Bicycle
By Michelle Webster-Hein
February 14, 2014
After work I fetched my bicycle from the shop where they had tuned it up--wrapped my Ram’s Horn handlebars with fresh tape, tightened the brakes, flossed the cassette until it sparkled. In truth, it is my mother’s bike--her first bike--a now-vintage twelve-speed Schwinn.
We have spent a good bit of time together, this bike and I, mainly summer mornings and Saturday afternoons, the occasional evening whipping down a sidewalk in the dark. But there is something magical about the first ride of spring, when the wind burns your throat and chaps your hands and stings your eyes but you pump pump pump regardless until you are whirring so fast you are equal parts thrilled and afraid.
