Breaking my concentration from swipes of mashed potatoes on buttered hawaiian rolls this year, the proverbial Thanksgiving question surfaced around the dinner table. It’s seasonal attire may be different, but the sentiment is always the same. “What are you thankful for this year?" I jump in first. “Bikes.”
A month and a half earlier, I’d been bombing up the Embarcadero on a candy red Jump-bike with Tom Petty blaring in my headphones. It was an uncharacteristically sunny day and I’d just finished a big, beautiful install in Dogpatch. Wind and water and sun, and the unmatched satisfaction of a job well done. Twenty minutes later I’d be on the other side of the coin - meeting with two of my great friends who have employed me for the last two years to inform them that I wouldn't be working for them any longer. It will change the trajectory of everything I’ve been for the last 8 years.
My history with bikes is scattered. I don’t own a bike of my own, we instead had a couple house bikes in varying states of decay and abandonment at my parent’s. There was the antiquated turquoise beach cruiser, gifted to Whitney to join in on her freshman year at school, only to have it’s destiny unrealized to collect dust for nearly a decade. There's my mother's bike, I don’t know why or how, but black and fancy with 21 gears with only one of them actually ever used. Anything in the 3rd sounds like rocks grinding in a garbage disposal. She rode it once alongside me once on a chaperoned run to notorious Almaden Lake park, and then never again. For whatever reason, we didn’t bike much as kids - I think Josee was afraid we’d get kidnapped, and instead pushed the rollerblading agenda. You just can’t go as far. Brink had just come out, which very well may have played a part.
20 years late to the game, in the long days of last summer, Kendall and I got into bike riding. We took each of the machines down from the rafters, pumped the tires and went into the park, too scared of cars and traffic. We felt like 70’s kids in the summertime, in faded denim and Adidas gazelles, syncing up our playlists at the start of every ride. We'd hit the play buttons at the exact same time and sing the starts of the songs to each other to make sure the timing matched. I can only imagine how this sounded to any passerbys. We leveraged the two noble steeds into all essential travel - a 10 minute ride to see the baby, 5 minutes to the grocery store, 20 around the lake for a sunset cruise. Our hogs on the open road.
Char started it all, as she does. When I use to visit in Redondo, we would kick off the trip with a ride on The Strand - 26 miles and a finish into the ocean (just us - not the bikes). We couldn't walk for the next two days. The constant complaining created perfect opportunities to describe to anyone in earshot the lengths that our athleticism, endurance, mental fortitude stretched to. Or tell the story of the time we both almost died when two of us rode one bike, together, through campus and down the Grande Avenue grade, and I couldn’t move my neck for a week. Her brother Wally has dozens of motley cruisers in Newport - rusted and busted, a handle missing, a seat that doesn’t stay up. The last time we took them out, our crew rode them around like a bunch of bullies; Steve sounding the squadron’s only handlebar bell through every intersection.
In the city, the birth of the electric bike changed my opportunities for transport and therefor, my reality. I biked everywhere. To Tartine’s opening in the Sunset. Velo Rouge for a hungover breakfast burrito and icey oat latte. Doctor’s appointments. You manufactured wind, propelled forward and up the hilly streets and the trip there became better than the actual destination. “I BIKED HERE.” Half lie, half truth. I apologized to the manual mounted cyclists I slingshotted past, barely having broken a sweat. It was faster than an Uber, which when riding in, were absorbed by your phone, or counting the minutes because you were stuck in traffic and late for where you needed to be. On the bike you had trees, birds, people, speed, freedom, stop lights, and looking cool.
I took Char on one on her last visit, knowing it would thrill her. She appropiately lost her shit.
In Bali, the natural graduation of bikes (barely biking > intermittent biking with Char > summer biking at home > city electric bike) landed me square on the back of a scooter. The last time I had been on one was the last time I almost died scootering - hitting some inlet railway slick with city mist to 360 around my planted foot in a Sunset intersection. Kendall’s boyfriend thought I had almost died before calling out “Looked pretty sick though!” and I hadn’t revisited the pastime.
Traveling with my mom, we didn’t touch the things, seeing the variations of scooter injuries seven ways to Sunday. We walked instead, opting to learn the towns and villages in detail, but in the process, overheating and exhausting ourselves. Many a lunches started in that hot, sweaty silence, without a semblance of humanity before plumping ourselves back to life with a cold drink.
When Tommy showed up, I got on the back of his scooter and the world cracked open. After a couple weeks, he gave me a crash course on a road closure our bike was trapped inside of. I went one way and never came back for him. I opted to take an actual crack at learning with an early morning thule around Uluwatu, well before other cars came out, learning the leans and the pick up. By the time Emma arrived, of course we got some of our own - saying we knew what we were doing. We really didn’t. But we had freedom and time back in our pockets.
So, back from travel, unscathed, but very much in quarantine - I’ve been back on the bike. A lot. Everyone’s on theirs too, coming to the same conclusions I've been coming to over the last year and change - this is a pretty good gig.
Josee hates us riding at night, but tonight, Kendall and I are bombing home under the flower moon. The street is so bright it may as well be daytime. I see Kendall take her baseball cap and put it on backwards, kicking it into a higher gear - the only way we ride now, both as strong on these things as we’ve ever been. When I pump, the blood grips the back of my legs, and I think of how that burn used to sear my lungs only a handful of weeks ago.
The faster we go, the more amazing it feels. I keep turning around to look up at the moon.