Peddling Furiously

I was on my 1994 Cannondale, peddling furiously. I was keeping up, but had the sense that I was working MUCH harder than I should've had to. But I was also amazed, given how I'd been feeling--so completely ravaged by age and old injuries--that I was able to do so at all.

So I hopped off the bike and looked at the seat height and handle bars and how far forward the seat was set. It was all wrong and inexplicably so, since the bike had been sitting in the shed at Mooney Avenue for the past 23 years.

Then I woke up.

[I know, I know, a totally trite and cheesy denouement. Which I wouldn't have used except that, these days, it's all I've got.]

Last week, while working to clear out the old house, my daughter had called to ask whether I'd be keeping the bike. The father of my twin granddaughters had said that he could use it to ride with the girls, so I'd said for him to take it.

But that's not the whole story.

Yesterday, after my grandson and I had done our respective workouts--his on the soccer field, mine on the track, both in the rain--we drove to the Mello Velo Bike Shop/Cafe in the city and looked at bikes.

I'd gone there a couple of days earlier when the idea of us getting new bikes was first discussed. (It was my idea, actually. I'd previously thought he should have one so he could get around without having to depend on a willing adult with a car. Then, overnight, it had become the two of us, together facing the uncertain times ahead.)

And so we went to the shop and looked around and talked and made some tentative plans. Red for him, blue for me. Aluminum frame for lightness in weight, x-brakes rather than discs for ease of service and overall simplicity.

A bicycle rack atop the Forester and, on top of that, the red and the blue. Lightweight and agile for whatever lay ahead. The thought of it easing me into sleep. Setting me upon that inward road of drifting, fragmented images and realities.

That road of nightmares and dreams...

LPK
Dreamwidth
3.29.2020