Episode CXV: My Bike

These days I live a fairly metropolitan life. I sold my truck; I live minutes away from work, church, entertainment, big city, etc.; and I consequently walk or bike most places. The star of today’s show therefore is my bicycle:

That’s right, a circa 1960s, steel, rusted, fixed-gear, vintage Huffy Sportsman bicycle.

Let’s start by talking about the positive attributes: My bicycle is charming. It has character. It is comfortable. It has a rear rack and a front basket (when you use your bike as often as I do, you really start to appreciate a bike with a basket). It gets me from point A to B, and is broken-down and rusted enough to never get stolen (see below). And finally, it is unique enough to be a common conversation-starter with random strangers on the street (see below).

And now for the negative attributes: On cold days, the pedals squeak. Occasionally the gears grate against the gear-protector. (This can be remedied by a hearty kick to the gear apparatus.) The tires, which appear to be originals, are just leaky enough that they never truly fill up, but neither do they ever truly go flat (I haven’t pumped them up in months). When I first got the bike the brakes worked a little, but within weeks they didn’t work at all. I have devised a number of coping strategies including (1) timing the lights on the way to work for minimal stop-and-go, (2) stopping from moderate-to-slow speeds by simply dismounting, and (3) slowing from a high speeds using Flintstones-style brakes (rubber soles to the wheel are nearly as effective as rubber bicycle brakes to the wheel).

And as if all those eccentricities weren’t fun enough, I was biking across campus one day and heard a big clunk. My left pedal had just fallen off my bike. Turns out the threading on the pedal as well as the threading on the mount was totally stripped, and I would have had to replace the entire pedal mount if I wanted my left pedal back. So instead, I learned how to bike with only one pedal. At first this was quite difficult, but I slowly gained the muscle memory needed to correctly time the revolutions and push against the metal shaft each revolution (see video below).

The bike is quite a conversation piece as well. I am often accosted by astute passersby and fellow cyclists with observations such as “Hey, you’re missing a pedal!” or “You need some air in those tires!” or “I don’t think anyone’s going to steal your bike man!” I also have met a number of people impressed with my ability to bike sufficiently well with only one pedal. Indeed, I take particular pleasure out of the rare occasions when my one-speed, one-pedal, 40-year-old clunker passes up a shiny new 24-speed struggling its way up the hill on Beacon Street.

It leaks, it squeaks, its brakes don’t work. It’s my new bike!

[Please note: the rust, the missing pedal, and the stunning good looks.]