Life as Part of a Bike

Yes, Mick, it must have been the artist in you that inspired you at that young age to be the first of us to hotrod your bike, take the fenders off, chop and channel and the like, a look that would one day (as with the Frisbee) be thanklessly co-opted and called the "mountain bike." Though not too young to be in love, we were much too young to patent. Anyway, for a while you had the fastest bike in that part of the east, as the drag races down Mapleridge Avenue quickly verified (Who was that fast rider?), and as commemorated by your virtual bronze plaque in the 505 Delaware Avenue Bikers' Hall of Fame (second floor, first bedroom on the left).

As for the bike in my own life, it just so happens that in my PureLandMountain post this morning I told of seguing into memories of my trusty scarlet Columbia with ivory pinstriping and then checked in here to find you reminiscing about your bike… (Are we really twins, and you just gestated an extra year and a half ?)

I soon stripped my own bike down to the elementals too, always seeking to maintain that rolling edge; then one day when bike-visiting our cousin Johnny Robinson, Pat Villani and I stopped on the way home at a relative of his who ran an auto reupholstering shop; in about ten minutes he had my ragged bike seat glowing in miraculously really genuine-looking leopardskin, and I didn't sit down on my bike for days to show it off, it was like Sheena herself riding double with me. More tales there too, but please continue...