My first set of wheels must have been on a training bike. I don't remember it.
The first popup memory is knowing already how to ride. There was a shiny, new, blue and white girls' Schwinn bike that came off the rack at J.C Penny's toy department. We were inseparable for about two years after that.
Butternut Creek ran behind our street and dirt pathways made their way to the banks. Water rushed by wildly in the Spring and lay smooth, murky and lazy by summer. When chores and home work were done or early am on weekends, I'd hop on that bike. Loneliness was not in my vocabulary. Creekside, I gathered thoughts, watched birds dive for fish and never worried if I would be pretty enough. It mattered only that I felt free, could go alone and breathe.
When sophomore year in high school rolled in, I found a friend who had a car. Until then it was bussing it to school, and being chaperoned by parents everywhere else farther away.
That yellow Rambler we renamed the 'hooky mobile'. Five of us dodged Science class for a trip to the Llama farm nearby, took extended lunches grabbed at Lum's and innocent joy rides. My bike memory was displaced by friends, school plays and finally , boys.
I started enjoying rides on motorcycles, in cars and vans, and finally in a British Sportscar.
Now my life is filled with things on wheels that don't stress my bones. Grocery and shopping carts and carriers that are , just that, carrying what we have trouble carrying ourselves. And my resourceful husband has restored a few found bicycles and just last year, I took to the park next to my current house. My eyes filled with the same sense of wonder in nature. I took a path different each other day. I was a born again wheelie.
A month before outdoor biking season ended my bike was stolen. My first thought was not panic. I thought "time for someone else to find their freedom, their personal sense of quiet wonder."
Unless you have a serial number and a myriad of details from your bike, hard to have it traced anyway.
If there is a lesson about wheels, I think that they must bring you home as much as they take you away. You can enjoy a rush of freedom and know that you are safe in your quiet world .Moving down the right path for you, don't
stop.