Randy and I were lucky to connect before COVID forced lock-downs and remote computing jobs, so we commuted between our homes, creating our own bubble and shutting out the world. Until spring stir-craziness turned our minds outward. Then we imagined a long gray ribbon stretching miles through the countryside. Not a road – a bike trail.
I hadn’t ridden a bike in decades though an ancient Cruiser gifted to me by a friend hid in my garage because riding alone through my city neighborhood had seemed dicey. Randy was bike-less because he’d lent his ten-speed to a car-less coworker needing transportation. One day the friend and a car collided. The rider made it. The bike didn’t.
As a child and teen, I’d spent hours riding my green Schwinn “no-speed” around my suburban development. But now I no longer had the slender shape and iron legs of my younger self or the sense of balance that made for riding no-handed.
When we finally hoisted our bikes off the rack at the nearest bike trail head, we were ready for action. The ribbon of trail stretched ahead and flowed behind us. We found ourselves unwinding the years, whooping like kids as we rode side by side. Randy had been a social rider as a kid, hanging out with a pack of neighborhood boys on bikes. They’d done stunts and ridden around the city. I’d lived too far from town to get anywhere by bike, and I was a solitary rider. Randy became the biking friend I’d never had, and to him, I became “one of the guys.”
On the trail we were the old fogies, the ones riders on thin-tired racing bikes with toe-clips sped past while calling “left.” We didn’t care. We enjoyed the sunshine and the hedgerow scenery: wild bergamot and compass flowers, sparrows and wrens, territorial chipmunks darting across the trail. After a few outings we became the riders calling out “left” to walkers and skateboarders. We were hooked. Randy and I rode through summer into fall. The amber alder leaves and crimson Virginia creeper on tree trunks mimicked a child’s crayon drawings. Flocks of mallards and starlings flew south. The earthy scent of decaying leaves and wild grape raisins reminded us that our trail time would soon end. So, one Saturday we started mid-way on our customary trail. Our goal: ride to the end and buy ice cream cones at the shop Randy remembered from when his legs were young enough to pedal the entire trail both ways. We retraced his nostalgic trip, buying waffle cones on the last day the shop was open. When rain clouds chased us back, we broke our record time in what we hoped would be the first of many seasons.
Jeanne Blum Lesinski
