As Bird grew older he came to understand that there are humans who were willing to try anything just to prove it could be done. Most of the time it killed them, and Bird thought that was just a colossal waste.
After a while, Bird didn’t really hear the roaring of the water. Not that it wasn’t there, it just faded in his head. As he was eating, he got out his notebook and began to write out the details of his journey so far. Bird thought it would be good to keep track of these things, even if only to have them to think about after he was home. He had no idea that he would eventually become a writer and that these memories would have some real value to him. But that’s where your head was at when you were only thirteen and almost everything that happened to you was new.
Bird finished his sandwiches and an apple and a peach and downed the rest of Orange Crush. Then he lay on the grass beside the bench and stared at the sky. He thought about a lot of things, and one of them was floating down the river in an inner tube. Maybe even with a bunch of other kids. He thought about the kids he knew who might be interested in doing that. But that would be an adventure for another time because Bird knew that would take some planning and a lot of cajoling.
Bird lay on the grass by the river in Chippewa for about an hour until he decided he was ready to make it back home. And off he went. He dropped off his bottle at the store where he bought it and with the two cents he got for it, bought a Double Bubble and chewed it all the way back home.
The ride home was a bit harder, but Bird’s legs were up to the task. Once he got into Fort Erie he turned up Jarvis Street which was the main street of the town. As he was heading up he saw a couple of friends and pulled over to shoot the shit with them. They both admired his new wheels and laughed when he explained what he had just done.
“You’re f##kin’ crazy, Birddog.” They told him. And yeah, maybe he was just a bit. But he figured that a little craziness was what made life interesting.
Bird got home in time for dinner. He didn’t tell his folks what he had done, because he was pretty sure he would have been grounded for a couple of weeks if he had. Even when you’re thirteen, there are times when honesty isn’t always the best policy.
After dinner, Bird lubed his bike and then grabbed his baseball glove, and headed out to the park to play some ball with the rest of the west-end kids.
As he was playing he thought, OK, now I’ve gone north. I wonder how far I can get if I go west. There was no east or south because Fort Erie sat right on the corner of Lake Erie and the Niagara River. He figured he’d try for Sherkson, which was a large beach with big sand dunes along the shore of Lake Erie. He knew that Sherkson would be a good destination because that’s where they went on their class picnics.
Instead of riding along the river, there was path that rolled along beside Lake Erie, through places like Crescent Park, Thunder Bay, Ridgeway, Crystal Beach, Bay Beach and eventually Sherkson. It was another long ride. But Bird was now officially a veteran of the long ride and this one felt like it would be a piece of cake.
Later that evening, Bird sat down and wrote a letter to his Uncle Harold, who lived in New Jersey, and told him all about his journey up to Chippewa and thanked him once again for the best gift he had ever received.
Bird didn’t give his bike a name. He believed that stuff like that was corny and, if anything, Bird tried to avoid being corny any chance he got.
That night, laying in bed and thinking about the day he had, and feeling the genuine fatigue in his legs, he realized that he would have to do a lot more riding before that went away.
But, still in all, he was proud of his accomplishment. And deep in his heart, he knew a couple of things were true. First was that he was a bike guy and the Schwinn would likely be the first of many he would own. And secondly, he was a scribbler. Not a writer. Not just yet. But he could feel it coming on. Building inside him.
But just like the bike riding, he knew he would have to develop a lot of stamina in order to get where he wanted to be, with both his bike and his pen. And he also knew he had the strength and the will to do that.
Bird drifted off to sleep and dreamed of riding effortlessly as the whole world passed by him, or at least the little of it that he knew. Tomorrow was another day. And for Bird and his new wheels, the possibilities were endless.
(Part 1 of 6 … To be continued)
