It's Like Riding a Bike...

Summer is the perfect time to throw your car keys in the key bowl, hop on your bike and enjoy the beautiful summer weather. Grab your water bottle and your helmet and just zoom off on your trusty bicycle.

Ah…if only it were that simple.

When I was a child, my bicycle was my primary mode of transportation. My friends lived within biking distance and most of the roads in my town had sidewalks. I biked to school, to my friends’ houses and, when I was a bit older, to Food Town, a local store a mile from my house that sold cold cuts, booze and hunting rifles. (But that’s a column for another time). Whenever I needed to go somewhere, I’d just grab my bike and be off.

Unfortunately, getting my family out on our bicycles is a much bigger production now. Sidewalks are virtually non-existent in our town and our steep driveway rolls straight down into the very busy street on which we live. When my kids were little, my husband and I would take them through our back yard, out our back gate and into the less crowded cul-de-sac neighborhoods behind us. Traffic is minimal there and the kids would have plenty of warning when a car approached.

But my children are 10 and 13 now, and they’ve long since outgrown the neighborhoods behind us. How many times can you ride around the same circle before you become bored? (The answer is 16 times.) Given that my kids are still not the most confident bikers and the lack of sidewalks in our town, our remaining choice is to load up the bikes and drive somewhere safer to ride.

Not so fast. First there’s an elaborate production involved to getting our bikes ready. Our garage is filled with stuff, including a 1979 MGB convertible that hasn’t run since we moved here 12 years ago (actually, I don’t think it ran even then). So my husband and I keep our bicycles suspended from ceiling hooks, while the boys’ bikes are entangled in the rest of the clutter. Once our bikes have been extracted, inevitably tires will need to be inflated. Apparently just the act of sitting stagnant in the garage allows tires to lose air. My husband pulls out the world’s smallest, slowest portable bike pump and begins inflating our tires.

Two hours later, when all the tires are nice and firm, we’re ready to head to our destination. Except we’ve now got to load the bikes into our mini-van, which only has room for three of our four bikes. So one of the bikes ends up on the roof of the car, lashed down by an elaborated network of bungee cords. In addition to our hillbilly bike rack, these bungee cords have also served as our hillbilly ski rack and our hillbilly luggage rack. My husband still maintains that this is one of the best Christmas gifts he’s ever received from my dad.

An hour later when all the bikes are stuffed inside and strapped to the roof, we’re ready to collect our water bottles and bike helmets and head off to Wompatuck state park, a twenty minute drive from our house. The bike on top rests on an old rubber mat, ostensibly to protect the roof of our van, but provides the added bonus of a disturbingly loud flapping noise throughout the drive. The kids are hungry; I didn’t pack lunch because I didn’t think it would take two and a half hours to prep our bikes and reach our destination. I tell them to drink water and be quiet. Once we reach Wompatuck, it’s another fifteen minutes before the bikes are out the van and ready to ride. But wait…my husband’s rear tire is flat again. Apparently sitting inside a mini-van is just enough activity to deflate his tire. Out comes the world’s smallest and slowest portable bike pump. “Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh,” goes the pump as my kids and I sit in the shade, slowly starving to death.

Finally, at long last we are all pumped and helmeted and ready to ride. The paths at Wompatuck are beautiful. It’s a warm, dry sunny afternoon and the kids have stopped complaining. Perhaps it is worth all the time and energy spent when the result is a blissful family ride.

But then bliss turns to blister after my son grips his handlebars too tightly. My other son is trying to get the hang of shifting gears, causing his chain to fall off…twice. After less than an hour of riding, we head back to the parking lot to clean and dress my son’s thumb wound. At this point the kids are hot and cranky and ready to return home. In go the bikes; out come the bungee cords and soon (okay, twenty minutes later) we are headed home.

Pacified with ice cream, my kids thank us for taking them on “a fun ride” and ask when we can do it again. I assure them we’ll schedule another ride soon, wondering whether it would just be simpler to sell my house and move to a bike-friendly neighborhood rather than go through that production again.