Bikes

Throughout my adventure filled life I have to admit that I have been prone to jealousy. I was jealous of my brother Dallin because he was born with a nice cut body. He had defined calves and biceps from the time that his poop still looked and smelled like mustard. I on the other hand have always been on the skinny side, despite my efforts to beef up my stature with hundreds of Richard Simmons video tapes. I was jealous of Alex because he knew how to spell; this talent had stemmed from a unique opportunity of having received an exclusive invitation to spend an extra year in 3rd grade. As a kid I couldn’t even spell single syllable words, as an adult, and what is more a teacher, I began teaching myself the rules of orthography. I was jealous of my only sister Marne because she always got whatever she wanted. The thing that I was the most jealous over however was Andy’s mountain bike. When I was about ten years old my dad bought Andy a $500 mountain bike and told me that I did not ride my bike enough to get one, but when I did, I too would receive a bike.
The day Andy came home with his black Fuji XC I jumped on good old Wild Fire and decided to prove my father wrong. I rode and rode that bike until I had given it everything I had. About 20 minutes later I pulled into our driveway all worn out. To my dismay my mom greeted me as if I had been there the whole time.
“Hi honey,” was all that she said.
Did she not notice the gallons of sweat pouring off my face? Or did she just think that I had hyperactive sweat glands? What use was it to throw a temper tantrum if I didn’t get any attention from it?
My drama never did pay out any dividends, but I did eventually get my bike a little while later, about the same time as my other two younger brothers.
It was four in the morning when my dad came up to our room to wake us up.
“Come on let’s go boys, daylight is burning,” Dad cheerfully hollered through our door as if it were lunchtime.
A couple of moans came back as a reply, but we knew not to mess with Dad so despite our weariness we were up and dressed in just a couple of minutes.
Downstairs mom was ready to greet us with a nice homemade breakfast of off brand cereal. I don’t know if you have ever tried to eat when your entire system is still asleep, but for some strange reason it just doesn’t work.
“Bryan you have got to eat if you are going to have enough energy for the whole bike ride,” my mom said as if she knew what she was talking about. I wasn’t even sure that my mom knew how to ride a bike, except for a vague, scary memory of my mom riding a bike to an exercise class in huge, fat socks and a leotard.
“Okay Mom,” I obediently replied as I shoved down the stale cereal into an ungrateful digestive system.
Outside it was eerily chilly as if the night were laughing at us for leaving so early and ignoring the dangerous of the darkness. My dad always said he wanted to beat the heat and by leaving at four in the morning for a 50 mile bike ride we should be home around one or two in the afternoon. Even though I always felt like puking this early in the morning, there was something special about the earth while it was sleeping, everything seemed so crisp and the possibilities of a future day seemed endless.
Those ignorant feelings of possibilities left rather quickly and just a few minutes into the big ride I was falling behind and using all of my energy to stay within spitting distance of my brother’s tire. My dad always just went a little too fast for me to keep up. Now that I am an adult I love cycling, but in all honesty I couldn’t stand it as a kid and the only reason I went was to be with my family, and to avoid being teased about being a wimp. I always found it hard to understand why anybody would enjoy doing what I was doing. I was trying desperately to keep up with my father knowing that at any turn I could be lost and never find my way home. Most of the trip to my Uncle Doug’s my head was filled with complaints and my muscles ached. I dreamed that every car going by would take sympathy on me and offer me a lift. At least I wasn’t as bad off as Alex or Dallin. Alex had to be pulled the whole way (an act that was terribly hurtful to his self-image, to this day when we go on bike rides Alex asks one of us to bring a rope just in case) and Dallin was at least half a mile behind us the entire trip due to the fact that he could not reach the pedals. Both of them were too short for their bikes so my dad had taken off their seats and replaced them with some gray foam padding that he had duct taped to the frame of their bikes. They looked rather ridiculous and once the sun made an appearance people came out of their houses to see our most amazing caravan. I always felt sorry for my little brothers because a thin foam pad was never enough to prevent horrible blisters.
Now that it was light and traffic had gotten a little thicker we were as vulnerable as ducklings crossing the street. In my mind the wind was always against us and most of the time kept us at a two mile an hour pace. Diesels would zoom past us and my dad always thought it an intelligent idea to use them to draft, which is why he always insisted on taking the roads with the most truck traffic. I will say that when drafting happened to work those huge trucks would give us a break from the wind, not to mention a tremendous push, but to me the scariness of the whole ordeal was not worth the brief increase in speed.
We had come to a four way stop and after waiting his turn, my dad proceeded through the intersection. A car coming from the north decided that traffic rules did not apply to bicycles and proceeded at the same time as our caravan.
“Footsacker!” my father screamed at the driver while simultaneously swerving toward the car on purpose. He swung his foot and kicked the door of the car with his powerful foot. One thing about my dad that did not need to be communicated even to strangers was that you don’t mess with him. He could be nice if he chose to be, but he could also rip the arms off of an 800 pound gorilla. I am sure he left a dent in the door and the driver in surprise, but I was so petrified that I had my head down and was speeding through intersection as if it were the end of the world.
“Please let me live, please let me live!” I repeated over and over in my head. I heard Alex let out a girly squeal and I noticed that Andy was so busy singing Mary had a Little Lamb that he did not even notice what was going on. Dallin, still a half mile behind came barreling through the intersection without even looking up as several other cars came to a screeching stop.
The rest of the trip went without incident, just yellow stripe after yellow stripe, and mile after mile of boring landscape. Despite the pain in every muscle in my entire body, the worst part of this endless death march was my boredom. I could never focus my mind and it was always spinning, looking, searching for something exciting among the fresh road kill. If I would have discovered music by that age a simple walkman might have eased my woes, but as it was I spent hours staring at the back tire of my brother Andy.
As we approached home I was at last glad that I had decided to go on the ride. I could spend the rest of the day lying around and whining with good reason. After sitting on a bike for six hours all by myself, without having a conversation outside the confines of my own mind, sympathetic attention from my mom was a great reward. I had made it home safe from another frightening family outing, and I didn’t have to worry about another adventure for at least another week.