I come from a large family. I had multiple siblings, each of whom seemed capable of taking up as much room (and making as much noise) as any ten other people. Add to that, there were always other relatives about. Usually, there were the odd assortment of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc. (I had a couple of uncles that were younger than I was.) Add to that menagerie, dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, a fair number of friends of the family. It was usually crowded and often loud.
I haven’t spoken about my yearning for a bicycle. I think I’ve related elsewhere the various stories of my learning to ride. That experience was on a wretched juvenile bike. The thing was almost impossible to ride on flat land, could not be made to go up a hill, and it seems I outgrew it almost as soon as I learned to stay on it.
By the age of eight I wanted I bicycle. I wanted it bad! I wanted it so bad I could just about not stand it. If someone had asked me why I wanted a bicycle, I would probably not have fully understood the question. After all, why would anyone not want a bicycle? If pressed, I would have said, “To ride it!” If really pressed, I probably would have admitted, “I want to go fast!”
Not being in possession of a true and serviceable machine, I had not yet formed some of the concepts that would later seem far more important to me. For that matter, when I was between the ages of eight and ten, I had not yet developed the self-knowledge to realize just what some of those concepts might be. Having never experienced anything else, I didn’t know that anything else existed. Do fish know that they are wet?
In my pre-bicycle life, my only escapes from the constant pandemonium of my family where the occasional periods when I could sneak up to the attic and spend an hour or two with a good (read trashy science fiction) book, or a few precious moments in the treehouse.
Shortly after receiving that first real bicycle, I started to make some discoveries. I discovered freedom, independence, and solitude. I also discovered that I like all three of these things. Liked them a lot. As long as I remained inside a few comfortably loose parameters, I was able to get on the bike and go away! I could go where I liked. I could be alone. I could decide where I wanted to go, how far, which route, and if I wanted company or not.
I discovered that I really enjoyed solitude. I was never bound to be a hermit. I like people, and am fairly gregarious by nature, but I need to be alone a good bit too. I enjoy my own company. This was quite a revelation. Unlike the fish, I’d discovered dry land, and found it to be good.
Soon I was riding with friends. Some of those early group rides were fun, pleasant, voyages of mutual discovery and exploration. But some of them were just tedious. I found that, when things got too boring, I could just ride away.
I was not very good at baseball, and had not yet discovered the one true talent I had at football, so when those games occurred, I was generally left out, or stuck in the outfield. (Sometimes I was out there, in left field, for both teams, for multiple innings at a time.) Eventually, I would slip away from the crowd, return to my bike and ride it away. There was always something interesting just over the horizon.
I think my very first racing experiences involved this same urge. I found that, if a group of friend became annoying or boring enough, I could outride most of them. There were one or two kids who could keep up with me. The most annoying kid in the area was the rich guy down the street. His name was Ronnie Bats. (Honest!) I couldn’t our ride him. He was the “rich kid” in our area. He was the first guy around to have an “English Racer” bike. It had funny handlebars, and gears. That bike (and Ronnie) were faster than I was.
Ronnie forced me to develop a new and different strategy. I found that, when I really wanted to get away from him, and the guys that attached themselves to him, all I had to do was propose a race. Ronnie was always eager to show off how fast he was, and his sycophants would always go along with it.
We’d line up, and then get going. Very quickly Ronnie would establish a lead. The other kids would struggle valiantly to keep up. I would let them. As soon as the group was a block ahead of me, I’d turn off. Then I would really accelerate. It was important that I get at least one more turn behind me before anyone noticed. In short order, I’d be gone, away and about my own business.
At some future time I would hear about it. “Hey! You really got clobbered the last time we raced! Boy are you slow!” they would say.
“Yeh, I know,” I’d answer. Then, I’d brighten up and say, “Hey! Want to race?”
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