photo credit: Andria | Flickr Creative Commons

My first ten-speed was a Schwinn Traveler. It weighed more than I did, which tells you as much about me as it does about that bike. I wore mesh bike gloves, even if I was just riding down to the park. I thought they made me look tough. I did not wear a helmet, though. The only person in our town who wore a helmet was Rusty, the mentally handicapped kid from down the block. His bike had a giant orange safety flag swaying from a pole on the back. From a block away, you could see that flag and hear Rusty guffawing. That kid loved to bike.

 

I rode the Traveler to the sand volleyball court at Redar Park. I rode it to the DQ on the Lincoln Highway, and to the pool at the Sherwood Country Club. I rode to my friend Dave’s house. His basement had pornography and a weight bench and giant stereo speakers. It was a caricature of manliness. I rode home, where I indulged my habit of hopping off my bike while it was still rolling and catching it by the seat, which I thought looked as cool as me in bike gloves. One day I missed the seat and the bike careened into my father’s car and smashed the brake light.

 

As punishment, I had to replace the brake light with him. He was good like this—spotting opportunities for learning and togetherness—but I have always hated intricate manual labor. We spent an hour going to the auto parts store, and another hour installing the brake light, and another hour going back to the store for a tool we needed to finish the job, and the whole time I was thinking: this is a waste of my life. I am wasting my life right now.

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I rode the Traveler in my first Apple Cider Century, a bike tour in Michigan. You could ride 25 miles, 50 miles, or 100 miles. After deciding on the fifty-miler, my father suggested we camp out the night before. I realize now that the camping was supposed to be a bonding experience—my father was good like that, too—but at the time, he just said it would give us an early start, and I believed him.

We weren’t big campers. Especially me. I was a fan of pillow-top mattresses and air conditioning. As I packed my duffel, I threw in a notepad and a handful of pencils, in case I had some downtime and felt like writing.

 

“You’re not going to need those,” my father said.

I said it was better to have something and not need it, than need it and not have it. It was a philosophy I’d picked up from my grandparents, who’d lived through the Depression and now had a basement that could support a small village through a nuclear winter.  

 

“Don’t bring the pencils,” he said, and gave me a meaningful look.

 

I brought the pencils. But, to be considerate, I hid them.

My father was right: I didn’t need them. We spent the day driving and setting up the tent in a schoolyard and eating in the cafeteria and watching some reindeer movie that had been filmed in this little town. In the dark, we found our way back to the tent, tossed our bags inside, and settled into our sleeping bags. I heard squinching noises as my father got comfortable on his air mattress. Then I heard a soft pop, followed by a long hiss. It was dark in the tent, but not so dark that I couldn’t see my father sinking to the ground.  

 

“When I turn on the light,” he said in a queer voice like he was trying to hold his breath and talk at the same time, “I better not see any goddamn pencils.”