"All I need is one bike"

By Pete Kennedy pkennedy@phillynews.com
Reprinted from The Trend

If you'd seen me in my freshman or sophomore years of college, I'd likely have struck you as clean cut, well-groomed, respectable. But as an upperclassman, my look changed in two ways:
First, whenever it rained (about six days a week in Pittsburgh), I developed a wet, muddy stripe up my back.
Second, on every pair of pants I owned, the right pant leg looked like it had been attacked by wolves.

Both changes were direct results of the fact that, at the beginning of my third year at University of Pittsburgh, I bought a bike. The tattered pants came from the insatiable appetite of the bike's chain, located on the right side of the frame. The stripe was from water and mud spun off the rear wheel.

But, oh!, how happy I was to forego fashion to fulfill function. I cannot overstate the vast benefits that bike brought to me.

I made it to class in three minutes instead of 15.

I traveled to parts of the city I'd not visited in the two years prior, even by bus: I rode north to the eclectic shops of Squirrel Hill; I rode across the 10th Street Bridge to the lively South Side; I even made it to the top of Mount Washington.

I got some exercise, and I had fun doing it. Walking out of class on a sunny afternoon to the rack to which my blue-and-silver Trek mountain bike was chained, I'd decide on a whim to detour through Schenley Park on the way home.

With textbooks and a laptop in my backpack, I'd bounce down the park's dirt trails and splash through the shallow parts of its creek. If I had the time, I'd extend my detour to Panther Hollow Trail, to the paved Eliza Furnace, past the tiny windows of Allegheny Prison and downtown, under the emerald palace that is the PPG building.

I usually ended up at the fountains of Point Park, where the city's three rivers meet. By that point, I had overshot my apartment by about eight miles.

I made these trips nearly every day, and often two or three times. Then, at the end of my junior year, just before final exams, the unthinkable happened- my bike was stolen.

I had been in the library for about 10 hours, time spent in equal parts as an employee re-shelving books and as a student cramming for a psychology test.

At about 10 p.m., I emerged from the library and into the darkness to find: nothing. I knew I'd left my bike at the rack at the library entrance, but still I rushed with desperate hope to every other bike rack on campus. It was gone.

I informed a couple of police officers parked nearby in a cruiser. They didn't radio for backup or put out an all points bulletin. They didn't take me to the station to describe the bike to a sketch artist. They didn't get out of the car. It was the longest walk home ever.

The next day, bike it or not, I had to get get to my exam. Walking felt so ... pedestrian. I came to understand why that term is a pejorative. Perhaps the antonym of pedestrian should be "bicycular," meaning efficient, fun, advantageous without drawback.

For the next month, I plodded along, a mere biped, technologically unenhanced, feeling every ounce of my cargo with each cloddish step. It didn't take long before I invested in another bike (a dark green Gary Fisher model with dashes of red and yellow) and a new, stronger lock. All respect due to the likes of Da Vinci and Edison, but my bike is surely a contender for the most amazing machine ever constructed.

I've often heard that much of life is about the journey, not the destination. I believe it. And all I need is one bike.