Casual
Epstein, Joseph
Casual SPANDEXLESS I had my first bicycle when I was eleven, and it was a disappointment. Schwinn seemed the only bike worth having in those days. My father, for some reason, surprised me by...
...I would love to ride a unicycle, I told him...
...Bikes for adults didn't come into play until the exercise craze hit...
...By a spin I mean nothing marathon but four or five miles...
...Had I had a Schwinn, who , can say, today I might be president of the World Bank, artistic director of the Orchestre de Paris, chairman of Disney...
...I don't suit up for these little excursions but wear whatever I happen to have on...
...My father, for some reason, surprised me by bringing home an off-brand bike called a SunRacer...
...I was with a boy named Ronny Harris who, attempting it, ended up with a concussion and several facial lacerations...
...I haven't yet worked up the courage to ride "no-hands," but then maybe one needs a living mother to do so ("Look, Ma, no hands...
...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...
...If there is a heaven, and if I am permitted entry, you will not fail to notice me there: I shall be the fellow without the helmet tooling around on the unicycle, grinning...
...I don't remember having to lock it up, unlike nowadays when I lock up my current bike even when parking it in our garage...
...But there wasn't much else I could do to add to its glamour...
...Red and white, it had nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't a Schwinn...
...I do not anticipate going for longer and longer rides, getting in better and better shape...
...The return is of course slightly uphill, which leaves me having to work a bit, ending up breathing more heavily, which gives the impression of a workout...
...He gave me his business card, but, for some reason, I never got around to calling him...
...Joggers, young parents pushing their children in the new troika prams, Asians with pastel umbrellas out for walks, are on the same path...
...I am a bit tentative on my bike...
...A young man in our building has recently gone into the bike-repair business, and so, summer coming on, feeling the need for a bit of exercise, and bored with longish walks, I had him clean up my long unused Slipstream, which I take now out for a spin four or five times a week...
...My exercise does not include the element of progress...
...At fifteen, the age one could then get a driver's license in Chicago, my friends and I, putting away childish things, abandoned our bikes for cars and the wondrous freedom they gave to roam the city...
...I'd as soon put on Spandex shorts for a bike ride as give the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in a Speedo...
...I used sometimes to ride it to the university where I taught...
...The toughest trick of all—accomplished only by my friend Norm Brodsky—was to drive oneself on one's own handlebars, facing forward...
...Many years ago, I met a man who, having read an essay of mine on juggling, asked if I would like to learn to ride a unicycle, which he would be pleased to teach me to do...
...I ride through a nearby park, then alongside Lake Michigan...
...In the early '80s at a police auction I acquired a three-speed Huffy...
...Something to it, I fear...
...I ride my bike less for reasons of health than for the delight in pedaling along, noting the lake in its many moods and differing colors, and taking in the views...
...I do use a clip around my right ankle to prevent my trousers from getting caught in the chain...
...I have long since lost his card, and now, alas, it is too late...
...I find myself looking forward to these rides, which I do not take at any set time of the day but when the mood strikes...
...I recently read somewhere that the use of the word "nowadays" suggests a reactionary, for nowadays are always understood to be much worse than thenadays...
...My current bike ride always follows the same route...
...For all the pleasures bike-riding gives, I do have a single regret...
...One somehow sees more on a bicycle than in a car or even while walking...
...I owned a green Raleigh racer in the late 1960s...
...I go at a medium pace, every so often pumping hard to build up a bit of speed off which I let the bike glide...
...I soon removed its fenders, chainguard, and kickstand, and bent its handlebars downward...
...pipe-less and suede-patchless, a bike was the only professorial accoutrement I had...
...Then, a decade or so later, I bought a standard, handlebars-straight-up, three-speed green Slipstream bike, which I used for a while, then forgot about...
...I rode that bike everywhere...
...I am merely trying not to fall too quickly into even worse shape...
...I eschew a helmet because I look too goofy in one, and nowadays (there's that word again) have just enough vanity left to wish to look merely ungoofy...
...the thought of a serious fall never quite deserts me...
...As kids we specialized in trick riding, including riding while seated backwards...
...At the beginning it goes slightly downhill, which provides a slight thrill...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 37
