Richard Treks: BALM: Week 3 Day 1

I don't remember riding a bike with training wheels. I must have, I just don't remember. I know I rode a bike with training wheels because I remember the first day I rode without them. Who took them off? I don't think it was my father; he was always away doing duty far away. Maybe my older brother Mike took them off. I want to say, I seem to recall, that Mother was there watching, in a sun dress, her long curly hair still black, slender, with bright red lipstick.

Our house, one of the first in Hanover Heights, was small; some houses today have rooms as big as the house we lived in on Adelaide Drive. Our house had a pump and septic tank. A forest swept from the pump side of the house down the empty gravel street to a stop sign. I had a habit of playing with matches. One summer day, striking matches behind the pump house and throwing them behind my back onto straw at the edge of the woods, I set the forest on fire, and the fire department came to put it out.

The day that I first road my bike without it's training wheels was also summer. The street was empty but dusty. I straddled the bike and started pedaling, wobbling back and forth, my feet at times scraping the gravel, pushing myself forward, the stop sign coming at me more quickly than I wanted, the bike turning around the stop sign, the way back to the house all clear, pine trees blurring by, the pump house coming into view, my mother smiling, then showing alarm, realizing I didn't know how to brake the bike. And so I fell, scraping my knees, elbows, and the palms of my hands. Little bits of rock and tar gravel digging in, like lead points of pencil jabs.

I have had other wrecks on bicycles. We boys in Hanover Heights would pile four people on a bike--one on the handle bar, a second on the cross bar, a third in the saddle, and the fourth on the rear wheel. We could go blocks before losing control on a downhill and wrecking, four boys flying every which a way. We would all mount the bike and ride again.

Today, coming up a steep hill, I saw a truck in my mirror speeding up beside me, too close for comfort, so I went off the shoulder and down a swale. Riding into St. Ignace on HWY 2, here a busy road because it leads to I 75, I had a close encounter with two fast moving trucks. The drivers didn't want to yield an inch of the road, so I was forced again off the road. These are not particularly alarming events. Bikers experience them every day. We drive cautiously, with our eyes in our mirrors whenever necessary.

The road is ours, too, but it's wise to know when to let the other have it,

The road today brought Gary and me to the end of the UP. Tomorrow we'll cross the Mackinaw Bridge and begin our ride down the lower peninsula, what UPers call beneath the bridge, the land of the trolls. The UP has been a wonderful ride. Matt and Randle, two cool people I met today, had been backpacking through the UP. We all marveled at one another's experiences. All along the way were signs of PASTIES SOLD HERE. Here in St. Ignace I finally learned what they are.

A pastie is a meat and potato concoction wrapped in a crusty pie shell.

I hope the trolls beneath the bridge sell pasties. I so want to try one!