BICYCLE THOUGHTS
By Randy Randall
I’ve been riding the bicycle for about three weeks now.
At first I had to dodge the dirty snow banks and puddles of melt water.
Before I added a rear fender, I’d come back to the house looking somewhat
like a skunk with a wet stripe up my backside. But there was more dry road
than wet, so that meant I could ride, and I wasn’t alone. Pedaling along the
coast, I’d meet one or two other hard-core biking types, all bundled up in
earmuffs and trooper hats. What a joy, though, to get out and hit the road
again. I paid the price with a broken spoke, but it was worth it.
Bicycling here along the Maine coast is very fulfilling.
The roads are mostly flat and the scenery is beautiful to look at. The
rhythm of pedaling and the sound of the tires rolling over the sandy
pavement are conducive to contemplation, and my thoughts wander.
First, I think about what a marvelous machine the bicycle
is—a machine that can multiply the minuscule horsepower generated by a human
into enough force so that you can fly along the roadway at many miles an
hour. From there, it doesn’t take long for me to remember when my sister
Ruthie and I were just kids on the old farm where our first bike was a
rather beat-up, hand-me-down, nondescript girl’s model. There was no way my
sister or I could sit on the seat let alone reach the pedals. Our technique
was to straddle the low crossbar, reach up to the handlebars, and push off
with our feet. We would stand on the pedals and coast down the dirt road.
When conditions were just right, we might be able to pedal one or two
revolutions, but usually we coasted to a stop and fell off in a heap with
the wreck of a bicycle on top of us. Then we’d shove it back upright and
hurtle the other way down the opposite hill.
Eventually both Ruthie and I learned to ride, balancing
precariously atop that full frame girl’s bike. Dismounting was always risky,
as we couldn’t usually stop, so we just crashed into the pasture junipers
and leapt clear before the bicycle toppled. Then the day came when we got
our own new bicycles.
That day was Christmas, and we received two,
twenty-four-inch Schwinn balloon-tire bicycles. Mine was red, and hers was
blue. From then on we were free to roam the dirt roads and ride to our
friends’ homes. We rode for miles, all with just the one speed and no hand
brakes. When you needed more speed or more power, you stood up and pushed
harder on the pedals, huffing and puffing to the top of the hill. As I
recall, those old Schwinn tanks were most durable and took all kinds of
abuse. Being the budding farm mechanic, I was always tinkering with mine,
taking things apart, putting them back together, and making adjustments. I
built a trailer I could attach to the seat post and pull behind. I also
added baskets and saddlebags and clips for carrying my fishing rod. When my
friends and I were in our Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn stage, we discovered
that a bicycle turned upside down on its seat and handlebars was a fair
substitute for the wheelhouse of a riverboat, and the front wheel could be
used to steer the Robert E. Lee along the Mississippi. Spinning the
pedals substituted for ringing the engine telegraph, calling for more steam.
Our friends weren’t much different. If their bicycle
wasn’t a Schwinn, it was a Murray, Huffy, or Columbia. Once in a while a kid
would show up with an “English” bicycle sporting three speeds. We kids all
thought this was the height of bike sophistication and often dreamed of how
effortless those three speeds would make climbing the hills around town, but
like many things exotic, three speeds were expensive, and so we contented
ourselves with our balloon tires, wide seats with coil springs, and coaster
brakes.
Once a few buddies and I made the ultimate road trip and
biked all twenty-five miles from home to our family camp on the lake. I
think four of us went, each with his faithful bicycle loaded like a
packhorse with all the camping essentials: peanut butter, bread, angle
worms, and a quart of milk to go with the cookies. We gave no thought to air
pumps or spare tubes or a sag wagon to follow along. We just set off and
many hours later all came rattling down over the hill bumping along the dirt
access road to the lake. We made it in fine style and set up housekeeping in
the old cabin. The next day we rode our bicycles along old tote roads and
deer paths as we fished the nearby streams for brook trout.
