Exiled

By Elizabeth Trickett

This week, my Kona King Kikapu was exiled to my landlord’s shed. “There’s just too much mud. It’ll ruin my hardwood floors!” he exclaimed, hands waving in every direction. He reasoned that his solution was generous for letting me use his building, though he failed to see, that in subzero temperatures, his shed was a bike’s death knell. Over time, my brake lines could freeze and snap, cables would rust and just the very fact that it was in there invited someone to walk off with a brand new bike.

When I first moved in with an explanation for keeping my bikes inside the apartment, I was confounded by the look of confusion in his eyes. I mentioned their worth and suddenly I was like a vegan reasoning with a cattle rancher. “I’ve got two perfectly good working bikes in my garage that I bought for half that amount,” he said, as though expecting a sudden epiphany that I had been ripped off and paid way too much for my wheels. I knew it was a losing battle and I had already taken on too many people with the same logic about cycling.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not simply a matter of the money spent on the sport; it’s the fact that we exist. Sure there are cyclists out there who ride irresponsibly, tearing up someone’s land or building jumps near hiking trails. But for the most part, we’re a quiet bunch, content to hunker down into our saddles and pedal along, obeying the rules of the road like everyone else. Yet people are still intent on honking, flipping the NY State bird and running us off the road or shooting an evil glare as we try to share a trail.

New York boasts a long bicycling route through the Hudson Valley on Route 9, one of its busiest-and most accident prone- thoroughfares. I see the green cycling signs on my daily commute and occasionally, there’s a lone cyclist attempting this “scenic” route. The state reasoned that wider shoulders are all a cyclist needs to be happy and these green signs are enough for the state to brag that it’s bike friendly. When printing up their glossy route maps for tourists, they seemed to ignore the SUVs similar in size to a small house and the tractor-trailers screaming by at 60 mph, or the debris from accidents, dumped- garbage, shattered bottles and dead critters that littered the bike lanes. The last time a fellow-cyclist followed a scenic bike route, it spiraled through the roughest parts of a city. He had expected to take a glimpse at wildlife, but instead, heard the zipping of a body bag as someone was lifted from the sidewalk next to him.

Instead of trying effortlessly to convert the masses, for now, we’ll simply have to find peace within our own Lycra-clad group. In the meantime, my beloved mountain bike now hangs in my apartment. After spending two nights in the shed, chained to an old rusty tractor, I couldn’t bear to leave her another night to suffer the same fate. After buying a broom and throwing down some floor mats, I quietly snuck her back to safety- a two-wheeled fugitive in the night.