The Last Exile

I learned to roller blade when I was 35 and it was great fun as far as it goes, but at the time, the children were really too young to keep up with me on skates, and by the time they could, no one had a interest to do so. My roller blades wore out and I never got new ones.

When I was five my father took me out to Canadian Tire to get a new bicycle for my birthday. It would be a real grown up CCM bike. In fact, the bike was so grown up he bought a 18” frame with 26” sized wheels figuring this way he would never have to buy me another bike. I crashed head-first into the ditch the first time I took the bike out. The crash mangled me up pretty much as well as the bike. My father blamed me for the incident and refused to ever get me another a bicycle owing to my ‘carelessness’. It was my grandfather who saved the day and took me back to Canadian Tire to buy a more appropriate sized bicycle

I got my last bike when I was 13. My mother bought it for my birthday. I wanted one of the new ‘3′ speed bikes which had just come on the market. Instead, my mother bought me a high end English Lady’s riding bike because she didn’t want me to go any ‘faster’ on the road. I was deeply disappointed and I never rode that bike after the first time wobbling around the apartment building complex parking lot. You see, at just barely 5′1” my feet couldn’t even touch the ground with my legs stretched straight out and my toes pointed. My mother never learned how to ride a bike so the nuance of having a bicycle sized appropriately was lost on her, besides, she figured I would one day grow into the bike and refused to take it back to get me one more my size. I never rode a bike again till Isaiah Sender brought home the 22′ speed racing bike his grandmother bought him for his 12th birthday. She paid more for that bike than I ever would have and it cost almost as much as my rent on my 3 bedroom flat in downtown Toronto. Needlessly to say, it suited him perfectly. Yes, at 12 he was already towering over me and he still has room to grow with the bike. I took his bike out for a turn which necessitated the tribe coming and watching as they had several large and persistent doubts I could actually ride a bike. The Last Amazon brought the first aid kit thinking it would probably come in handy. While Isaiah Sender’s bike was really too big for me I discovered it is true – one never forgets how to ride a bike and I remembered how much fun it was to ride.

So for the next three years I kept threatening to buy myself a bike and just never got around to it; till this, my 47th birthday. I went off to Canadian Tire and bought myself the cheapest 18th speed bike I could get sized appropriately for me. Apparently, I most suited for a ‘youth’ bike. Isaiah Sender came with me and insisted on following beside me on the way home. I tried to give him my transit pass so he could take the subway home but he insisted on running beside me to ensure I didn’t get into any harm in the traffic. I learned a multitude of lessons. Isaiah Sender is in remarkable shape and a five km bike drive was pushing it for a 47th year old woman who hasn’t done any serious biking riding in the last 30 plus years. I will obviously have to work up to the up hill 2 km ride before I take the bike to work. I also learned Toronto’s roads are in appalling shape and I need to change the seat on my bike to something a with a more padding that would be kinder to my privates. And having ‘handy’ sons is wonderful for getting one’s ride ‘pimped’ out with fenders, bottle holder and the requisite old lady basket…or I suspect needing the seat changed.