Live to Ride, Ride to Live

Watching my son move quickly away from his first bike - his first two-wheeler - makes me look back in fondness on the two-wheeled conveyances of my youth. I am a bicycle commuter five days a week, so sometimes I get a little blase about riding. I am remembering now a time when my friends used to call me up and ask if I wanted to "go ride bikes." That was an activity. We didn't need a destination, we were just going out to do just that: ride bikes.
We were pretty solidly Schwinn in my house. My first bike was a gold and the seat had a nice white "s" painted on the seat. I rode with the training wheels on for longer than I needed to - mostly to be certain that I really was ready to do all the balancing that was required. The other very intriguing part of having training wheels was that I found that on certain driveways if I straddled the gutter just right, I could sit and spin the back wheel without moving - and when there was water in the gutter, I could make a spray back behind me.
Later I graduated to a red Stingray. I had the white banana seat and the fat rear tire with nice tall handlebars. I rode that one to 7-11 to buy Odd Rod stickers and Wacky Packages. One day my dad brought home a steering wheel to put on in place of the handlebars. I was very excited to try this new (and very hip) modification, and after a few minutes of installation and adjustment with a crescent wrench, off I rode. The problem came when I got to the end of the street and went to turn around. Handlebars give you a pretty solid notion of how far you are turning - a steering wheel is a little more tricky. I got the front fork completely sideways and went straight over the front tire onto my face. I cursed my father and his bizarre notions of fun - for a couple of hours, and once the bleeding had stopped I was back out in the street, working it out.
When it came time to start pedaling up the big hill to junior high, I moved on to the Schwinn Collegiate five speed. The last twenty yard of that hill sometimes threatened to eat me alive, with my backpack on and my legs pumping even in first gear. I could only remind myself of the joy of flying back down the hill on the way home.
By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I began to take grief for my clunky old five speed. All my friends were getting bikes made of ultralight materials made in Japan or Italy. My American-made hunk of steel was a dinosaur, and after I saw "Breaking Away," there was no turning back. To this day I cannot remember the make or name of any of my subsequent bikes. I was on my way to motorized transportation, and I didn't look back (except for the nine month period in my senior year when I had my license suspended - but that's another story).
These days the kids in my class always want to know: "Mister Caven, don't you own a car?" Yes I do, but I prefer to ride my bike. It's a Raleigh C40 Cross - it's pretty trick, if you know what I mean.