Biking With....

Biking with…..

(reflections on the strange loads I’ve carried on bicycle)

A fish tank. I was in Pennsylvania, the early college years. It was a small fish tank, plastic with purple top, found sitting roadside after someone’s cleanup venture. I’m not sure why I thought it necessary to collect it while on my bicycle ride, maybe because It Was There and I was stretching my newly-left-home wings and displaying feathers of my father. Growing up he’d routinely pull over in his...Mercedes to pluck through a beckoning roadside pile.

I remember balancing the fish tank between handlebars and seat post, hugging it occasionally with a spare leg. It was mostly downhill. I think I really enjoyed the stacked feeling of collecting resources in a resourceful manner.

Dessert plates. Pedaling out one night for pipe organning, and someone must have purged a kitchen. Sweet dainty china pieces in a dusty box, none of them matching, their intricate roses and gold trim and little stamps on the bottom (“made in England” or “made in occupied Japan”) appealed to me all Victorian.  So after rummaging around and making an attractive mismatched selection, I stacked them ill-fittingly in the corner of my wire bike basket (I was on the van) and pedaled sedately off.

I don’t think I’ve EVER heard anything so loud coming from my bike before. Clanks and crashes, miniature China cymbals, vibrations of the road magnified by the plates’ odd sizes, resonating off the houses. This was horrifying. How could plates make so much noise? I scooped them up to mediate this nonsense. Thus I continued through downtown Ithaca cradling a palmfull of plates.  (I’m eating chocolate off one of them now, as I write this. They really are very charming.)

Kitty litter AND potting soil. They were both at the bargain store and I couldn’t pass them up.  The heaviest saggiest bags of weighty material possible. And since I am now car-free, I hefted one bag into the front basket and wheedled the other under the back rack-strap. The suspension gave a visible uff and I laughed and mounted the rig. Stopping was a delayed and thick experience and turning could be magnified into a giant sudden swing of direction due to the weight in front. But no matter, I treated all with care and great awareness. (maybe one thing I especially love about biking, and also Biking With Items, the amount of focus and awareness necessary. Its almost a sort of balance meditation) I took empty back streets, plowing along like the Queen Mary. The laws of physics—namely inertia: that an object in motion stays in motion, no matter how massive.

Then: OH GOOD what impeccable timing to meet my sophisticated and attractive Downstairs Boys neighbors as I roll weightily home on this ridiculous rig. I couldn't really stop properly or turn around for a sufficient greeting, so I just yelled out something idiotic and incomprehensible as an explaination.

Bread. Why it is nice to have friends at the bakery, for day-old giveaways. Again, from the college days. Talk about voluminous though; bread is certainly, erm, spacious. Both back panniers full and a big poof of a bag strapped to the back rack. I then distributed to friends and neighbors.

Compost. This makes me feel very Ithacatious, biking my compost up THE HILL to the greenhouse compost collector. Especially if I’m wearing plaid and a vest.

Vegetables. Cabbages, kale, carrots, flower bouquets, garlic, and tomatoes. All at once.

Also are all those things so routine they’re barely worth mentioning: a clanky six-pack, a houseplant, half a batch of muffins, waaaay too much organ music, a tall curvy mirror, hefty much boots, a left-over sheet-cake. This number was in a clear plastic container on my back rack left over from church. All colored frosting right at child’s-eye level.  I pass a mother and daughter. “CAKE!” observes the little girl, all wistful and recognizing, as it rolls through her world-view.

I take an undue pleasure in all this. I don’t know where this pride in being resourceful and slightly unorthodox comes from, but I think I might cite my father. I’m grateful that I can see this transport of objects as an amusing challenge, rather than an inconvenience and reason to pine for a car.