Sunday, January 2, 2011

A Bike to Ride



The first bicycle Aileen and I owned as children we called “the clunker”. It was a 1950's pink Monark super deluxe bicycle. My dad kept telling us it was a top of the line bicycle, but it wasn't the 1950's
anymore. We would have been embarrassed to ride it, but it was the only bike we had and it was freedom. We took turns learning to ride until we had it mastered. When we finally obtained another bike in the family, we argued over who would ride the “lowrider” and who would get stuck with “the clunker”. Eventually, we all owned a Schwinn lowrider stingray bike and we were “cool”. If a friend didn't have a bike or someone couldn't ride because of a flat tire, we would walk. We walked and rode everywhere! Murray Park was about three miles away and in the summer we would ride there and swim all day at the pool. The shortcut was through winder dairy off of 59th South in Murray. What an adventure. Dirt rodes past the cows, through the woods and across the stream where there was sink mud that we always had to go look at and ponder what would happen if we fell in. We also took short trips to Arctic Circle, 7-11, and the bakery on 9th East. We would hang out at Skaggs and the shopping stores just past 56th South and 9th East. When we got older, the Fashion Place mall went up toward State street and we loved going there.
I still have a bicycle. Pete and I used to ride out through Snow Canyon before they charged an entrance fee. One beautiful Spring morning, we went riding. As we started up the incline into the Canyon I got really dizzy and collapsed on the path. A passerby offered to take me home and I accepted. Actually, Pete insisted. We haven't been bicycling much since then. I miss it. I really loved riding bicycles.

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