New Blue Bike

I bought a blue bicycle for forty bucks yesterday — it’s perfect. A Schwinn Collegiate — a blue “girl’s” bike with a front handle brake, three speeds, a big wide bouncy seat, and a coaster break. It’s much like the bike that was so fatally wrong that I was taunted all through sixth grade, but now, as an adult, it’s perfect. What I wanted was a bike I could ride around town, and which was old enough that no one would ever ask me to go mountain biking on it (don’t like mountain biking. I’ve never seen the point of hauling a bike up a mountain in order to go screaming down — call me a nerd, but I like to walk. I like to look at flowers and pretend to identify birds).

This morning my brother came by to pick up the dogs for their morning walk down at Mayor’s landing, and I followed them on the bike. A perfect ten-minute ride through the cool early-morning streets of Livingston, yellow morning sunlight streaking through the trees that have only recently leafed out. The Yellowstone’s running at flood stage, so as we walked the dogs around the park we watched big logs go screaming downstream toward Big Timber. Then back on my perfect blue bicycle, back through the leafy morning streets with all the kids heading off for the last few days of school. A nice way to start the day.