My Bike

I've begun to bike places more often. Part of the reason why is health: in general I like the idea of exercising while I commute. Part of it is cost: I save money on gas and parking, and members fees at a gym that I might have to join in order to get this same amount of exercise. And, part of it is just because I enjoy biking.

(part of it is also the fact that Moya, my car, tends to have her alarm go off at all odd hours of the morning while nighttime joy riders drive super fast down the road by Kathryn's house. Not being woken up, sometimes repeatedly, in the middle of the night is something amazing you don't know you have until it's gone)

The story of bike is an interesting one.


When I was growing up, I would bike every day to school. This was the case ever since I learned to bike back in grade school. This would happen rain or shine, and there always were a few days a year when I would have to go the whole morning completely drenched since it had been raining on the bike in. Fortunately, this was northern California, so that kind of rainy day was few and far between.

When I went to college, I didn't bring my bike. I didn't need it. My brother, on the other hand, did need a bike, as his had fallen to pieces over the years. So, when I left, I let him use my bike. It seemed like a simple enough solution, at the time.

A few years passed, and two things happened at about the same time.

First, I found a bike abandoned in the bushes after one of my frisbee practices. It was rusty, partially flat, and the rear brake pad has been completely worn down. It was not a great bike. But I decided it would make my trips up and down the hill to my apartment a bit faster (well, down the hill, anyways). After a week or so with this crappy found bike, I began to wonder what had happened to my high school bike.

Second, Alan was finishing high school and moving on to college. He also decided that he wouldn't need a bike once he went to college, since everything would be in walking distance.

You would think this would have a simple solution, but no.

I called home and asked what happened to my bike. I got a curt reply. "That's Dad's bike now."
"What? No, I mean my bike. The one Alan was using."
"Yeah, that's Dad's now. He's going to leave it up in Tahoe so he can use it when he goes up there."

I won't go in to my dad a lot, but this is typical him. He'll just completely disrespect us, pull some shit, then get angry and yell about how he pays for everything, even though our mother is the primary breadwinner.
Apparently, Dad thought it was an old bike in need of a few upgrades. Especially if he was going to be riding it. So when Alan left, he took it to the shop, and poured about $800 worth of upgrades into the thing. He spent the money on it, so now it's his. Plain and simple.

I told him I didn't care how much money he put into the bike, it wasn't his to repair. It was still my bike and he couldn't take it. Despite my moral high ground, he had the physical advantage of actually having the bike, as opposed to me being an hour away at University. So, I lost. My dad stole my bike.


He tried to make it up to me when I came home for the summer. On my birthday, he gave me a brand new bike. It was not well received. Not only did it drudge up our argument (after all, his unscrupulous actions were the only reason I needed a new bike in the first place) but the bike was a weighty behemoth. It had adjustable shocks, disc brakes, thumb shifters, wide tires, all kinds of things you'd expect to see in a quality off-road bike.

Except I wasn't planning on off-roading at all. I needed a commuter bike. Definitely not this. If you go out of your way to create someone's need for a gift, as tasteless as it is to get them that gift, you could at least make it a good one.

I didn't like the gift. My dad didn't understand why. This bike was worth more than my old bike, more than the upgrades that he paid for improving my old bike. Do I know how much it costs? I should love this bike.

Needless to say, I never used it.


That is, until last summer. Kathryn moved from West Seattle to Ravenna, and she had to get her old bike to her new house somehow. I suggested we make a day trip out of it. Pack a couple of snacks, plan a relatively easy route, and just explore the city on our bikes.

I went to the storage unit below my apartment to pull this baggage-laden behemoth out into the light of day. It's the only bike I had, and it would get me along our picnic route quite nicely.

When we both started biking regularly, I looked at replacing it. But there were so many options, so many different types, so many price points. I tried to take a road bike for a test drive, but I happened to try this when all the road bikes were rented out for an annual bike race from Seattle to Portland. Then, the weather turned south, and that was enough to keep me from riding my bike for a little while. It was enough time where I questioned if a new bike would be a worthy investment, or if I would just spend the cash only to have my new bike hide out, once again, in my storage unit.

So I stopped looking. Now I just use this gargantuan block of metal on fat tires to huff and puff my way up and down the Burke-Gilman trail. If I really can keep biking despite the weather, than I should give buying a road bike a second chance. But for now, this bike that should never have been bought, that I should have never gotten, that I somehow didn't manage to get rid of, will do just fine.