up and down. My pristine desert was gone.
One time, home from college, heading south on Eastern, a red car full of boys my age slowed down next to me. Before I could register what was happening, one of them leaned out his window and slapped me in the ass.
I can still feel the sting. I can still hear their laughter as they peeled away.
A few years later, I was riding home from a volunteer gig at the Alzheimer’s daycare my grandmother went to. I should have gone down Sahara. Sahara was the most direct route. But I was tired, and Sahara lifted over the I-15 at an angle I didn’t want to deal with that day. So I headed down Spring Mountain Road. And as I was approaching Paradise, seeing the green light turn yellow, I sped up. The old man turning left from the other direction didn’t see me. The sun was in his eyes, and who would expect a woman on a bicycle to try to make a yellow light?
It was the most surreal thing. As I was rolling over the hood of his car, I thought, “Whoa, I’m getting hit by a car!” It was all slow motion. Then I landed on my ass, sitting up, momentarily thinking I might be OK. Until I saw my thigh. Which was dancing to its own tune. And the seeing brought me back to reality and I felt the pain. Though it wasn’t quite as bad as when the EMTs showed up and straightened my leg out.
Holy fuck. Sixteen years later I gave birth - by Caesarean. But I cannot imagine that vaginal birth, even of twins, would have been more painful than straightening out a broken femur.
In the ambulance, they gave me an IV. I watched them and was impressed. My veins like to stay well hidden. Phlebotomists rarely are able to stick me the first time. But these guys did. Then they lifted my other arm to put in another IV in and I’m like, “Why are you doing that,” because the odds of them getting an easy stick twice were not great.
“Your blood pressure is going down,” one of them said.
“Oh!,” I thought. “I’m in shock. Fascinating!”
They nailed the other stick.
In the emergency room, I explained to the doctor that I don’t react well to pain meds, and could he just give me a local anesthetic. He laughed at me. And I’m glad he did.
There was also some issue about how to tell my parents. My mom was working just down the street, but my mom had a tendency to panic. So I was like, “Call my dad. But make sure to tell him I’m OK. That it’s just my femur.” But my dad has a tendency to not stay in one place, so when they called his office, the guy they talked to immediately called my mother. Who panicked.
I realize now that that shouldn’t have been my concern. But I wanted them to know that I was not dead. And not only was I not dead, but my faculties were fully functional. Even with the painkillers.
It would be so much easier now. “This is my iPhone password. Call my family and hand me the phone.”
When I got home, with a pin down the middle of my femur, my dad showed me my erstwhile bike, sitting on the side of our house.
“What I can’t understand,” my dad said, “is how the seat got this way.” My normally tricornered saddle was now shaped like a crescent moon.
“Oh,” I said, perhaps a bit too brightly as I leaned on my crutches, “That was the shape of my leg!”
My dad gulped. Reality isn’t his favorite subject. Perhaps because of that, I specialize in it.
As I moved to Boston and then Chicago, my bike became my way to explore my world. And to think. I would head out from Logan Square up through the northern suburbs to Highland Park, and then I would come back down. That was my 50-mile Saturday ride. I had a couple of shorter ones during the week. By that time, I had started my newspaper, PerformInk. I made marketing plans on those rides. I wrote stories on those rides. I solved world hunger on those rides. My mind and my body were able to separate on those rides, and my thinking was crystal clear.
It seems strange, but I ride to think. I realize now that all of the physical activity I did as a hyperactive kid kept me from being a distracted kid. And it still keeps my mind clear.
My kids have known this since they were little, when I would put my road bike on a trainer so I wouldn’t have to leave them alone. “I have to ride,” they have heard me say countless times. “My head is getting fuzzy.”
The bike that is now in intensive care is a Mongoose IBOC whose frame weighs less than my kids did when they were born. And is older than my kids by about seven years. Since moving back to Vegas, it has mostly stayed on my trainer. Because it is dangerous to ride in this city. And, I can’t go those distances anymore anyway. I occasionally will take my mountain bike out to get a good outdoor workout. But the road bike has served as a stationary machine for the last decade.
We have gotten old and rusty together.
There is nothing drastically wrong with my bike. It’s just that the parts used on it - specifically the part that clamps to the frame that holds the guide wires from the shifter to the derailleur - are not made anymore. And that part has been attached so long, glued by dirt and sweat, they are afraid of levering it off and breaking the frame.
As the mechanics were consulting with each other in their diagnosis, they were admiring the beauty of the bike, like you admire an antique. They were also taking note of my face, and knew the solution wasn’t, “Sell her a new bike.” They talked about “sentimental value” and bringing in a consultant who had been around when this bike was made.
They treated my bike as if they were treating someone’s body. “Ma’am, your parts are wearing out, and we may have to put in new ones, but your frame is so fragile, we’re not sure what will happen.”
Let me make clear for my children that I am talking about my bike, not my body. I am not fragile. I’m in great shape. Mostly because of all that bike riding I do. But I saw my mom go through this, when the fixes for her various medical issues would contradict each other, and it became clearer and clearer that her body was cornering her to death.
The mechanics talked about my bike the way my mother’s doctors talked about her dwindling choices. With kindness. And reverence.
That doesn’t always happen in bike shops - especially when a woman walks in.
But these guys, so indicative of Gen Z, they understood the love and care, even for rusty old things.
I feel restored. We’ll see if my bike can feel the same.