Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Another thing I fixed last weekend, something that wasn’t on my list: I resurrected one of my old bikes from the bike-and-parts mausoleum in my garage for my son to ride.

As I might have mentioned before, my wife and I were bicycle zealots in the 70s - we commuted to work, to the grocery store, rode bikes as our primary recreational activity.  At one time, if you were a bicyclist in Seattle and wore a helmet, you were probably among our closest friends.  I worked for a couple of years as bike mechanic, and had half-baked designs on having my own bike shop after we moved to Seattle.  We accumulated a stable of bicycles for various purposes - commuting, performance touring, racing (my wife), and in 1980 had a Rodriguez tandem custom-built for us

Then in 1981, our son came along, ending (by choice) my wife’s racing career.  As soon as we were able, however, we were back out  on the bikes, first with baby seats, then with a kid-back arrangement on the tandem.  Turned out, however, that the boy really disliked biking, either as a passenger (baby seat) or as a participant as a stoker on the tandem.  I think it was the sense of confinement of a soul that really likes to be unencumbered.  Slowly we disengaged ourselves from the activity, returning fitfully when an old friend would shame us into a ride.

Imagine my surprise, then, when he started riding to his classes at the university this summer, not only because it was convenient, but because he wanted to emphasize it as a transportation option, and even to ride for pleasure.  It immediately became apparent that his bike, a sorta-mountain bike with big, knobby tires that we bought him when he was in middle school - was not exactly the epitome of efficient commuting or touring, although it still fits him and works fine.  I considered taking him to a bike shop and buying a new, state-of-the-art road bike, but decided to wait a bit and see if this was something with legs (ho-ho) or a summer fad.

Meanwhile, he had been scoping out our dormant collection of iron, and came in one day asking about my old Fuji that was hanging in the garage.  My wife and I had discussed, briefly, letting him use one of our old bikes.  My wife has a Peugeot PX-10 that she bought in 1973, and a Guerciotti that she bought to race with.  I have the Fuji, a Swiss Super Mondia and an Erickson custom bike.

I mean, we’re Egypt and Greece.  Stick a spade in us to do something useful, and you’ll likely strike something of historical value that we have compunctions to preserve:

• The PX-10, purchased in Ohio before we moved to Seattle, was the bike Mrs. Perils of Caffeine rode to her (our) wedding, on our honeymoon (bike ride, of course) on the Olympic Peninsula, on our mega-tour from Astoria to San Francisco, etc.
  
• The Guerciotti, of course, she used to win the 1980 women’s state road championship
  
• My Fuji, also purchased in Ohio, was the bike that Yr  Ob Corres rode to HIS (our) wedding, rode his first century (100-mile) ride on, and rode on our honeymoon tour.  It’s outfitted with Stronglite cranks, Campagnolo Record steel pedals and Phil Wood high-flange hubs on wheels I built myself.
  
• My Mondia, lovingly constructed from a salvaged frame and scavenged (but outstanding for their time) parts, I rode on the San Francisco tour, and two or three TOSRV rides.
  
• My Erickson was custom-built for a friend of mine who seems to order a new bike every year or so.  It’s our most “modern” (1985) bike.  Paradoxically, it’s both my best bike and my least sentimentally-charged, so he’s not gettin’ that one.
  
• The tandem.  When we ordered it, we were on the high side of recreational riding.  By the time it was delivered, Mrs. Perils had joined a racing team and had been training for 4 months, riding 300 miles a week, and our riding styles were, to put it mildly, diverging.  Since the bike was designed to fit only me in the front (with the gears, steering and brakes) and her in the back (with nothing to do except grip the handlebars, pedal like hell and trust me uncritically), that “divergence” in riding style, which really was just code for her being an ass-kicker and me being a duffer, led to some not-inconsequential strife as we explored the exquisite togetherness of tandem-riding.  We had a coming-out party for the bike, and friends (still married at that point) who had been riding a tandem for a couple years gave us each individual gifts: to me, a hacksaw so I could cut her loose when I was driven to, and to her a velcro thumb-band with a thumbtack attached so she could, with a mere flick of the wrist (the rear handlebars of the tandem are un-hygeinically close to the posterior of the “captain”) exact vengeance for any real or imagined transgression.  Historical significance of the tandem: I rode the Bainbridge Island Chilly Hilly Ride on it with Rebecca Twigg, the 1980 Olympic silver medalist, as my stoker.  (She was my wife’s sometime-training partner while she was racing.)  Bankable bicycling moment for me, career-imperiling embarrassment for her, I’m sure.

So, to our shame, there was some reluctance to simply award the kid one of these bikes.  I finally decided I’d like to see the Fuji used.  I took it off its hook in the garage ceiling, where it had been hanging for the better part of 20 years, clamped it into my bikestand, and started tuning it up, finding long-lost tools along the way.  I felt like one of Graham Greene’s whiskey priests who had returned to his congregation and was administering communion again.  And the transsubstantiation of the bike proceeded in a workmanlike fashion.  When I was finished, he and I took a test ride down the Burke-Gilman trail, probably our first bike ride together in 12 years.  I relished every mile of it, even if I did have to chase him pretty hard up the hill at the end.