About A Bike

This is about a bike. I try my best not to have emotional attachments to physical things, but despite my brain, my body has developed one with a bike.

The majority of my life has been dedicated to skateboarding; you’d think it would happen with skateboards, but they’re disposable. Designed to be used, discarded, and replaced in quick succession.

This bike has been with me for twenty years, and my body somehow knows it. I can’t explain it; muscle memory, pressure points, the way it fits, a familiar sight looking down at the handlebars. I really don’t know, but with each of the rare times I ride it these days, I’m met with a rush of endorphins out of nowhere as soon as I start to pedal. Like a physical flashback I can’t control. Not a movie flashback with the highlight reel playing, but a return to a state of comfort mixed with a nervous childlike buzz.

Working from home and family life, rides on it per year can be counted on one hand.

It was the first bike I owned in SF, the bike I rode to work every day for ten years. It took me through the city. Started with the fixie craze, went through every handlebar trend, still has the same weathered seat, has flipped back and forth between single speed and fixed, of which I never could decide. It’s simple, it hasn’t changed.

They say our bodies can hold trauma. This bike seems to hold joy. A time, a life, a place of which it can’t seem to let go.