Reclaimed

Today I got my newly recovered bicycle out of the shop and promptly got honked at, twice, on my way home. Ahh, Long Island.

It's not a fancy bicycle just your standard step-through ladies mountain bike. I love the fact that it is old and new at the same time. I love its crooked basket the one I warped when it crashed in Astoria. I love the gears that seem so familiar and so easy in comparison to the bikes I had in Boulder. I love that I can sit perfectly upright and see everything so clearly. I love its burgundy color, the color that used to match my melodramatically dyed hair.

This is my bike. The one that I rode on bad dates in Long Island City and late nights working in Soho. The one that I rode 42 miles on the 5 Borough Bike Tour when it had nubby mountain bike tires. Only now having ridden so many more miles, on bicycles far more suited to that purpose, do I realize how insane that was.

I had let it go years before. I left it here when I went to Colorado. I got other bikes, several of them in fact. I assumed this one would be sold or given away because I said I did not need it anymore. I sincerely thought that was true.

Luckily for me it was not sold or given away. As a result of a mixture of cheapness and stubbornness, he tucked it into a closet for almost six years. He assumed it was worth something other than 25 dollars and some extra storage space. He was right.

Thanks, Matt.