Bicycle

I have a lovely purple bicycle, that I really like. Now that it is spring, I have cleaned it up, and lubed the chain, and taken it to and from work again. But it's lonely to bike on your own.

Melbourne has a bike share program. There are lots of stations around the city where Melbourne city bikes can be found. You pay by the day or week or year, and take a bike for a half hour at a time, from one of many conveniently located stations. There is a station just up the street from us. I convinced Jonathan to try it. We'd take it just a block away to Albert Park, and ride once around the lake. It would be lovely.

Jonathan was happy to try, except he reminded me he hadn't actually ridden a bike for three years.

"Oh, you can't forget how to ride a bike," I said.

The cost for any number of 30 minute trips over whole day is only $3. That's cheap! But if we keep the bike out for more than a half hour, we pay more per half hour. First we pay only an additional $2. Still cheap! Then $7. Then $10 per additional half hour. So getting not so cheap. But we were only going once around the lake just a block over. Surely it would take no more than one half hour. Maybe an hour, tops.

So I brought my bike, and paid for one for him. My bike is slick and light and purple. His rental bike was thick and heavy and Heavy. It had a basket and heavy mud guards and a generator attached to the back wheel so that it would turn on blinking red lights in the back as he pedaled. And kind of heavy.

Jonathan got on, and fell over.

We adjusted the seat.

He got on again, and fell over again.

"How do you get this bike to go forward?" he asked.

"Push really really hard initially, so it has momentum," I said. And he did, and the bike wobbled back and forth across the wide sidewalk, and he stayed up.

"Ok, ready to go!" said Jonathan.

"Um, maybe we should walk it across the road to the park," I suggested.

Once in the park, we easily found our way onto the track around the lake. But the track went on the wrong side of the yacht club, so we followed the sidewalk the other way. And then that narrowed, and then completely disappeared.

"Now where?"

After going in a couple of circles, we found our way back.

The half hour was coming to a close rapidly. I told Jonathan to keep his eye out for the other bike share station that was supposed to be on the west side of the lake. But we couldn't find it.

Finally, off in the distance, near a different building, we spotted the station. By the time we reached it, we would be over the 30 minute mark anyway.

"Should we just go around the lake instead?" I asked.

"Sure," said Jonathan.

So we did.

The lake was lovely. The sun was shining. There were lots of black swans, raising their baby swanlings.

A billion people were out walking on the path, and Jonathan wobbled his way back and forth between them on his heavy bike, all the way to the tip of the lake.

"There should be another bike share station here somewhere," I said. "Do you see it?"

But we didn't see it. And we didn't feel like looking. So we just continued on.

Riding back on the other side, the way we had come, we realized that the wind was actually blowing pretty hard.

"Can we take a break?" Jonathan asked. "My legs are really tired."

I looked nervously at my watch. Another 30 minutes were almost over. Oh well. We'll pay the extra $7. "Ok."

Then we biked another 10 minutes into the wind.

"Can we take a break again?" asked Jonathan. "This path is really bumpy."

"Ok," I said, looking at my watch.

Ten more minutes. 

"Can we just walk home from here?" Jonathan asked. "It's too windy."

I looked at my watch again.

"Um. How about you wait with my bike at the next park bench, and I'll return the bike-share bike?"

That suggestion was happily agreed to. So off I went on the bike-share bike.

And fell over.

I adjusted the seat, and pushed off again.

And fell over.

The third time, I pushed that heavy thing really really hard. And I was off! Wobbling back and forth over the path.

I pushed hard -- Hard! Back around the corner, back across the road, back to the original bike share station. With 10 minutes to spare. I pushed it into a slot.

And nothing.

Ten minutes later, I figured out how to actually return the bike (push Hard!). And then ran, back across the road, around the corner, to try to find my poor abandoned child with my beautiful purple bike.

Fifteen minutes later I found him, pushing the bike along the side of the lake, looking out at a family of black swans.

"Wow family outings are so fun," I said, taking the purple bike so that I could wheel it all the way home next to Jonathan. "We should do this again sometime."