I was never athletic as a child. Sports were encouraged for my brothers. I spent many summer days in grandstands with the other sisters. Once, my mother signed me up for a baton class, but we arrived late and all the batons were taken and I had to march around the gym, last, without a baton. I never went back.
Oh, but I loved to ride my bike! My most poignant and sensory memory is of that blissful moment when I rode down our dirt road without training wheels. My bike was aqua blue with white wall tires just like the 57 chevy my father drove. But my ride had the sparkly streamers dancing from the handlebars.
I knew I was mastering the balance on the big banana seat. My father’s hand gripping the chrome backrest kept me steady. The rhythm of his work boots kept time with the slap of his utility scissor hanging from his belt. Summer breeze, dirt, and Old Spice. When I peeked over my shoulder to exclaim that “I was really doing it” I saw his figure way off in the distance behind me just a blur of fatigues and t-shirt.
I had my ticket to freedom. My BFF and I would ride across state lines from our rural New England town. Once we rode in a Bike-a-thon for a charity. This would require a different kind of riding and to keep up I would need a better bike. So, I got to ride her fancy 10 speed and she rode her mother’s even fancier Peugeot bicycle.
I took my rickety Schwinn to college with me and rode up and down the Esplanade and through Beacon Hill at night so I could peek inside illuminated windows of fancy houses. The summer between the first and second year of college when I lived in the dorm, I delivered the mail around to all the school buildings in Back Bay. It was stolen right off the porch of the dormitory on the nice residential section of Commonwealth Ave. The theory was someone hopped aboard just to get to their destination and my bike would turn up in a nearby alley. But I was never that lucky to ever be reunited.
Eventually, I had a new bike with a baby seat on the back. Then when the children rode on their own, I traded the seat for a car rack, and we took our bikes everywhere. Our own neighborhood, state parks and the Cape Cod Rail Trail right along the canal.
It is these visceral and nostalgic memories that accompany me now as I ride along the Greenway in Charleston once again on an aqua bike with white wall tires. I chant, as I once did, that I can do this even though my legs burn at the beginning of the trail and the breeze off the marsh can be so strong that the bike buffets. Each mile brings rewards and challenges. The field of sunflowers at the beginning of the Clemson Extension transports me to Arles. The stretch after rivals the hottest desert. Toward the end are amazing vistas of marsh and rookeries. Egrets, ibis, herons, wood storks, and roseate spoonbills back lit to a fluorescent glow by the setting sun. I am buoyed by the site.
To feel so light yet so grounded and connected at the same time. Those exhilarating feelings of freedom return but I also feel fiercely protective and vigilant. My chant becomes an apology for infiltrating their sanctuary for my own sanctuary.