We all die eventually, but somehow I figured I was a survivor and would live to be a hundred. I didn't have any rational basis for thinking this; it just seemed right. Is that hubris? Did thinking this way let me take life for granted? I don't know.
Now, young in years but old before my time, I'm broken and useless. What little I still own will soon be taken from me, and I'll be tossed out with the garbage. How quickly things can change.
I was never much for looking into the past, and I don't like to talk about the years before I moved to Phoenix. Only through the nostalgia of youth can I say those were happy times. In truth they were unproductive years of neglect and unhealthy want. But Phoenix! The Valley of the Sun. How that move changed me! How free I became! How happy I was exploring the city and learning new routes. Everyday it seems I went someplace new. I was doing what I had always wanted to do. Because of that I can say that I got to live—if only for a short while.
Of course, the initial exhilaration of new settings wore off in time, and my joyful explorations ebbed into steady routine. My body began failing me—in small ways at first, a spoke here, a new chain there. I could no longer deny I wasn't the spry youth I once was. Aging causes some of us to do stupid things. In hindsight I realize the surgery was a mistake. Keep the body God gave you—that's the lesson I learned. But I gave in to impulse and went under the wrench. I trimmed down, lost the gears and the free-spin hub, and proudly showed off my mid-life crisis as a fixie. Graceless aging is all it ever was, though.
Some decisions can't be taken back—especially when your original guts end up in a landfill far away. And it's not that I was useless. Not yet anyway. But life can be awfully short, and it can be taken from you in an instant. That's another lesson—but one that's hard to learn before it's too late. But I learned it. Now I'm broken and useless and ready to be tossed out with the garbage. Maybe I'll finally be rejoined with my dérailleurs and shifters and rear brake in the landfill?
4 comments:
Say a 32 year old, non-athletic woman wanted to buy a used bike to ride around the neighborhood for exercise, maybe in the $50-75 range (from, say, Craigslist;). Any recommendations about what kind of bike she might keep an eye out for?
Sorry to hear about the loss of poor Schwinn. May it rest in peace.
Lindsey— My experience with buying bikes off Craigslist is that $50-75 gets you a bike in need of repair—usually repairs needing new parts and thus costing money. On the other hand, my sample size is two, and both bikes were road bikes. Mountain bikes and cruisers may be cheaper.
On your budget, my advice is: get a working bike. The main things to look for are: clean, quiet drive chain; shifter and derailleurs work; brakes work; frame doesn't have any obvious cracks or bends; and the wheels are true.
Good luck!
Wait a minute, you have a list too?
Josh— In the future, everyone will have a list for fifteen minutes.
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