When we moved off the farm and into town, we rode our
bicycles to school, as did most every other kid. The schoolyard would be
packed with bicycles parked and dropped and lying helter- skelter all around
the bike racks. No wonder I’m still riding. That sense of freedom and
independence those big, old, heavy Schwinn bicycles had given us is still
part of my character today, and I revel in the sweet memories of childhood
every time I ride.
I’m always amused by the variety of people I meet when
I’m riding. Certainly there are a few duffers like myself. We coast to a
stop beside each other in the parking lot, pausing to look out over the
harbor and the lobster boats, and we chat for a bit, remarking about how
nice the day has been and how to avoid the road construction on Route 9.
Then there are the families strung out along the edge of
the road like the three bears. Usually the dad is pedaling in the lead, with
maybe a trailer attached and a toddler inside staring ahead at the reflector
on the rear fender. Afterward come the kids, one or two riding
age-appropriate bicycles, all decked out in their helmets and shades. The
little girl has streamers flowing in the breeze from the ends of her
handlebars. Mom is the sweep, bringing up the rear, maybe with a baby seat
over her rear wheel and another riding along like Linus seated behind his
Mom. I come upon them all later in the parking lot, sharing snacks and fruit
juice.
There are the racing types, too, mostly young men in
their twenties and thirties, it seems, all looking fit and tight, wearing
their spandex pants and yellow-striped shirts. These fellows often ride in a
pack like a palindrome, ankling furiously, heads bent over the curved
handlebars, riding bikes that weigh mere ounces, cost a fortune, and have
tires the diameter of pencils. Lance wannabes, I call them. They pass by me
as though I’m standing still. All I hear is a businesslike voice call out
“On your left,” and then a queue of riders glides past. “Nice day,” I’ll
say, but they’re too busy drafting each other and are soon out of sight. I
wonder if they’re having a good time, but then I’m reminded of the old
phrase “different strokes for different folks,” and nowhere is that more
true than with bicycling.
I also meet the occasional mountain bikers popping out of
a gap in the woods where they’re just finishing a two-mile romp through the
swamp. They reach the ditch and skid to a stop. I know they love to go
hurtling down the side of Sugarloaf Mountain, bouncing from rock to rock,
and I appreciate how their expensive knobby-tired bikes are even better than
Jeeps. I envy their stamina and endurance, not so much for the racing they
do but for the high, wild places their rugged bikes are able to take them.
I love to turn down every little side street and see who
might live at the end or where it might lead. I ride across backyards,
sometimes to reach a little path, and then through a vacant playground to
turn onto another narrow side street. I can just squeeze between the fence
posts, ride down some corduroy logs into the State Park, and downshift to
ride through the swamps and woods. Just now as the days are lengthening, the
chorus of spring peepers is so loud I can hardly hear the tires rumble on
the gravel. Every once in a while, I’ll surprise the deer that live in the
small patch of woods and catch a glimpse of their white tails as they bound
away into the twilight.
I’m no evangelist when it comes to bicycles. I just enjoy
riding, but I do wonder how much higher gasoline prices must rise before
bicycle sales begin to creep up. Pedaling along a rather busy uptown street,
I’m reminded of the time that I spent in Saigon many years ago and the sight
of hundreds of commuters on their bicycles clogging the streets. Bicycles
were everywhere in Vietnam. They were not a toy or a sport vehicle; they
were just plain transportation, and everyone rode. Old people and young—men,
women, children—all rode bikes.
I’ve seen whole families riding through town on a single
bicycle. The father would be driving and pedaling. The mother sat sidesaddle
on the rear fender, holding one child, and the other child would be balanced
on the crossbar in front of his father. This was not in any way unusual.
Farmers would pile bamboo cages stuffed with squawking chickens, all
destined for market, on the rear fender of their bicycles and skillfully
weave in and out among the myriad bikes, jeeps, cyclos, buses, and
motorcycles that thronged the wide avenue.
