LEARNING TO RIDE A BIKE

Sure, I fell a lot, but I never cried.  I was smart, I
practiced on the grass in the outfield of the baseball diamond.

I have been having these throwback moments of nostalgia again these days.  Rather strange about how that happens.  You go a couple of years straight without ever going back into the past. It's like it never existed. Life goes on at the age that you have achieved and that's it.  You arise in the morning, live the day going from one event to the other and never step out of that narrow trace.  Then, one day, when you're looking for some piece of reference material, boom!  There is a picture of a cousin that you haven't seen for 60 years or so and you're off...to who knows where.  Now where the @%^<~* did that reference thingy go?  You spend 30 or 40 minutes looking for it, and finally find it right where you left it to begin with, on the floor by the side of the box where you had found it.  But the cousin is still there.  Never goes away.  Can't get anything done.  What a mess!  I quit.  I hope she's still alive.  She must be, otherwise someone would have told me.  Funny, she never did get into the email stuff.  Pretty old fashioned, I guess.  Oh well, gotta get back to the grind.

Yep, that's what starts you back on the road to the past.  You think of all kinds of things that are not connected, not logical and not consequential in the least...but you're having fun so you let it go on.  So, I got stuck on the learning to ride a two-wheeler experience.  The reason why I put this picture up is because this is evidently a rich spoiled brat kind of wimp.  Look at that $300 bicycle!  It's small too.  What's he screaming about?  What would he be doing if it were a standard 26" like more of us had when we were going through the phase. Falling from that added height would really make him howl!  I didn't have a bike because my father said that I would get one when I turned 14.  I didn't like the deal, but the only money I ever held in my hand was the nickel that I would occasionally get to by a Hershey bar or something precious like a balsa wood stick and wing glider.

Somewhere around 9 years old or somewhere in there, my aunt Norma heard me whining about the fact that some of my friends could actually ride two-wheel bikes and that made me ashamed to traipse around the neighborhood on my old trike.  She said that I could borrow her bicycle now and then so that I could learn.
Oh, wow!  The first tine I had it, I walked it down to the playground where there was plenty of grass so that I could fall and not die on the first day from so many road wounds.  All went well until the guys saw that there I was with a girl's bike.  Ooooppsss!  I had over looked that discrepant reality.  I really took a lot of heat for showing up in a man's world with a girl's bike.  So, I got as far away from them as I could and forced myself to learn how to balance myself on that infernal machine.  I admit, that first day was not a total washout, but I left the playground to give my aunt Norma her vehicle in good condition.  I thanked her and asked her to lend it to me again soon so that I could maybe get to learn how to sit on the seat to pedal.  I had almost mastered balancing myself while standing up.  That was the beauty of the girl's bike.  It did not have the horizontal bar from the seat support to the front fork.


See what I mean?  This looks about like what my aunt's bike looked like.  This one is a little bit on the deluxe side though because it has a kickstand.
Well, about one week later I did get to spend some time at the playground again and I did learn pretty much how to ride a bike.  I still had not mastered the proper moves to mount a boy's bike, bit could ride a bike.  It would be quite a while before I would learn how to mount and dismount from a boy's bike.  That took a lot of practice.  However, to do that I got some help from a fellow baseball player who helped me to learn.  That wasn't easy, but I got through it and by the time I got my bicycle, I was already quite proficient...and, by the way, I was in the 6th grade and I was only 12.  I never knew why EFR Dion changed his mind about that.  Yeah, he bought me a boy's bike.