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| From High Wheel Bicycle |
On my bicycle, I've raced, toured, commuted and delivered pizzas, books, payroll checks, blueprints, contracts, machine parts and a few packages with "don't ask don't tell" policies, if you know what I mean.
I've thumped along potholed city streets, rumbled down rocky hills, rolled along county roads and routes departmantles past fields, castles, cathedrals and through forests and villages. I've woven my way through pacelines and drafted riders I would pass and others who would ride in races, and in places, I have never seen. I've cycled over ice and through fire. (I'm not making that up!) I've ridden alone, with friends, with lovers and after breakups. And I've pedalled away from a person or two.
On the other hand, I've never done BMX, bicycle polo or paintball on bicycles. And I've never ridden a high-wheeler, although I sometimes think I'd like to. After all, my cycling ancestors did so. They include Auguste Rodin, H.G. Wells and Mark Twain, who wrote an incomparable account of the experience.
He tamed his bike the way he tamed just about everything else: with his wit and irony. Really, I don't see how a cyclist can not develop at least a little bit of either quality.
Whatever others do, I'm not gonna "ask."
ReplyDeleteSteve: Is that your version of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy? ;-)
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