Frankenstein or Superman All I wanna do is Bicycle bicycle bicycle

I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like.
It's got a basket, a bell that rings
And things to make it look good.
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.
I have a love affair with bicycles.
The simplicity, the efficiency, the lines, the colours, the shape, the sounds.
Its all so very beautiful.
I love the way the wind feels blowing against your face as you ride, the breeze in my hair.
I love the sound of the bearings clicking in the hubs.
The precision sound of a chain gliding into place as you shift to tackle a hill.
I love the feel of the ground coming up through the wheels as you take a corner a sharp angle.
I love the sound of your own breathing and the blood pounding through your head as you finish a long sprint.
Even the knocks, bangs and clicks from a less than ideally maintained bike are comforting to me.

I think our love for a bike is mostly nostalgia - it brings back the carefree moments of our youth. They represent freedom, the ability to move on our own, to manipulate machinery, to stretch our boundaries beyond the reach of our parents - beyond the horizon of their eyesight.

I started off with a blue metallic tricycle, it had a white banana seat with red trim, white handle grips with red, white, yellow and blue streamers hanging from them. I know it had a horn, a bell and I think it had a white basket as well, but I'm not sure. I do remember a little yellow sticker on the riding platform on the back that had to do with firefighting. I imagine it was sold off in a garage sale many years ago.
That was replaced with a red ccm swinger convertible. The convertible meant the cross bar could be adjusted as a top tube or a step through a girls bike. I started off on it with coaster wheels, it had a spring saddle, a bell and a horn. I never gave a thought about the chrome fenders and how tiny the wheels would have been on it. I remember tearing down woodrow crescent, trying to make the bike "cooler" by covering up the swinger logo with masking tape that had "General Lee" written on it. That certainly dates me as a relic doesn't it.

This one is not mine, or who knows, maybe it is just under a different owner. I hadn't thought of it in years, but was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the details came back to me.

The 'swinger' would have served me well for a while, I have no idea what age I was when I retired/out grew it. But it was replaced with my first 'real'  or at least what I thought of as real bike. A CTC Road King SuperCycle 10 speed. It was blue with gold/bronze labelling on it. It had drop handle bars with big thick foam grips. It had the standard brakes and the pull levers as well. There were reflectors on the wheels, front tube, seat tube, the orange ones on the pedals  which were they type of platforms that would whack you in the shin leaving a scratch or puncture from the spikes on them. I tried finding a pick of it, but just couldn't find one anywhere. I do seem to recall it having a suntour gruppo on it, but that might just be wishful thinking. The ten speed marked even more freedom. I'd ride it on my own to baseball practice in the summer, to morning swimming lessons which meant locking it with a cheap cable/combination lock 6934 - that just came to me out of no where.
I can distinctly remember the drag I would get on the wheels from the light generator being put into place. And I had reduced the warning system to just the bell, I suspect I would have been reluctant to even have it on there, as it wasn't "cool". I would have gotten four or five years of use out of that one,
and after saving some money, I went into my first true bike shop.
Rainbow Cycles on Wellington Rd.
Rainbow was my first introduction to the world of cycling. It had good bikes, road and the popular BMX machines of the time. The spread of mtn bikes had yet to take over the world. It had that unique smell of grease, rubber and citronella chain cleaner. There were parts and gruppos in display cases, it had spandex clothing with advertising of european companies you'd never heard of. There were magazines like: bicycling, cycle, pedal etc.

I was in heaven.

Every few weeks I'd hassle mom and dad into stopping so I could pick out my new steed and see how long is was going to take me to save for it. I settled on a Fiori Monza 12 speed. It was black and pink, with quick release hubs for the front and back wheels, I put toe cages on it to go with my Nike Look pedal system shoes. There was no horn, no light, no reflectors, no bell.
I was a rebel!
This was the bike that got me all over town, I could go from my house downtown along Upper Queen and Ridout in just 16 minutes! It made me the king of my domain. I made rides to St. Thomas and Port Stanley on it, I thought if I fitted it with panniers I could go anywhere in the world. I didn't need my parents for their car anymore, although thank you guys for when I did need a ride.

