As John Lennon wrote “when I was younger, so much younger than today”, I had a sleek, shiny Motobecane Super Mirage. It was silvery blue, had ten speeds and little narrow tires. It was light as air and I could carry it easily up stairs if needed.

My bike was my primary form of transportation. I cut quite a figure riding it all over Chapel Hill, NC and surrounding area. Then, in 1977, I went to New York. My ex husband took the bike. It was retrieved the summer I went back to North Carolina to do theatre and sold when I returned to NYC that fall.

I did a little riding in NYC on borrowed bikes. Biking in NYC is like being the target in a video game. Traffic, cabs in particular, car doors that open suddenly in front of you and unpredictable pedestrians were only a few of the highlights of city biking then.  Nonetheless, biking anywhere always has that poetic element of stolen freedom that makes it one of the most pleasant ways to go-go-go. I became separated from biking when I left New York and have never pursued it since.

Now I live in an area of Oregon where biking and public transportation – buses – are promoted. In Eugene, where the University of Oregon is, one is hard pressed to find much in the way of parking in the city. The traffic in Eugene seems to be primarily arterial – many streets are one way and the traffic flows constantly only stopping for the many lights. 

I live in Springfield that is connected to Eugene by a series of bike paths intertwining along the Willamette River. The head of the graduate theatre department where I will be pursuing my PhD has encouraged everyone to get a bike. So I did.

My new bike is certainly not a Super Mirage. For one thing, it is a girl’s bike.  It is made for comfort and, as it was explained to me, to cover more distance per revolution of my busily peddling legs. It has 21 speeds, to which I laughed, and it has handlebars in a way more upright position because now I have some carpal tunnel that kicks in when I bike in a purely plank position for more than ten minutes at a time. Nevertheless, as soon as I embarked on my first exploration of the river bike path I felt that old exhilaration of stolen freedom.

I have always been a relaxed biker. I tend to mosey along blissing out over the river flowing beside me, especially after living in an area of the country where all the rivers are dry beds. Speeding past me are bikers who obviously have some place to go. For them the bike path is a road leading to work, school, an important appointment and they didn’t set their alarm clocks in time to watch the river flow. I think to myself that I will be one of them when school starts and wonder if I’ll find my biking as pleasant as it is now.

I decided to condition myself. On each trip I added something, some weight, a ‘thing’ – a backpack, then a backpack with a large full water bottle in it, a jacket, then the backpack with the chain (which weighs as much as a small child), the water bottle, the jacket, a snack, my keys, my glasses and my camera. Still the trip is pleasant. To make sure I make my biking as unpleasant as possible, the next thing I will add is a couple of books. I’m thinking, to make it significant, I should choose the Brockett.

History of the Theatre, by Oscar Brockett and Franklin Hildy, is the text for many a theatre history course. The year I received my Brockett, the ninth hardback edition, measuring 8 1/2 x 11″ and almost 700 small print pages, it was accompanied by the Wadsworth Anthology of Drama, over 1700 packed pages. It would be a serious commitment to add the Brockett to my backpack, but to add the Wadsworth with it could catapult my pleasant ride into a workout worthy of biking Death Valley.

Am I ready to plunge from the poetic bliss of stolen freedom to the mule train drudge of a daily commute?  Likely this time will come whether I heft Brockett and Wadsworth or not. It rains quite a bit in Oregon, but my July here has been rain free. There will be coldish weather, though now the cool temperatures are shockingly welcome ones. Sheer repetition will eventually take a good deal of the glow off.

Should I plug in the Puritan work ethic now and prepare myself for the hum drummery ahead? Is it necessary to take the positives and immediately load them down with several layers of heavy negative shellac simply as a reminder that the dull day may come? Why is it that as soon as we recognize and appreciate the good stuff we literally seem to start imagining the bad stuff?

I think I’m going to rely on one of my favorite life philosophies:  “Let’s don’t and say we did.”  Brockett and Wadsworth will remain housebound. We all need our summertime and what is stolen freedom if we can’t bike away with it while we have the chance? 

The Willamette River from the Autzen Bike Bridge

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