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Back before I bought my candy apple blue Haro Nyquist bmx bike with a 3 piece crank and a gyro which took more beatings than a geek at football tryouts(thats right, a geek, use throwback insults from now on…you won’t) I built bikes from what I found at yard sales and shit. I’d buy a couple part bikes for like 5-20 bucks and piece them all together to make 2 or 3 rideable bikes. Of course, making one superior to the rest …the prototype. I had finally built my perfect BMX bike to take to the wakefield track (this is not a story about the track…that is to come at a later date) but the bike needed one more thing.
That one thing was metal pedals that would dig into your shins so hard and cut so deep that you had to wear shin guards if you were doing serious riding. And guess what, I was a fearless 7th grader and as soon as school was out all i wanted to do was ride that fuckin bike so I got the shin guards now I just needed the metal pedals. Afterall, I couldnt be using the titanium three piece crank I bought off a kid with plastic pedals, thats just fucked up. How could you even think that I would ride that…with a 3 piece crank?
So I set off for Schwinn one day. The main street location, not the friendly spot over on Albion. Schwinn was a great little bike shop until they moved it. Almost as if they sold out or went commercial, but anyway I digress. I was there for my goddamn pedals; dyno, chrome, ballin. A couple bike engineers or whathaveyou helped me pick out the perfect pair and helped fasten them to the beautiful frankenstein masterpiece that I had slaved over ever since my last report card when I got a couple A’s and my mom said she’d fuel my bike habbit.
Now its time to go test out these pups and kick it around wakefield maybe even make my way over to the track later on that day. I rode up main street towards Greenwood and then turned around by JJ round. I start pedaling and pedaling then i easily j-hop up the first curb that I pass. I even pull back on a wheelie and spin the bars in celebration…then I pedal harder and try to go higher over the next curb. But motherfucker this one was like 2 feet higher and I jumped 3 inches lower. I fuckin blew it, flew right over the handlebars crushed my face off the sidewalk, landed on my hip, then dragged my exposed knee over the rigid blacktop. As I felt the hot pain come over me I looked up and then across the street. Through the searing pain I could see a store. Then I made out some faces inside the store, they were staring at me. Oh, Shit the store was Schwinn and the people who I could see? yeah, they were the guys who just listened to me brag about my bike for 20 minutes. I gave them a quick wave pretending like I was okay and they laughed hysterically at me. I felt like such a doofus (notice the retro insult…i’m tellin you. its gold).
This lady came out and helped wipe the blood off my face, knee, upper leg (not the shins cuz I had my one guard on even though I didn’t wear a helmet), and elbows. And then she got the hose and sprayed my blood off her walkway before she called my mom. I couldn’t walk or anything but then mommadukes gets there and makes me walk down the block holding onto my bike. I don’t know why she did that, probably torture for being an idiot on my bicycle, maybe punishment for mouthing off earlier on in the day, but dammit that hurt and I wanted to kill her for not letting me just go home and bitch about what just happened.
Oh yeah, the bike was fine. I still have the facecloth the lady gave me to wipe my blood. Its bright orange and I use it sometimes, it reminds me of when bikes were the most important thing in my life. A greased chain and pumped up tires made my life perfect back then and that was sweet. I’m thinking about busting out the old haro and heading to the track someday.
Schadenfreud.
C
