velo

I rode my new bike today! It is MINE, and it was FREE, and it is IDEAL. It is my dream bike, i.e. it is the EXACT same bike that I had when I was 17 and AWESOME! ME, I was awesome! And so was the BIKE!

My good friend's husband gave me this 20-year-old bike because I mentioned how much I wanted one like I had when I was 17 and it was 1988 and I had just lost like a hundred pounds and I rode my bike EVERYWHERE with my brand new healthy skinny body once all the way to Provincetown and once all the way to Chatham just to go to the Yellow Umbrella Bookstore and once in the rain to see a foriegn movie at the Cape Cinema with Chinese to English subtitles and once for a whole summer to every single place I could think of that sold onion rings so that I could definitively state that the best onion rings in the whole world were sold at the WEATHERDECK.

But then they stopped making bikes that were AWESOME with curvy handlebars and skinny skinny tires and somebody passed a LAW that all bicycles had to be UGLY and HUGE and HEAVY with MASSIVE MACK TRUCK TIRES and handlebars that made you sit up all straight like a DORK.

Otherwise known as mountain bikes. Which NOBODY rode on mountains.

For me, bike riding was all about going FAST. Once all the tires got all fat and tready, suddenly bikes weren't FAST anymore, they were ALL-TERRAIN.

YECCH.

But now! I have! My bike! Back!

It just so happened that this wonderful, wonderful man had an 18-speed bike from - YES THAT'S RIGHT - 1988 hanging up in his garage TOTALLY UNUSED and in MINT CONDITION.

And so. He gave it to me.

I will love him always.

So I had to get a new tire put on it, and also some new cross handles for the brakes (the ones that go on the top horizontal part of the curvy handlebar, it only used to have the ones down on the curvy part and I just don't like to ride with my hands there all the time and forever), and I grudgingly gave in to Prudence (that bitch) and bought a helmet even though I never wore one when I was 17 and awesome, because I guess I am just less awesome now that I am 36.

But today I went for my first real ride on my awesome new/old bike and OH SWEET JESUS I am in love. It was fast. It was zoomy. It was swervy. I made great huge swoops in the road when there were no cars behind me, hugged the white line along the non-existent Cape Cod shoulder when there were. Turned on a dime to avoid the sandy patches that are anathema to skinny skinny tires. Crouched really low over my slick curvy handlebars. Shifted gears to adapt to uphills versus downhills. Sat back and coasted hands-free for a while, just to show that I could.

If only, if ONLY the Weatherdeck was open for onion rings right now.