A bicycle repair shop consisted of one man squatting on
his haunches on a street corner with a piece of tarp laid on the ground,
where he displayed his tools. Bicycles would be parked all around, and the
mechanic would busily repair a flat tire while all about him swirled the
traffic and mayhem of a thriving third-world market place.
All around the world other cultures have adopted the
bicycle as their main form of everyman’s transportation. In Europe, Holland
and France come to mind as cycling-friendly countries. In the Far East
places like Vietnam and Japan and the Philippines all support millions of
bicycles. And then there is that greatest of all cycling civilizations,
China, where bicycles number nearly half a billion, if not more.
A little research will turn up information about how
bicycles have been used in war and how whole brigades of soldiers have been
mobilized on rugged bicycles. Even today you can find folding bicycles and
the military’s version of the mountain bike suitable for dropping behind
enemy lines via parachute. These reconnaissance bikes remind me again of my
old Schwinn single speed and how we used to charge along the dirt roads and
cow paths.
The United States had its infatuation with the bicycle,
too, but that was a long time ago and was quickly surpassed by American’s
love affair with Henry Ford’s ubiquitous “Flivver.” But there was a time
back in the late nineteenth century when bicycles were all the rage, and the
American Wheelmen ruled the roads. The League of American Wheelmen was
founded in 1880 in Newport, Rhode Island, and became one of the most
powerful citizens groups urging the government to build and improve American
roads. Remember also those two intrepid Wright Brothers, who taught us all
how to fly, ran a bicycle shop as their business. The late 1800s saw the
development of such wonderful machines as the “penny-farthing” or
“ordinary,” the great high-wheeled bicycle we all associate with barbershop
quartets, and the “safety” bicycle, which looked very much like the bicycles
we ride today. America had its fling with the bicycle, but it quickly
evolved to a child’s toy and was left behind in the dust of the modern
automobile. As a side note, I will say I’m seeing a few more Vespa-type
motor scooters on the roads this spring, and that bodes well for a return to
simpler and saner transportation. Again, this is an economical two-wheel
vehicle the Europeans and Asians adopted years and years ago.
We have a bicycle story of our own from the Canadian side
of the family. In the 1930s the Canadian government passed a Homestead Act.
If people would move back into the woods and build a house and improve the
land, then eventually they would be granted ownership of the property. These
folks were called “lotters,” as they were occupying particular surveyed
lots, and our aunt and uncle were two of them. They were young and newly
married, and together they homesteaded, building a log cabin to live in.
Their only form of transportation was Uncle’s bicycle, which he would ride
out to town to buy the necessary supplies. During the fall, he would carry
his rifle, and on one trip he shot a deer. After he had field dressed the
animal, he managed to wrestle the carcass atop the bicycle, and that’s how
my aunt saw him when he returned to the cabin at dusk. She heard the noise,
and when she opened the door, she saw Uncle walking along the path, gamely
pushing the old bicycle through the mud with a 180-pound buck draped over
the handlebars.
Who knows? Maybe the day is not far off when here in the U.S., people
will be compelled to leave their gas-guzzling SUVs parked in their garages
and pedal their way to work or to school. If people in other countries have
been riding bicycles for a century or more, then maybe we might suspect they
know something that we don’t. Think of the benefits. First, there are the
obvious savings on gasoline and diesel as well as the desirable effect of
reducing greenhouse gasses and global warming. Then, too, there would be the
secondary benefit of healthy exercise incurred as part of daily living, just
like walking.
But there could be other benefits, too. If people could
only travel so far to shop or reach certain services, then maybe villages
might spring up and people would build and buy homes that were closer
together. Maybe a community would grow, and suburban sprawl would be
reversed. Maybe towns would build more bicycle paths that are wider and go
more places. Maybe our hectic lives would slow down a little, too, as we all
allowed more time to go places and to do things. Well, it’s a thought and
just one of hundreds of harebrained ideas that go coursing through my head
as I pedal along the beach, breathing in the salt air, savoring the view of
the offshore islands, and wishing that everyone could be as happy as I am
when I’m on two wheels.
