Riding on two wheels

My first bicycle was a balloon-tire one-speed Western Flyer that was well-suited for the dusty gravel roads of Killough Valley in the Ozark hills over yonder.

My Western Flyer was capable of as many speeds as my legs could endure. Mostly, I rode my one-speed bike slowly. Crashing on gravel quickly teaches bike-riding prudence.

Helmets? Never heard of them when I was a kid. We wore baseball caps sometimes when we rode our bikes, but mostly we liked the wind blowing through our hair. No one who rode bikes when I was a youngster died as the result of a bicycle tumble. I'm not arguing against helmets. I'm simply stating facts.

I am no cyclist. I am an occasional bike rider. These days I prefer cushy seats and high handlebars. I also like pedal brakes and no gears. Fat tires are just fine.

For several years I was a serious bicycle commuter. It all started with a police auction in Dallas in the late 1960s.

My wife and I had moved to Dallas in 1967 B.C. (Before Children). We decided to purchase bikes for recreation, and I noticed an ad for a bike auction at the downtown police headquarters. So on the appointed Saturday we arrived early and waited to bid on bikes we thought would suit us. I successfully purchased a three-speed with hand brakes and pedal brakes in good condition for $15, but we were outbid on a bike for my wife. A local bicycle shop, however, had a beautiful used woman's bike complete with a nifty woven basket attached to the handlebars, and we splurged $30 to get it.

There was one small flaw in our plan to become recreational bike riders: My wife didn't know how to ride a bike. When she was a child, she was learning to ride when she was bitten by a neighbor's dog. She gave up bike riding. She loves dogs. Go figure. She got the hang of her Texas bike on an isolated, dusty, rutted incline near a lake north of Dallas. She spent most of a day coasting, falling, getting up, coasting falling and getting up. Finally, she progressed to a school's vacant parking lot where she immediately ran into the only light pole in sight. But, by gum, she rode her bike.

When we moved to New York, it was such a hassle to get our bikes out of storage that we seldom rode them. After we moved to northern Idaho, I started riding my bike to work and on news assignments. Soon, a few of my newspaper colleagues were riding bikes, too, and a couple of years later the city agreed to designate bike lanes and install bike racks in the downtown area.

Our next stop was Nevada, Mo., which is perfect for bike riders like me: It's as flat as a pancake. My wife and I put child-carrying seats on our bikes, and we took long rides with our two sons. I rode my bike to work every day for five years.

When we first arrived in Nevada, I was the only adult riding a bike to work. Period. I never saw families riding bikes together. The coffee-shop crowd buzzed about that new editor who rode a bike to work. A bike! He might be a hippie or something.

As it turns out, there were a lot of adults in Nevada who wanted to ride bikes in public, but they knew it would cause something of a social ruckus. Bikes were for children. So they left their bikes in their garages so as not to draw attention.

Me? I needed to get to work. And get home. I was no social engineer. On my last trip to work five years later, I counted nearly a dozen adults fearlessly riding their bikes to work. By this time it was the late 1970s. Heck, you might have seen anything then. Even in Nevada.

I left Nevada knowing I had not changed the world, but I like to think there are some folks anticipating their first Social Security checks who remember riding their bikes in the 1970s wearing neckties and pantyhose. Not at the same time, of course. Not in Nevada.

Now cyclists in Cape Girardeau want bike lanes and trails. Good for them. I'm looking for a bike with a supersoft seat and a street with no hills. I'll be pedaling again.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.