My first mechanical love was a 1967
Schwinn Stingray, with gold metalflake paint and a tiger-pattern banana
seat, which appeared on Christmas day. It was particularly good at
speeding, flying off ramps and skidding to a stop, though I myself was
not. The sissy bar at the back was what bullies hung onto when they
wanted to mess with me, which was often.
Next came a candyapple red Robin Hood "English racer" with
26-inch wheels and a 3-speed Sturmey-Archer hub. Fast, fast, fast.
Everything a 9-year-old could want in a "real" bike. I got it just in
time for the rest of my friends to graduate to 10-speed racers, Shimano
derailleurs and rattrap pedals and make me feel like a little
loser.
Three years of geekhood later, my Aunt Joyce gifted me with a C. Itoh
10-speed, with Shimano parts, a weirdly cool ice-urine metalflake paint
job and super-grabby Weimann brakes, which I thought would make me look
tough when I slammed to a stop, but instead just pitched me straight
over the bars and onto the pavement at least twice before I got the
message.
I hung onto the Itoh through college,
through my first newspaper jobs, and it evolved, eventually gaining a
matte-black paint job and a disgusting patina of rust and grease. I left
it with my Volvo mechanic when I deserted Florida (where a long-term
romance and my career basically self-immolated).
In Philadelphia, I picked up a refurbished '62 Schwinn cruiser with
chrome fenders and whitewalls. I have it to this day - 50 pounds of
by-god American tube steel and machined parts. I commuted in hardnosed
city traffic, through thick snow, pissing rain and (I'm not
exaggerating) sleet for five rough years.
When I moved to California, I rewarded the Schwinn by stripping and
rebuilding it completely. Candy-apple red, of course.
I then spent about six years kicking the shit out of a Specialized
RockHopper (good first mountain bike, which carried me through the first
of two California
AIDS Rides and a trip down Moab's Slickrock Trail. The rigid steel
frame kicked me back, but at least it taught me how to avoid plunging
off cliffside singletrack (lie flat atop the machine and clutch the
earth until it stops ripping off your fingernails and face).
A few years ago, I got myself a terrific
Cannondale F1000 (pictured above), which I took over some gnarly red
table rock at Sedona, across desert sand at Joshua Tree National Park
and through the second AIDS Ride. Then someone stole it.
Hell holds a certain particularly toasty corner for bike thieves, I told
myself as I ground through the requisite red tape with my insurance
company. But then I picked my current ride - a hardtail Cannondale
F700sx with Hayes discs, a particularly bizarre Lefty front end and a
very trick blue metalflake-to-black paint job.
When I'm not
riding it irresponsibly around L.A. after dark through pungent neighborhoods with the notorious fictitious bike gang known as the IAAL-MAF, I'm sharing a (candy-apple red) '72 Schwinn
DeLuxe Twinn tandem with my wife, Kristina or dragging the kids around
in an airy little trailer behind the good ol' cruiser.
Why the obsession? Bikes don't pollute, cost big
money or let you down. You can always fix them with a few minutes of
cursing, sweat and a skinned knuckle or two, and they will take you
anywhere.
