I remember the first day I started learning to ride a bicycle....
We have this tradition in my house during festive periods especially Christmas.
When morning comes and we are all gathered in the living room, someone sits very close to the window in order to peek out and count the bikes being ridden up and down the street, especially the new bikes.
The number varies each year, but the sight of shiny new bikes being taken out for their first spin is, to me, synonymous with Christmas.
This year, as I watched them pass my window, I reminisced about my own first bike.
It came after a period of haggling with my parents, and what felt like years of watching my brother zoom ahead of me on his.
After washing my dad's car for the umpteenth time, he decided, coupled with pressure from Mom (who I relate to more) decided to buy me a bicycle.
I was very excited, I couldn’t just wait to lay my hands on my own bike. While I was asleep, the things i see in my dream is the bike. I mean, i feel like it is already here in the parking garage.
That feeling was out of the world.
In the end, I was given my own bike.
It wasn’t brand new, but it was all mine, and at last I could cycle with all the other kids in my neighbourhood, and even though it wasn’t brand new, it looked brand new to me.
It was a grey boy's mountain bike, I can't remember the make, but it have gears that I never used. My parents had the foresight to remove the various stickers it came with, which I replaced with ones that I'd been saving since the notion of getting a bike occurred to me.
I think they were of The Raccoons( wasn't so sure about that though). I also had little reflective clips that went on my spokes, and my dad attached a white basket at the same time he screwed the stabilisers back on.
I later had my elder brother fix some kind of fancy light that shines brighter with the speed velocity and vice versa.
The teen years arrived, and it seemed that cycling was no longer cool. My bike sat neglected and abandoned in the garage.
I didn't even notice when it was no more, and it was years before I was back on the saddle.
I still remember one incident like it was yesterday, my mum used to take me into the park to learn how to ride.
On one such occasion, I went too fast down a steep hill. I ended up rolling forward through the air and landing roughly on the concrete, knocking out a front tooth.
My mum tells me she shoved the tooth back into my bleeding gums (it was hanging on by a thread of flesh) in the hope that it would somehow re-root and grow. It later turned black and fell out."
I look back at that incident and just smile…
While the memories of my bike are fading, I know a child who remembers everything about his...
do you remember your first bike? lets hear your story....
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