As much joy and happiness the Monza brought me, it also brought me my most pain. It was the bike I had my first spectacular experience with road rash with 20 years later the scars are still visible. It was
also the first bike of many that was stolen. It was taken one night at work, I stopped into the petrol station and stayed for twenty minutes, I didn't lock it up, thinking who would be so brazen as to steal it with me standing right there. I suspected it at the time and I feel the same still, that it was the other little teen punks that worked next door at the Sunoco car wash that pinched it, but who knows. Fortunately, we had the foresight to insure a $400 bike, so it meant a trip to find something new! By now the times had changed, it was 1990 and Mtn Bikes were no longer the monstrously heavy balloon tired garage sale clunkers. Sadly, Rainbow Cycles hadn't embraced the new trends and I had to find a new shop. This one on was Two Wheels on Dundas. I never felt comfortable there, it was too bright, too clean, it smelt more of carpeting and packaging than it did of those smells I associated with a bike shop. It must have affected my choice of new mounts - a Diamond Back Topanga - I picked it as a bike to take to university with me, something that would survive the Ottawa traffic, weather and streets. I got it a month or two before it was time to move, and as I wasn't allowed to keep it in residence with me I had to keep it locked up out front of the dorm. We left it at my aunt and uncles place for the first few weeks while all of the new school year festivities took place, just to keep it safe. We brought it down, locked it up and then went home for the thanksgiving weekend. On arriving back, Uncle Paul quipped how's the bike? I looked over and....
It was gone!
Not just the bike the entire rack was gone!
Heartbreak struck yet again. I was livid, I hadn't had time to fall in love with this bike, we never bonded, oh what could have been!
You thieving Bastards!

Thank god for insurance!
That brought around the Specialized Rock Hopper.
I always thought the Rock Hopper was a step down from the Topanga, it cost more, but it was what the insurance covered me for. It was my first bike as a courier. I remember all too well suffering through the snow trying to push it along. Its weight and terrible handling. It too got stolen from me. This time while I was chasing government bureaucracy in the passport office at Place du Portage in Hull.
*sigh*

The next one was a Trek 950 Singletrack. My first all aluminium bike. It was pretty cool, and yet it got abused by me as a work bike. I adorned it with the head of a Wil E. Coyote mug from KFC, and loved it fondly for the few years we were together. It too was separated from me far too quickly, this time from out front of a lawyers office. I admit it was my fault for not actually locking it, but it was meant to be an in and out pick up and I was able to watch it the entire time. Apparently those few seconds it was out of my sight, were all that was needed.

That brought around the Specialized Stumpjumper M2 with Rock Shock mag 20 forks! I even fixed it out with a Tioga wheel disc! It was my first real racing bike and man did I race it. That one only ever saw a few days on the road as a work bike, I was always too nervous to take it out as I couldn't get insurance coverage anymore. It spent a lot of time hanging from hooks in my ceiling, a constant reminder of the importance of bikes in my life.

Shit.
No more insurance coverage.
Now what do I do?
I need a bike to earn money and I have no money to get a bike.... maybe I should steal one? No that's just karmically uncool.
Lee Cooper helped me out by selling me a used bike. It felt too big at first, it was my the first roadie I'd had in close to a decade, it took a long time to get used to, but it became part of me. It was an extension of myself. We were symbiotic. Until a cold, cold, cold winter morning in 1996. I thought of every excuse I could to not work, but couldn't get out of it. On my way to picking up one of my last packages in the morning run, I heard a snap and soon I was flying through the air in a most unnatural way. It was brought about with an abrupt and painful crash to the ice. I looked down at my steed with rear wheel still spinning half heartily and saw that the front fork had snapped directly below the crown on both sides. There was another crack forming in the top tube as well. Hmm, no more riding today at least I get to get out of the cold.

Once again, no money, no really usable bike. What to do, what to do.

I had found a new bike shop since becoming a courier, and I was in love again. The staff were informed, sarcastic, rude, lazy, dirty, and frequently high or drunk. What wasn't to love about them? They were ideal! The shop had all the right amount of dirt and grease everywhere. It was like walking back into Rainbow cycles again, but this time I was already on the inside of the cycling world. I was accepted as a true two wheeler. And the boys, most of them former couriers themselves, recognised their own kind. I was sold a used Kona Kahuna on consignment, I'd be back on the road in less than a week.

The Kona became an extension of myself, it was as much a part of me as any limb. It went with me everywhere. It would go to the bottle shop, the grocery store, the bars, it went with me on treks through France, Switzerland, Germany, India, Belgium, Ireland, U.S.A and so on. It came with me to Australia, and it aged and changed with me that entire time as well. I put 700cc wheels on it and Magura Hydraulic brakes, I changed the paint to something more unique. A bronze Buddha adorned the headtube, along with the Tibetan prayer flags, while St. Christopher and St. Gabriel medals adorned the wheels keeping me safe after I slid under the moving truck.

There were other bikes as well.

The Gary Fisher

The Cannondale Black Lightning with all Campagnolo groupo.

The handbuilt Gardin fixie.

The Scott full suspension.

When I came to Oz, I quit riding and the rust and dust seemed to build up on the old mare at the same rate the inches went onto my waist. Eventually Liv backed into it and it bent the wheel and possibly then rear forks and with that my riding died. I'd thought several times of getting it fixed, but just never seemed to have the time or money. I don't know what will happen to it when I'm gone, but I'd like to think it will sit quietly in a shed waiting to be dusted off, the Brooks saddle oiled, greased  and ridden again, this time by a young girl exploring the sense of wonder at what vistas await around the next horizon.