Advocacy

Break These Rusty Chains

So it’s 5:45 in the morning and time is running out faster than I’m getting out the door. A month of laziness and a good sinus cold and a few other lame excuses lets me know the lethargy in my legs is very well earned. The best thing about living on a hill is that quitting early in a ride means a ride back up the hill. Weird that going in is harder than going home.

It is still early, and a few hours over the weekend has the bike quiet and running smooth. The streets are waking up with increasing traffic and a few people are afoot.

But I’m out of sync.

There’s a rhythm to some sections where, if the speed is right, you can cruise green lights with out stops and catch a flow of traffic. It is a familiarity bordering on intimate. Some things have changed in the last month: construction has moved along, a few abandoned cars have gone missing - I’ve learned they don’t always go away, sometimes they reappear in other places. Some things have stayed the same: people at certain stores in the morning, walkers - although they're further along because I’m later along.

It’s a bit of a hustle and a little denial, but it’s as clear as the sunrise; I’m gonna miss my target time. This will leave me with an hour to kill downtown. I let up on the push and drop down Imperial into downtown, bypass the short route and meander through the streets. You can tell it’s the start of a new year: there’s new people out jogging, less people out for a morning smoke and a gaggle of people with new puppies.

In a way it is a refreshing way to look at the city anew. A year to ride, experience again and become familiar with an old friend. Stop, lock the bike up, take off the helmet, turn off the blinkie lights. Drink some water - apparently stale from remaining on the bike for a few weeks between rides, and giggle at that. Take a deep breath, shoulders back and sigh. This year, this year is going to be a good year. I can feel it.

Of course, that sounds a bit cliché, corny, or even dumb the second the words escape my lips. And I giggle at myself a little. Bored, with time to waste, I get back on the bike and do aimless loops around down town.

Tony has his coffee cart near the old YMCA again. He waves as I ride by. People are rushing in and out of the grocery store on the back side of Horton Plaza. Heading over towards the College trolley stop, there’s some interesting graffiti on the wall, and direction has changed. This goes on for about 30 minutes. Aimless curving around, letting lights make the decision on whether to turn or go forward. Morning sun, shadows of buildings, an occasional breeze. The smell of washed sidewalks, breakfast and coffee. Eventually time runs out, and as much as before it was a hurry to get to a destination, now I'm disappointed at the end of sheer wandering, suddenly burdened with purpose. The soreness returns to my legs as reality sets in. I laugh out loud now. It’s like a kid at Christmas. Impatient for it to begin, lost in the moment to much to grab it, and then looking back with a bit of melancholy.

by BikeSD Staff

When the walls came tumblin' down

At the age of 12, my mother told me I was now old enough to ride my bike where ever I wished. The invisible fence was at the end of the block in an evolving suburban neighborhood in South San Jose. You could, at a stretch, from the end of the block, see down a “drive” the went about a half a mile in either direction. The announcement, that came on a weekday, preceded hours of sitting on the seat of an 80’s Schwinn BMX staring down the street at others who walked, drove and rode ~ freely. Now, for most, this would be a holiday worthy announcement. Planning would be in order. Honestly, for that week, the subject didn’t come up and it didn’t cross my 12 year old mind.

Saturday morning, was as most boys, breakfast, cartoons, and then shoved out the door to “go do something”. In the corner was the Schwinn, knobby rear tire slightly bald from skidding. I walked back to my room, grabbed a red, general electric mini cassette player with a built in speaker, and a cassette tape. In a shoe box, in the garage, there was miscellaneous stuff, bolts, screws, parts and pieces. With a piece of metal from who-knows-what, and a hand drill, I screwed the cassette player to the front reflector. I grabbed a battery, and stiff plastic water bottle from my brothers gold Univega Alpine Uno road bike and left.

The only thing in the cassette player was a dubbed version of “Crimson and Clover” by Joan Jett and “Planet Rock” by Africa Bambaataa. Or, the only thing worthy of remembering, perhaps. At the end of the street, I hit a left. At the end of the long street, I cut right out to the express way. I followed the expressway to it’s end, and then road along the creek. From the creek, I paralleled Highway 101.

The tape player would slow and stretch sounds a little as the bike reacted to curbs, bumps, and occasional stand up pedaling. Every 10 minutes, the tape would stop, and the player would click off. Carefully reaching forward, rewind would be hit, and once at the beginning, the songs were replayed. Joan Jett’s voice would waiver, as if growing tired from the long ride. She was hard to hear with the speaker facing forward, and even on maximum, the sound was pretty flat.

