30th
Bicycle built for two?
It’s spring, so like every other homeowner I know, I think about getting rid of some of our clutter. That inspires the idea of a garage sale. And the garage sale makes me think of what “big-ticket” draws we could offer, and that brings me to our tandem bike.
This is no ordinary tandem bike. This is $2,000 worth of sleek Cannondale high-tech machinery, only ridden twice. I bought it for Steve for his birthday early in our life together, well before my eventual acceptance of Steve’s hatred of all “Outside Magazine” style adventure sports.
His biggest complaint when we went mountain biking was that I rode too far ahead of him, so I thought this solved everything. I’d seen other couples gliding along in perfect sync when we’d gone to Kettle Moraine, so the idea really appealed to me. Until we actually rode it. The first time, we just took it out for a quick ride and discovered that it was very hard for me to balance both of us. The second time, Steve took the helm. It wasn’t long before the stress of trying to control it and deciding how fast and where to go got us bickering.
Finally, Steve decided this had gone on enough and squeezed the hand brakes — hard. Unfortunately, only the front brake reacted, and the back end, with me still pedaling, was thrown high in the air. I will never forget the horror of staring down at the top of his head. I think after that moment we decided to walk it home, and it’s never been on the road again.
What’s even more funny, aside from my complete misreading of what the bike would offer, is how we view it now. I will bring up the garage sale idea at least once a year, and he’ll mumble that we really shouldn’t sell it because “maybe the kids will take it out some day” or “maybe we’ll try it again.”
For me it represents a really stupid purchase so I just want it gone. But he has more loyalty. It’s an admirable trait. Maybe we’ll pump up the tires and take it for a spin this weekend.
