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 <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="5"><b>Bad Case 
 of Bike Hate<br>
 </b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="3">by <b>Jake Laksin</b></font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="3"><i><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">originally 
 appeared in the Boston magazine Mental Floss</font></i></font></p>
 <div align="left"> 
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">To tell 
 you the truth, I hate my bike. So help me God, I have dreams -- not nightmares, 
 mind -- wherein from the tribunal comfort of my bed, I watch as punishing 
 flames of crimson engulf my despicable contraption, torching it to a fine 
 crisp. Nothing but nubs of pedal and bony bits of frame tubing remain, and 
 to see even these, you will have to sift through a tiny dune of ash.</font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">If you 
 feel bad for my bike, don't. The bike deserves it. In the two years we've 
 been together it has been awfully abusive, a tormentor with reflectors, 
 snapping the spirit like a spoke. But before I present the very venom informing 
 his two-wheeled crankiness, let me describe how we met. </font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">We were 
 set up. The matchmaker was my dad, who, knowing that some writer's salaries 
 sometimes fail to bankroll life's fineries, (cars, Tuscan merlots, rents, 
 foodstuffs, etc.) and operating on the best of intentions, picked it up 
 at a garage sale. He was taken with the sight. Slender maroon stems framing 
 the body, itself jeweled in the amber sheen of a late August sun. In the 
 outmoded 27 x 1_ inch bike tires he saw not obsoleteness, the kind that 
 prevents most repair shops from stocking them, but rather an antique bicycle's 
 classic svelteness, the kind that stays true to its boulevardier name - 
 the Schwinn World Tourist. At $20, a find. For my son, he told himself, 
 it would be perfect. </font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Indeed, 
 I was all too happy to have the bike. I will not deny this. Rather, I will 
 plead location. You see, I live in Boston, a city so full of its colonial 
 heritage that to this day it insists on the narrowness of its downtown streets, 
 causing them to resemble cobblestone hallways, just wide enough for ye horse 
 to trot betwixt. As for the main thoroughfares, those two-lane trails wouldn't 
 qualify for avenue status anywhere but here, where they are so stuffed up 
 with trolley, car, and bus traffic that you can dust all three on bike back. 
 </font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">It doesn't 
 even have to be a top-rack model. Hoity toity hydraulics and fancy gearing 
 are utterly unnecessary. BUT, and here I'm getting warmer to my point, the 
 bike does have to MOVE. Because when a machine acts up, when that svelte 
 rear tire lodges against a fender and will not hear another word about spinning, 
 when its chain wheels and freewheels conspire to clink and clank loudly 
 enough to turn heads, robbing me of the right to suffer in private, when 
 I start to feel like I'm jockeying a washer-dryer gone wild, when all this 
 happens, I get upset.</font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I know 
 what you're thinking, but I assure you, I caved for bodywork at first. Once, 
 twice, three times, desperate. Each time, though, something inside got rubbed 
 the wrong way. Sparks jumped from sine. Marrow seethed against bone. I began 
 to grumble about the $80 tune-up, muttering hard under my breath something 
 about the bike costing the same as a nice dinner downtown, and how I can't 
 recall one of those doing me wrong. I forgot all about the five-month honeymoon, 
 burying deep the memory of that perfectly lovely time, when the riding was 
 smooth, and bike and rider could be seen coasting the narrow streets, the 
 aura of alloy-flesh synergy billowing like a wedding train. </font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Instead 
 I concentrated on the numerous hills, humps and cloud-pushing grades rising 
 up all along the route I take to work everyday. I stewed in a private hell 
 of similes. Like the one about how their legs feel as if they're on fire 
 every time I huff-it up yet another top. Or how riding that bike is like 
 trying to pedal up a blue whale's back on a treadmill. I get creative when 
 I'm ticked, and I was ticked because some days </font></p>
 <p align="left"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">I became 
 convinced that hated my bike. As evidence, I began telling my dream - the 
 one that burns the bike like an effigy. What I would neatly leave out is 
 that each morning, when I wake up, I picture that same bike, intact and 
 horseshoe-locked to a white wood banister, expectantly presenting its seat. 
 I know I need it. How else am I going to win the breadcrumbs? But I ask 
 you, shouldn't the bike treat me better?</font> </p>
 <p align="center"><i><font size="3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">more 
 Over the Transom</font></i><br>
 </p>
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