The Bicycle Adventure and Other Stories

Did you know? Nearly every major injury I have sustained was caused by riding a bike.

The other day, I went on an adventure with my new friend, Sarah, at FaHoLo. It involved bicycles, and I will tell you about our adventure in a minute. First, I have to give you a brief tour of the Laura + bike=disaster timeline.

Let’s see. Once, I was riding a wheeled toy in our garage. I would have to ask my mom exactly how old I was, but that’s not important. Suffice it to say, I flipped the tricycle thing over onto the concrete floor and got a gigantic bruise on my forehead. I think it was right before some dance recital, photography session, or other moment at which it would be nice to appear photogenic, and mom spent a quite a while putting foundation on my bump to somewhat cover it up. Oops!

When I was about 8 years old—my adult front teeth were newly grown in—I attempted to ride my neighbor’s full-sized bike. I did fine for a while, until I tried to turn into my driveway. I swerved, and the next thing I knew I took a bite of concrete, scraped my nose and chin and chipped off at least a third of my right front tooth. I got a cap on that tooth and you can still see the faint line that delineates the real tooth from the cap. You’d think I would have learned my lesson about bikes. Or not.

When I was 10, dad left for his first international trip—a business trip to the island of Cyprus. When he called home to tell us he arrived safely, mom got to tell him I had wrecked my bike and broken my right arm. What happened was this: I was trying to ride one-handed down the hill in our neighborhood. I had seen many of my friends doing it well and thought I would give it a try. I veered out of control and to correct the problem I grabbed the left-hand handle brake (which makes sense, given that I am left-handed!). Unfortunately, the left brake stops the front wheel! This presumably caused me to flip the bike and fracture my arm. Now, that was in the days before every pre-teen had a cell phone, so I had to wait on the curb in pain for someone to drive by before I could get help. I wore a cast for six weeks and was as good as new. (Taking piano lessons for six weeks with a cast made my piano teacher’s life difficult, but I got a lot better at playing chords with my left hand during that time!)

That is most of the harm I caused. Since those adventurous days of childhood bike injury, I have managed to stay in mostly one piece while navigating the roads on my beloved bicycle.

That brings me to the other day’s bike adventure. I got a text from Sarah, which simply read, “Come to the new maintenance building. It will be fun!” I figured she was right, and so I wandered off to join her. She led me into the dark, dusty building and over to the corner where, to my surprise, lay a bunch of old bikes. It looked as though the bike section of Wal-Mart had crawled there to die. Flat tires, broken brakes, and loose chains dominated the scene, but with a little bit of searching we each found a bike that probably wouldn’t kill us to ride. With our new-found modes of transportation, we cycled off into the sunset.

The bike I found is a character. It is a red boy’s Huffy, and when I first found it, its chain was off the gears, its front brake was busted, and the seat needed tightened so it wobbled forward and backward while I tried to ride. I put the chain back on, figured the front brake was what caused my 10-year-old arm fracture so I was just fine without it, and decided it would be fun to try to ride with a loose seat. That dusky ride was one of the most delightful things I have done in a long time! I had a blast riding with Sarah. (And I didn’t fall or anything!)

The next day, I asked the mechanic, Kyle, to tighten up my seat. That helped make it a lot easier to ride and I have been riding it around camp a lot more since then. That night, Sarah and I rode down the entrance road and past the go-cart track to the field with hay bales in it. We hopped back and forth across the rows of hay bales and then sat and talked until it got dark.

So, while most of my major injuries have come from riding bicycles, some of the most delightfully fun times in my life have come from those rides as well.