Back In The Saddle

So, the biking thing is going well!
No spills…yet!
No crashes….yet!
No pulled or strained anything…yet!
Unless you count the very spot, down there, where the body meets the bike seat…I’ll admit….that’s been better!
I am so lovin’ being back on a bike!
And I broke down and got my own!
I gave B Boy back his bike last week…sorta at his insistence. While he never came right and said…”get off my damn bike”….he kept hinting it was time I got one of my own. And realizing how un-cool it must be in his eyes, to have his mother riding around on his bike…I bit. I traded the little orange number for a lime green one. Yep I got a thing about colour. It doesn’t scare me at all.
Back in The Day…I was an avid rider.

Never bothered to get a driver’s license, I had my bike. When I moved to the city, Calgary to be exact, I found it much easier to have a bike than a car. No parking hassles, no traffic jams, no expenses like gas or insurance…shit back then…we were not even bright enough to realize we needed helmets! I could go anywhere… at any time. I. Loved. It!
My Grandmother ended all that.
Ya know how…shall we say…older people… get things stuck in their craw? They get a thought or idea and be damned if you can shake it outta them.
She decided it was unsafe for a girl to be riding a bike in a busy city…all hours of the day…and what if you were run over….you live alone…who would know…if you were laying dead in the road… who would go to the morgue to claim you…and how would we get you back here to bury you…and you’re so young …and your life would be over cuz you were riding a damned stupid ten speed and you’re a girl….I insist on buying you a car.
It went on for months.
I got this same phone call …two…three times a week. I stopped answering.
She then assumed I was out riding the damned stupid ten speed some more.
So she started on my mother.
Who was soon begging and pleading with me to buy a car…before she lost her mind.
I so didn’t want one. I so didn’t!
For the sake of sanity, and the return of harmony to my family, I agreed to go look.
Be damned if the car lot wasn’t beside a motorcycle shop.
I found my ‘car’.
A Honda.
V-65 Magna to be exact.
I called my Mom to tell her it was that or nothing. She could decide…that or she listen to my Grandmother…it was my best offer. I held the phone as far from my ear as possible, I was sure there would be screaming.
Only silence.
Then I hear….”you must never tell your Grandmother it’s a motorcycle, You must tell her It’s a car…a Honda…she will think it’s a Civic.”
I said I couldn’t lie to my Grandmother.
She said “you can …and you will. She is an old woman…she doesn’t need to know this…I promise…I will worry enough for both of us.”
So the deed was done.
Not that easy.
My grandmother, of course, wanted to know what kind of ‘car’ I had chosen.
A Honda I told her.
Two door or four door she asked?
Two door I replied. (since in fact, you could get on it from the left side or the right side….that I reasoned, would qualify it as a two door.)
What colour is it she asked?
Black….all black.
And how much money do I need to send you she asked?
$6000.00 I said.
That was almost the deal breaker.
She decided it can’t be much of a car for just that little and probly no safer than my damned stupid ten speed and maybe I better keep looking.
UGH!
After much assurance that this was a perfectly good ‘Honda”…and I had had it checked out…blah blah blah….she relented.
And the deal was done. I agreed not to ride my damned stupid. ten speed in the city anymore.
That was the end of my biking days….on a damned stupid ten speed anyway. I used my ‘car’ for transportation after that.
I’ve missed those days and how!
I’m really happy to be back on a bike.
A damned stupid mountain bike.
And yes.
My Grandmother went to her grave thinking she had bought me a black, two - door Honda Civic.
My mother made me!