oh, i guess i’ll go, but i’ve always had trouble telling this story. (i tried writing it for creative nonfiction last semester. it was tough.)

my bike love started in middle school. (quick side note: i originally wrote ‘92, and i don’t know why.) in grade school i rode around town and in the powerlines behind my house on a shitty ds mtb, but when i hit middle school, i decided i wanted to buy a bmx bike. so i got a gt vertigo. i wasn’t very good, but god i loved that bike. i took it apart and put it back together more times than i can even remember. it got to the point where i wanted to race, but i couldn’t find any tracks close enough to me. but for some reason, a year or so into high school i just stopped. i couldn’t even drive yet, and i just stopped riding.

flash forward to the summer. i’d been wanting a bike for a while but hadn’t bought one yet. i had some friends who had “fixies,” thought they sounded fun. i didn’t wanna deal with a derailleur in the city, so i built up my fixed. but here’s what pushed me to building it: i’d dated a girl for a year and a half, and we broke up at the beginning of the summer. i won’t get into the details, but know that it was enough to keep me in bed. and when i wasn’t in bed, i’d usually want to be in bed. the bike took my mind off her, it became my best friend. i had forgotten how much i missed it.

gosh, this story is so girlish.