The Schwinn was no where near as cool as the Mongoose bikes, and the Red Line bikes my friends had. It was heavy, lacked a free wheel or a hand brake, (coaster brakes), had a seat with a pad instead of the cool BMX seats, and there was no pad on the handlebars. The grips were plastic instead of the rubber ones on other bikes. Secretly, I knew that if I ever had a chance to run from the police or CIA with an extra terrestrial in the front basket, I’d never get the thing off the ground.

The bike path ended in a farm. A farm with a long driveway that reached out to another road. Summer had turned the bay area hills golden. These were hills when IBM was big. When there was no internet, computers were green screened, compact cars got 18 mpg, and rap music was a novelty. Things seemed uncomplicated, dangers were limited to strangers offering candy or waking someone up early. These hills boxed in my view of the world, seemingly castle walls that could not be passed through. Riding south, the end of the trail, stopping on this farm, seemed with out belief. A trail that I had watched for years from a car window, that seeming ran on for ever through the gold grass and oak trees, suddenly ended.

I wiped my sweaty hands, drank from the water bottle, and rode out to the end of the drive way. Going each direction was the now defunct Monterey Highway. Run down fruitstands, symbols of a changing landscape I had yet to grasp were down the road. I gingerly walked out on the road, defiantly looking south, where no traffic came. Lifting the heavy Schwinn over the guard rail, it slipped, the cassette player stopped. Back on, I rode on. The road was empty for seemingly miles. At 12, the miles seemed like years. The vestiges of road side stands, and guard rail that went on for miles were all to be seen.

The water bottle grew to slippery to hold, and was now empty. I set it on a weathered guard rail post, and continued to ride. For what might be a mile, but what became years, I reached Morgan hill. A stranger stopped at a local antique store, and asked me what I was doing, and when he heard my story, he was shocked and amazed. He came out with a glass bottle of orange fanta, and 10 cents. Enough to call home.

My mother, of course, was in shock. Morgan Hill was about 20 miles south of were we lived at the time. But, in terms of a 12 year old who was only allowed to venture to the end of the street, it could have been a different planet. Completely unsure of what law I had violated, if I had done something wrong, or if perhaps I had tread onto ground that was forbidden for my age….confusion set in.

But, I hung up the pay phone, and rode home. Skipping the trail, I stayed on Monterey Highway, the whole way, until I reached a known cross street. From there I crisscrossed from land marks previously seen only from the back window of a car. There was sunburn on my face and arms, salt stains on my shirt and grease on my corduroy pants. Hours later, there I was, at the corner that had previously been the limits of my world. Missing a water bottle, cassette player now filled with a spider web of tape feed, palms black from the grips, and more thirsty than I knew how to explain. But, there I sat, at that corner.

I can’t tell you how long I sat there, on the seat of that bike. At home, my mother was waiting, and probably my father (turns out, he was, and I was forced to ‘stand in the corner’ for a few hours after the trip, which was punishment enough while dehydrated and tired). I knew that something in the form of punishment was coming, that weird dread that comes to the 12 year old mind in an indefinable form of clairvoyance that strangely only came AFTER something had happened. I knew where I should be, and that I should be there quick, as if an early arrival would decrease the severity of the punishment ~ but, this moment declared this 12 year old wisdom to be false.

But for a few minutes, I drank in the hills, golden brown. Not defiant, but in a manner of knowing, that walls had fallen, new horizons were not only seen, but available, and that something had changed.

The tape player never worked again. My brother never seemed to notice the missing water bottle. For my birth day, I got a cool plastic seat from Gemco that had holes in it and was labeled “BMX”, and some rubber grips ~ all ideas from my Mom, I’m sure.

My mother often recounts the story of the bike ride and the phone call with a certain novelty. She’s older now, aged from years of being a social worker, and raising two kids who were tyrants of stress. I broke down many walls as a kid, some good and right walls to break down. Others, I think were not kind on her heart.

Visiting recently, we laughed how she watches NFL football, and I’ll tinker with something instead. I rant at the dumbness of football, she gaffs at “sideline bimbo’s”. and something debasing about Al Davis. “I remember the time you called me from Morgan Hill, you always have to push the limits.” A mixture of pride and a memory of the stressfulness of the event glints in her eyes.

I think a part of me left home that day, and never came back.

by BikeSD Staff