By JJ
Introductory, FIRST BLOG entry!!!
Bicycles and cycling hold a special place in my fondest memories. As a determined five-year-old, I taught myself how to ride in an afternoon, on the gravel road driveway around my farmhouse. I graduated to the BEST bike I ever rode as a kid (I’m so glad that best bike was mine!), a wonderful blue Schwinn Stingray. Single speed, coaster brakes, banana seat and ape-hanger handlebars, that bike was my constant companion during a solitary childhood growing up on a farm in the middle of “Nowhere,” Nebraska.
I incurred my first concussion on a bike. Spying a massive hill while visiting some family friends who lived in the sandhills of Nebraska, I decided to take one of the family’s adult sized bikes and see what it would be like to bomb down. I had never experienced a hill of much consequence, and this one was a doozy. I trudged up the hill with the enormous (for me) steel relic of a bike. Once at the top, I mounted, realizing that my legs weren’t even long enough to reach the pedals on the downturn of the crank. Undaunted, I focused on the bottom of the hill, and let ‘er go. Somewhere around halfway down that hill, I had completely lost control of the runaway cycle, and I don’t think I knew how to use hand brakes. I was on gravel and in a terrifying moment, I crashed. I don’t remember how I fell. I certainly wasn’t wearing a helmet. I remember being taken to the hospital in my parents’ car, blood dripping out of both of my ears. However, after they checked me over, I was declared whole, and sent on my way. The incident didn’t deter me one bit from biking.
I was very jealous of the “city kids” who could ride their bikes to school. “LUCKY!” I thought with bitter longing, wishing I could ride some sleek beautiful Schwinn Varsity in some cool color and secure it to the bike racks with a matching cable lock with some awesome secret number code. Thane Osterberg did. I was jealous. His lock was “8008,” which, he explained, looked like “boob.”
When I finally grew tall enough, my grandma, who lived in town, let me ride her Schwinn (seems like that’s all there were back in 70’s Nebraska) Suburban. When I asked if I could ride her bike, she didn’t think to put a time limit on how long I’d be gone or how far I would ride. And DID I RIDE! I went all over town, from one side to the other, downtown, through many different neighborhoods, euphoric at the feel of smooth pavement under my tires and the wind in my (unhelmeted) hair.
Those memories mark some of the best times of my childhood. On the farm or in the city, on gravel, dirt, blacktop or cement, riding my bike was how I felt free.
Fast forward many decades, I am off the farm and a dedicated Minneapolitan. (Northeast, but 15 years in South make me fond for that neighborhood as well.) I still love the feeling of flying on two wheels and the freedom of getting from one place to another on my own power. I don’t necessarily fit the demographic profile of a “typical” cyclist. Some terms that come to mind when I think about my identity: teacher, parent, partner, queer, white, able-bodied, middle-aged, assigned female at birth, survivor, queer, genderqueer, tall, big, introvert, musician, bilingual, privileged. Who cares? Welp, maybe some of those traits will play a role in how biking fits in my life.
In this blog, I will share more of this love affair with the bicycle. Maybe you and I have some things in common. I look forward to writing. Hasta pronto.