Yeah, The Pensioner came pedaling into the Landfill back yard this afternoon. I am skeptical. I can’t remember what bikes we have around here. Apparently this is his original one. I mean the one we bought when we both bought bikes when the original beach urchin was a baby.

When I was a child, my bike was my best friend. I started out with a 20-incher and there was a period of time when I obsessively-compulsively rode that bike around our block hmmm how many times (I can’t remember) every evening. I remember one night coming home with frozen fingers and happily warming them up in warm water in our bathroom sink.

The next night? Eesh. A PREDATOR (a young man, not a bare bear) drove by me at the corner of Superior St. and 8th Ave. and said something like, “Hey kid, wanna go to the pitcher show?”. Cue the soundtrack from the movie Psycho in my little kid brain. I was two houses from home. I biked like CRAZY down the sidewalk past Phil and Philomena Herron’s house and Ozzie Green Thumb McInnes’s house into my yard (the predator was yelling “HEY KID, HEY KID”) and dove into the garage. When I got into the house I remember looking out the dining room window and seeing the predator driving fast down the alley. Looking for me? Where did that little kid go? Yeesh! I did NOT tell my parents about that. Why? I do not know. I was afraid to tell them, I think. Complicated reasons. I don’t remember what my dog Tigger was doing but it’s likely she was ready to go for his throat.

I grew taller and eventually got a 26-inch bike. It was a girl’s bike although at the time I really wanted a boy’s bike because I viewed myself as a badass. I was annoyed when I overheard kids at my school saying “The Brain of Lincoln school got a new bike”. I was mortified when my whole 6th-grade class saw MY MOTHER take off down the alley and 7th Avenue on MY BIKE! We lived across the street from the school. But. Jeebus!

I was a WARRIOR on that old bike. Me and my friend Laurie rode our bikes EVERYWHERE and we occasionally wiped out big time and got big oogly scrapes on our knees or wherever and so we would always say we had fought World War III on our bikes.

So the GG and I got our adult bikes when the beach urchins were babies and the problem was that the bike seats that we bought only strapped the kiddos in at the waist so they would fall asleep and their helmeted heads would move forward and bump up against my back. And then there was the time that I was riding with a very young mouse and I was struggling up a hill and she kept saying “Up the hill. Up the hill.”

I stopped riding that old bike because the brakes were making horrible noises and I do not fix brakes myself and I couldn’t make anyone else take the issue seriously enough to fix it. If he wants to ride his old bike, I am fine with that.

I’ll write about the bad book another day.

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