[First Draft]
The other adventure ride during my early teen summers took me to the Indian Hill Swim Club, 5 and a half miles away. Monday thru Friday, our mother would drive my sister and I there in the mornings, for swim practice, then to hang out in the early afternoon until she retrieved us. Once my sister turned 15, she found the crowd there immature, and she abandoned the sunny idyll. My mother suggested I ride my bike there, leaving her free to continue her work and studies in clinical psychology.
A quick scoot up Montgomery Pike, then over Euclid and Kenwood into the shaded suburban paradise of Indian Hill. Roads seemed to stretch forever between stop signs, houses were set far back and far apart, and the noise of commerce never intruded. For two years, I engaged in preparatory work for my future triathlon career. The cycling never seemed important; it was the pool, the swimming, and the kids I hung out with who held my attention. Twenty-seven years later, once I discovered I could run, I called on those swim-bike days, and recaptured the freedom and fun they held.
That same year I biked to swim practice, my parents bought one of the first compact cars, and red Dodge Lancer. Styled as a pseudo sports car, it had a sloped rear trunk, bucket seats, and little power to accelerate. Combination please the second car users in our family, my mother, my sister, and, several years later, me. Once I started driving the Lancer, any thought of using my Raleigh for transportation disappeared like the autumn leaves we burned in a wire cage every fall.
My three-speed gather dust, cobwebs, and rust as it hung out under the eaves in the back yard. When it came time to drive to college, my father’s courageous DIY efforts could not restore it to working order.
“You can’t take this thing to Connecticut. Let’s go to the police auction and see what we can pick up for you,” he said one Saturday morning. Fifty dollars didn’t go as far in 1966 as it did in 1958. We came out with a maroon fat-tired Schwinn with hub gears and brakes, and a basket in front. For three years, whenever I felt lazy, I’d haul it up from the basement storage area and ride it on the days when I needed to make it from one end of the campus (the science labs) to the other (English or Religion classes in Fisk Hall) in less than 10 minutes.
I scheduled as many of my classes for the morning as I could, wanting to have early afternoons free before swim practice, and the evenings unencumbered to socializing. All my studying happened in the quiet of the library carrels between six and eight AM. I jammed five subjects into each semester, instead of the usual four. Most classes were two or three days a week, and hour each, so my time from eight to noon was spent negotiating the campus paths every hour to fit it all in. The Schwinn served that very well. Simple transportation, cheap and reliable.