Braking Free: The Story of My First Bicycle

I was a late bloomer when it came to bicycles. My family was poor, we were living in a housing project in San Francisco and bicycles were a luxury they couldn’t afford.

When I bought my first bicycle, I was nine. I paid for it with the savings I’d accumulated from several months, or more, of allowances. Maybe my parents chipped in. I don’t remember now.

At five dollars, the bicycle was a bargain. I bought it from my friend, Joel Rimes, who also assured me that it was a bargain. The fact that it no longer had brakes and was missing both tires didn’t phase me. That bicycle was a wonderful machine -- it moved when I pedalled! The bare rims made for a bumpy and noisy ride but the sheer joy of feeling the wind rush past me as I made my way down the slope of the project courtyard made up for the bicycle’s defects.

At first, my joy was short-lived and inevitably gave way to anxiety. Where would I stop? How would I stop? The solution I came up with involved picking a grassy patch for my destination and then falling over onto the soft ground. A boy’s bike, its inconvenient bar made me nervous. I wasn’t about to hop off the seat and brake with my feet.

And so I pedalled and fell, pedalled and fell, pedalled and fell. After a few weeks, the routine became second-nature and even a little dull. I began to feel brave. I was ready to rise to a new challenge. I invited my little sister, who was four, to ride on the handle bars.

It was a sunny, Saturday morning. Our housing project fronted the street where the Fisherman’s Wharf cable car ended its run and turned around to make the trip downtown again. The tourists stood in happy groups, smiling and chatting. They carried bags full of sourdough bread and souvenirs for their relatives back home. As we headed down the street toward them, they smiled at us and waved. As we got closer, they stopped smiling. A few even looked alarmed. And then we plunged into the crowd. Minor hysteria ensued. My bicycle came to a stop. My sister fell off the handle bars.

Neither of us was hurt. We wheeled my bicycle out of the crowd and back down the street toward our apartment. My sister looked at her hand. It was bloody.

“Are you okay, Ellie?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said. “I’m okay. Did you see that man with the white package? I think it was something from the butcher’s. My hand went right through it and got stuck in the meat.”

“Oh, that’s okay, then,” I said.

After that, I decided that maybe my bicycle wasn’t the bargain I'd thought it was. It ended up against the wall outside our apartment where it became even rustier and was eventually wheeled away by the maintenance man.