The first memory is a borrowed memory. I am told I watched in horror from the kitchen window as my dilapidated tricycle was scooped away by the city trash service. Months of hard-handed power slides along the sidewalk had brought about that moment. I grew up pedaling. Summer days, especially, were filled with seemingly endless rides. I ventured to baseball games, wooded parks, and stores selling childhood novelties. Arriving home one late afternoon I shocked my worried mother recounting how I had ridden to a distant downtown location. I remember my excitement to tell her. Often I rode to nowhere in particular. Empty parking lots and long quiet alleys consumed hours of time. Once I rode forcefully into the back of a parked car wedging my wheel under the bumper. I had been watching the sun shimmer through the canopy of broad green leaves above me.
In high school and college I raced my bicycle against others and sometimes myself. Grunting and gasping through races with names like Mingus Mountain Challenge, Slaughter House Canyon, Wolf Creek and Behind the Rocks I hurled myself against dirt and stone. I sought exhaustion as my accomplishment. Near the top of one such race I distinctly remember stopping, vomiting, and immediately pedaling on my way. Of course there was subdued pedaling–road trips across deserts and mountain ranges that afforded countless epic rides. So many landscapes have rolled out before me. I pedaled alongside sunrise and sunset; chased the moon whisking through pine tops; and hooted and hollered in silent forests. Pedaling friends have also come and gone. There have been serious discussions of life beside silly laughter. There has been quiet full of thought.
Not much has changed since those days. I still stare at my often broken and weary bicycle considering how I have ridden too hard or not ridden smart enough. I still find myself pedaling in and out of imaginary obstacles and searching out sweet curb jumps. I still stand up in the saddle and grind the gears mining deep into the lungs for air. Though these days this occurs just as much on the commute to work or the kiddie trailer-pulling-excursion to the park as out on the trail. On occasion I haul church youth off on a pedaling adventure. They bounce and teeter down the trail–their laughter echoing off the trees. Waking early in the morning while the family sleeps I tip-toe out the door to spy grass nibbling deer and mountain lion tracks along the trail. Here amid morning chill and sleepy nature I consider myself while pedaling, where I have been and where I am going.
