Buy Cycles
When I was seven years old, Pepe, my mom's cousin Luz’s son, stayed with us for a while over the summer. He took me to get my first library card. We went to the great amusement park Pacific Ocean Park in Venice. He showed me insects, rocks, and plants I had never noticed in our yard. A wonderful thing he did was to park my dad‘s car out of gear and without the brake on, then the car crashed through a wall and stopped in the kitchen. It was glorious.
Pepe also had a 10 speed bike. He put me on the handlebars and we rode around the neighborhood. I wanted a 10 speed bike.
When I was nine, my friend Anthony gave me his old bike. I learned to ride the thing turning circles in my grandmother‘s garage. That old bike might still be underneath Noah’s house.
This bike gave me even more freedom in my free range childhood. Being free of the immediate area of home. It was exquisite. One of the things I was able to do was to visit people.
Find a story of such a visit here
When I was a senior in high school I began shopping for a 10 speed bike. There was a cool little bike shop in Montebello, a bit beyond my school. I would go there and look at bikes and ask questions. One day the guy said he had a bike that wasn’t selling. He would let it go for cheap. Would I be interested? Sure, I said, Why don’t people want to buy it? He said it was a little odd and it was Italian.
The bike was a beautiful blue and beautifully designed. It was so light in weight. It had braces on the pedals, called rat traps, that gave much more stability, and also allowed you to pull up on the pedals. It had hand screws on the gears and the brakes for easy adjustments. Wing nuts so you could remove the tires without tools. It also came with a tool kit. It had a tire pump and a water bottle. But the best thing was it had not merely 10 speeds, but 15 speeds! Three sprockets in the front, and five in the back making 15 speeds.
I brought my dad to see it. The price was right, he immediately bought it for me. The bike shop guy said that he couldn’t get parts for it (because it was metric) and he recommended a bike shop near Western and Santa Monica. We went there for something minor, and we found another Italian bike, a little used, but just as wonderful. My dad bought it for himself.
The name of these bikes was Geminiani. My brother called me a couple of years ago to tell me that the designer/owner of this bike company had just died.
My dad and I, and often my brother, on his stingray bike, would ride around the neighborhood. A number of times we would throw the bikes in my beat up old van and go down to Santa Monica and ride along the boardwalk to Venice or the marina. Once we took the bikes down to Newport Beach and explored the Balboa Peninsula, and discovered some favorite places.
Later my brother, on my dad’s bike, and I would ride out to Santa Monica from Lee St, 20 miles mostly flat. Once, coming back from Santa Monica on Pico Blvd, there was a little accident where my knee got hurt. This is just before my trip to Europe.
There were longer trips out to the San Fernando Valley to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery and Busch Gardens, a tour of the brewery, and free beer. A 60 mile round trip.
Then there were the great rides out to my cousins in Fontana, 60 miles one way, mostly flat. I’d ride over on Friday, stay for a weekend, and ride back on Monday.
Find more Fontana lore here
One reason for doing these long rides, but very much not the main reason, was my weight. My lifelong friend Eddie would tease me about my weight. He was fit and athletic, as were most of my friends. A little story about them…
A couple of years out of high school somebody called together a large bunch of friends. We went to an all you can eat smorgasbord restaurant. These guys kidded me that I would be the biggest eater because I was overweight. That wasn’t the case. These fit 20 year old jocks could really eat. Thinking about those guys, and of the ones I still know about, half of them are dead, most by heart attack.
So my friend Eddy, who died a couple years ago, had relatives in Rialto, a few miles beyond my cousins. After telling him about riding my bike out there, he said he wanted to go, too. It was not a good time riding with him. First of all, he did not have the stamina, this athletic fit guy did not have the stamina. He had to stop every 15 miles to rest and eat. The result was, he lost weight on the trip, and even though I ate much more modestly, I gained weight. This convinced me that my weight and exercise didn’t necessarily have the same metabolic mechanism as that of the average bear.
Another beloved long bike ride.
From Lee St out to Santa Monica by Olympic Blvd. Always enjoyed a few oysters at the Santa Monica pier, a few more oysters at the Redondo Beach pier, then on to San Pedro for some smoked fish at the fish market. Then over to Long Beach. A stop of an hour or two at Acres of Books, an amazingly large used book shop. I loved the smell of that place. Then a long, slight uphill ride on Long Beach Blvd or Atlantic Blvd straight up north to Lee Street. Lily and I drove that route and found it was 80 miles.
Disneyland wasn’t very far, 25 miles, but the 25 miles back on a bike, at night, was brutal.
I sometimes dream of riding a bike a long distance.
I wake up tired.