I'm in a relaxed stupor from listening to Billie Holiday all evening, so it's time to take on projects I've been putting off. So now I can check "bike retrospective" off my list. A burden lifted!
I'm celebrating my two year bike-a-versary with the Old Dutch Treat. I brought it home from Hyland Cyclery on November 3, 2007. Thinking about that first daunting ride through Sugar House and up up up into the foothills makes me a little verklempt- in fact, just thinking about Utah has that effect on me.
But Utah is another post for another day. I bought my bike after a year of reading Copenhagen Cycle Chic daily in a Seattle skyscraper. When I moved to Utah for graduate school, I found myself on a spread out (and scenic!) campus. But more than anything, I had recently made a quiet exit from Mormonism.
It was a time of aesthetic overload for me. Tasting coffee for the first time since 1999, beginning a drinking career with a six pack of Blue Moon, and entering a whole new world of empty Sundays, strange dating expectations, and choices I'd never even considered having to make- it was eye opening. It was overwhelming. So one day I went to a bike shop that deals with Batavus' US distributor (at the time?), Seattle Bike Supply, and I ordered my dream bike.
It was one of those surreal large impulse purchases that was fantastically intoxicating. It was my mid-life crisis Corvette on a quarter-life scale. Waiting for the bike to arrive nearly killed me.
Not really. But it changed how I experienced my world once it showed up. I felt like hot shit riding that bike. With the wind on my face, I had my deepest thoughts. I started healing from all the hurt feelings and developing a new sense of self. I even started a blog.
A lot has changed since then. I never would have thought when I purchased the ODT that it would replace my Honda- or that I would be riding it around Philadelphia, a city I had never been to and never thought of living in. But in spite of the increased purpose and frequency of my rides, the ethos is still the same. I still feel like hot shit riding that bike.
Here's to many more good years on the Old Dutch Treat.
5 comments:
Good to look back at where one has been and then to look ahead at where one is going, and sista you have come along way! But look where you are headed, WOW! Glad that you are where you are and happy! Press on!
Congrat's! Two years and still loving it. That's great.
Be Free. Ride On.
Oh, you think you're hot shit, don't you? Oh... wait a second... you actually explicitly stated that you felt like hot shit, which takes all the hubristic wind out its sails, and makes feeling like hot shit completely acceptable. Good on you. Carry on. :-)
Love this! A beautiful bike. Coffee. Blue Moon (with an orange slice, of course). Congratulations on your two-year anniversary with that gorgeous bike.
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