I want to ride my bicycle

People who love riding bikes: This guy.

For all intents and purposes, this is the last week of summer (yes, technically Fall starts in about a month, but kids are back in school and the city pool closes this week). And so far this year, I have not taken part in one of the most traditional summertime activity: Riding a bike.

But then again, when you look at 7-year-old me’s history of bike riding, it’s not all that surprising.


Many years ago on Christmas, my brother and I ran into our living room (this is when we only needed one Christmas tree like a normal family, which is something I’ll be sure to complain about again in the future) and found some of the biggest gifts we had ever received -- bicycles.

There were two bikes in the room. Both fixed gear Huffies, one was a smaller blue and black model and the other was suitable for a child about 4 years older and looked like the inside of the soda shop the kids from “Saved by the Bell” frequented. Thinking practically, I jumped on the blue one which was more my size only to find out it was my brothers. This is what we call foreshadowing.

We were pretty good at sharing as kids. (well, Chris and I were. There’s a whole different story about Chris’s sharing past with my sister that we will be getting to at a later point.) As it was, we broke up our time with the blue bike between us so that we could both get aquainted with the products. At the time we had a long concrete driveway and my parents were able to park in our garage, so we had plenty of room to ride around on our property without having to travel on the dangerous 55 mph road in front of our house. But Chris was much more determined than I was, and being it that it was his bike, he started seriously riding much earlier than I.

Fast forward to the next Christmas, one of the warmest in my memory, Chris was riding his bike on the driveway as some of our family members were arriving to celebrate the holiday with us. I was still having problems keeping from falling.

At the time Chris had a few friends that did not live too far away from us, so he was able to use his mobility to his advantage and bike to see them frequently. I on the other had had little reason to get excited about biking as my best friends lived in town and there was little chance that I would be able to ride out to see them (my youngest brother Zach has taken up bike riding for this exact reason and many times has made the 5 mile trip into town to see his friends on the last bike my parents bought for me). I, like almost any kid, eventually learned how to ride a bike. It was luckily before I was quite big enough to ride the 90s mobile, but Chris had almost a year and a half ahead of me (he also started driving before I did, but we’ll not talk about that).

With the exception of a bike I received when I was much older and the few times I have ridden around town with my friends in my early adolescent years, bike riding has never taken a hold with me. Sure, there was a time when I was obsessed with learning how to and very happy with myself when I did, but it has not been something I’ve embraced. However, that version of me who was obsessed with riding a bike? He was 7 years old.

Dear 7-year-old me, I’m sorry we stopped riding bikes. There are a lot of excuses I could probably use, but honestly I think you deserve better. Hopefully I can find that child-like wonder of bike riding and get back into it one day, and here’s hoping procrastination keeps that from being put off much longer.