It was my very first two-wheeled bike and I was thrilled with it. It had a been a gift from my parents. The grips were a bright white rubbery plastic with finger grooves.
It was a single-speed and came equipped with coaster brakes, white fenders, a blue and white seat and had a pretty blue chain guard with the name Supercycle painted on it in white script.
I loved that bike. It was my equivalent to freedom, as every child discovers. I was a bit of a daredevil back, setting up obstacle courses to ride my bike through; small ramps and jumps and “water features”. I attempted a crazy stunt on a gravel hill that resulted in road rash on my elbows and picking gravel out of the scrape. But I always got back on. At the time, I was too young and we lived too far from town for me to ride my bike to school, but it was not too far to ride to the bus stop, which was about half a mile from my house. My friend David lived on the corner where the bus picked us up and said it was Ok to park my bike there while we were at school. This was a great arrangement because when we got home David would get his bike and the two of us would head off to find adventure before it was time to go home.
One day, I got off the bus and my bike wasn’t there. Gone. No one had seen anything. There was nothing I could do. I walked home, crying. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to steal ‘MY’ bike.
My parents consoled me but there wasn’t much they could do. I can’t remember if we ever filed a police report.
I got another bike, and this one never left my yard except when I was on it. I returned to walking to the bus stop because I was too scared this one would be stolen as well. (I know what you are thinking…Why didn’t you lock the bike up? Lock it?!?!?! What’s a bike lock? I grew up in an age where you weren’t supposed to have to lock your bike, or wear a helmet, so I did neither.)
About a year later David and I were out on our bikes and had ridden about three miles down the road to a local campground where they had a tiny sundries store that stocked the best fireball jawbreakers on earth.
They were cinnamon flavored, could barely fit in your mouth and they took hours to eat, burning your taste buds off the entire time. We were on a mission for fireballs. We left the store, clutching our small paper bags filled with sugar-laden junk and went around the back to sit before heading back home.
And there it was. Sitting in long overgrown grass along the back wall of the camp store was my bike…missing both wheels. David and looked at each other and our jaws dropped. We looked around to see if anyone had seen us. Now we were paranoid. It was as if we had just witnessed a murder and the bad guy was going to track us down. We ran to our bikes and pedaled those single speeds as fast as we could to the nearest house where we knew someone. Knocking on the door I begged to use the phone, and called my Dad, explaining in heaving breaths that I had found my bike!
He humoured me and came to pick us up and we drove to the camp store where David and I remained in the truck, slinking down in the front seat, while my father went into the store to make inquiries. Minutes later he emerged, walked around the back of the store and came back with my skeleton of a bike frame. He put it in the truck and we headed home.
He told us that they had no idea whose bike it was, that it had been there, wheel-less, for some time. The crime was untraceable, and the bike was unrideable.
Later that summer Dad found a couple of wheels to put back on the bike, but with the fenders they were too small and the bike suddenly looked goofy. It was relegated to our cabin where my brother and I rode to the local camp store for chocolate bars and pop. It was a good camp bike, but sadly remained forever tainted in my eyes.
