CHAPTER 1: FREEDOM
My earliest memory involving wheels – was a red tricycle. The 1970’s Radio Flyer classic.
When it was given to me, it had plastic tassels that hung down from each of the white rubber handle grips. (they didn’t last that long…they either wore off or I tore them off – I can’t remember).
The house we lived in – had a network of sidewalks. All of the sidewalks terminated on the West side of the house on the large concrete pad that ran along that back wall. It was my personal parking area sans valets – but mine nonetheless. I would ride along the sides of the house around to the front driveway….turn hard, and go back and forth up and down the driveway when my dad was away at work.
I could turn down the sidewalk that went down to the street where mom drug the big metal garbage cans in the morning.
I could turn (if the gate was open) and head back towards the pool (the gate was usually closed…but I’d watch for the opportunity).
There was way more concrete back there. More nooks and crannies to explore. More paths.
To me, they seemed like so many roads. Kid roads.
We lived along Sunrise Highway on Long Island…and I could see the cars travelling east towards the Hamptons going one way…west towards New York City going the other way.
For most of my life, if I closed my eyes – I could hear cars going somewhere in a hurry on a highway.
In the morning everyone was going West. In the afternoon, everyone was going East. Life on Long Island was a daily vocational migration of reticent participants. Left to right and back again.
I thought about those roads, and where people were going. How they could leave and go whenever they wanted. Stop or just keep going. The freedom of it.
And on my little 3-wheeler, the “Big-Wheels”, I was free. Freedom.
I didn’t understand then - so much as now, how when your feet are moving in circles on pedals…when you’re focused on the few feet in front of you, the thinking part of your brain shuts off. You shift to another plane of consciousness…a simpler plane.
Guru’s call it a “flow-state”. Michael Jordan flying-v before the dunk, state.
There’s breathing, and pedaling, and moving. Moving away from something and moving towards something. Moving.
And not thinking.
I liked moving. Going from someplace I just was – to someplace I hadn’t been in a while…or ever.
I liked being alone and moving and going.
The first of my cycles had three wheels.
The tricycle. It was awesome, and I remember the first thing I did was cut the frills off of the white handlebars. I was young - but I knew that they weren’t cool. Knew enough to pull the little fronds off one by one and say it was an accident when asked by mom where they went.
The tricycle was awesome - but soon replaced in my parental upgrade program by an icon of the 70’s. “Big Wheels”. Any self respecting child of a Baby Boomer had one…
Consequently - the “Big Wheels” rider was followed in the line up by the stealthy and even cooler 3 wheeled “Green Machine” .
You could ‘drift’ on the Green Machine’s hard plastic rear wheels. It didn’t have handlebars and looked like something from a science fiction movie.
You could be Luke Skywalker firing at Tie-Fighters pedaling this around in your backyard. . .
There were 2 levers that you held that controlled the steering and was far before its time. If you got up to speed, and push-pulled the levers at the same time you could loosen up the back wheels, and they would skid around corners.
We were “Tokyo-Drifting” before the popular movie series taught us how to in real cars - in Green Machines.
Both were more amazing iterations of the once frilly handled “tri”.
When birthdays came….grandparents and aunts would ask if there was still an empty space back in my parking lot. They knew how much I loved riding the ‘cycles’. They’d conspire and pool resources for the next holiday to help me with my collection.
By the time I was 8 or 9, that lot was full of cycles.
By the time I was 8 or 9, I was using one of those cycles to escape other Cycles. Grown up things.
When you’re older – you can see that stuff clearer. When you’re 8 or 9, not so much.
Things were changing in my family.
Pieces of the glacier were starting to crack and fall off.
The laces on the family footballs in my house were loosening up. Becoming unraveled. Things were breaking in my house...cracks from so many inherited dysfunctions a 7 year old isn’t supposed to see, or know about.
The genesis of so many knotted emotional balls that would serve to drive my siblings and I thousands of miles apart as young adults,
……………never to speak to each other again.