Cycling through life's transitions

One sometimes hears comments like “swimming is a sport you can pursue no matter your age.” Or it might be golf, bowling, or even pétanque. For me it’s cycling: pedalling here and there for more than 60 years.

I remember my first bicycle, the one with training wheels that I rode slowly over the uneven turf of our back yard in Massachusetts. It was red, and the training wheels didn’t help me achieve balance until my father took me out onto the seldom busy street, held his hand on my back as he ran alongside, and then finally let go. Off I went, a bird leaving the nest the first time. What I also remember, from later outings on that bike, was pedalling as hard as I could and loving how it felt.

And so it was as I grew up. First, envying my brother his big Columbia bicycle with its coaster brake and “belly balloon tires,” as he called them. When he wasn’t around I’d struggle onto it and ride out into the street, slamming on the brake in the sand at the side of the road for the excitement of the skid (and the occasional skinned elbows arising therefrom). Then, one Christmas, three brand-new Phillips bikes awaited my sister, brother and me—genuine English three-speed bikes with heavy steel frames, and a generator with lights front and back. I loved that bike, and kept it for the next 43 years—even though, in full adulthood, I had received from my wife the gift of a beautiful new bike to replace it.

Those bicycles led us to places we’d not have seen otherwise—they let us see more and be so much closer to the passing world-scape than through the window of an automobile. On hot summer days they let us hear the sound of insects and birds, feel the heat of the sun and the cooling breeze that a bicycle always assures. On seaside roads and paths one could smell the sea, the dried seaweed and the marsh grass with no chance of a pesky green-headed fly alighting to deliver its vicious sting. Then, years later, in the hilly high desert, pedalling to the highest points in that dry heat to quietly cast an eye across the endless landscape, the dry stony land with magnificent saguaros, ocotillos, scented acacia and the yelp of the coyote.

When moving to Dublin we left our automobiles behind but the bicycles followed—taking up new duties as we foreswore car ownership thereafter. Our trusty steeds, as we called them, were now outfitted with baskets and panniers, and accompanied us on shopping excursions, into Dublin city with its narrow streets (and close encounters with menacin