Tripod: Get Where You're Going

CHOOSE BIKES
by Bernadette Noll
I am riding along on my circa-1965 black Schwinn one-speed bicycle. I love my bicycle. She is not so fast but she is steady and she can tote a whole week's worth of groceries in her attached crate. She keeps me connected to my natural surroundings because it is she and I on the road with no protection from the elements and no safeguard from the potholes and pebbles. To stay alive I must stay in a hyper state of awareness. I ride along on a sunny day and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
I am riding along on my black Schwinn one-speed bicycle. I hate my bicycle. She is slow and she is precarious and she forces me to pedal until my thighs burn as I race to the bank in a battle against time and bouncing checks. The rain pours down on me in fast and furious sheets and my bicycle adds insult to injury by spraying a muddy stripe from her tires directly onto my back, so that I now resemble a skunk in a yellow raincoat. I ride under dark skies and alongside rush-hour traffic and I feel defeated and deprived. My bicycle is my only form of transport. It is a vehicle of recreation and a means of travel. Like a fickle child, she at times makes me proud and at times makes me skulk in shame at having to rely on her alone. On sunny days I rave of my selected vehicle. On these days I believe the world would be a happier place if everyone were on a bike. Fortunately, here in Austin, Texas, these days are the majority. On dreary, dank or cold days I feel the pauper as I watch the privileged people race by in their weatherproof wagons, their errands so effortless in spite of the storms.

Did I, with the iridescent sheen of a bewildered and beleaguered waitress, really appear to her as if I were out for a joy ride?

One Saturday morning, after an exhausting waitress shift at a 24-hour cafe crowded with Friday night revelers, I had to ride. I had to take the cash that I had earned that night down to my bank in order to cover the checks that I had sent out the previous morning to pay for such luxuries as lights and gas. It was hot. I had just served the masses for ten hours straight. I was greasy, weary and bleary. But I pedaled. From South Austin, past my house which held my waiting bed, over the river and towards my bank. As I waited at a red light a woman pedaled up next to me. She was caffeined and cleaned and ready to ride. She was outfitted in lycra in all the colors of the rainbow. If she was the sunshine, I was the dark and dripping cloud. She looked at me and smiled. "Nice day for a ride, huh?" Did I, with the iridescent sheen of a bewildered and beleaguered waitress, complete with food and sweat stained clothes and circles under my eyes that a raccoon would envy, really appear to her as if I were out for a joy ride? The light turned green and I slithered away.
My bicycle is not always a chosen form of transportation. I choose it in the sense that I am not willing to trade my freedom from long working hours for car payments, insurance, registration and repair bills. I choose it for the fact that if I didn't incorporate bicycling into my everyday life I would not get one moment of exercise and thus would not be able to eat whatever I want and thus would blow up into a human the size of a house. I choose it in the sense that it makes me feel young to be out riding while the 'big people' scurry along in their autos. I choose it in the sense that at times of thick traffic I generally move along much faster than the cars. I choose it for the way it enables me to park instantly, right outside the doorway of wherever I happen to be going.
I do not choose it for the way it keeps my area of travel somewhat limited. As I live on the South side of town, I generally do not attend things on the far North side of town. Sometimes it is not so much the distance as it is the narrow busy roads I would have to ride in order to get there; roads that I am afraid to be on in a car let alone on a bicycle. If I simply MUST get there, I usually rely on the trusty '67 Chevy truck of a friend of mine. I find that it, with its three on the tree shifting, keeps me in the same elevated sense of awareness as riding my bike.

I have seen some drivers so engrossed in their cell phones that I would just as soon have them driving along with a six-pack under their belt.
I do not choose it for the times I find myself riding alongside somebody who feels that they alone, in their two-ton vehicle, are entitled to the road. Nor when I realize that the person driving directly behind me, next to me or in front of me forgets that they are operating such a vehicle and is concentrating solely on their car phone or makeup application or radio dial. I have seen some drivers so engrossed in their cell phones that I would just as soon have them driving along with a six-pack under their belt.
And contrary to the beliefs of those drivers who have tossed various items at me as they drove by or yelled ingenious invectives, I do not choose to ride a bicycle merely as a means of annoying those in cars. I, like you, am just trying to get where I'm going.

Getting Where You're Going on Four Wheels:
Coping with the Loss of a Loved One

Bernadette Noll is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. On being a full-time writer, she says, "My life is forever colored by ten years in the restaurant business. It's always in the back of my mind that there is only one letter difference between writer and waiter."
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