Bicycling in P-town
I’ve loved bicycling ever since I traded in my three-speed Raileigh for a nameless 5-speed sometime around 1960. I bought a Peugot U0-8 with a case-hardened chain and a padlock and rode it through college in Buffalo in and Cambridge afterward. It was transportation and I still can’t believe I used to sling a dufflebag of laundry over my shoulder and balance the end on the rear carrier and ride it through a foot of slush to the laundromat, but I did.
I tore it down and shipped it home after college and then to myself in Cambridge. I still remember the day I got the bike in its flat bike carton. I put it together and suddenly Cambridge opened up. I went everywhere on the bike, trading it in for an Austro-Daimler before I went to grad school in Amherst. I rode the Austro-Daimler from Cambrige to Amherst, then all over Amherst, Belchertown and Northampton, often in the same day, looking for apartments. It was still transportation as well as recreation and I used to ride it from Belchertown to Amherst, leave it in my office overnight and ride it home the next day.
Sometime after grad school, bicycling became cycling and cycling became exercise. I bought a car and the thought of cycling to Northampton for anything more than recreation wasn’t in the cards. I got bike clothes and a helmet. The roads were filled with slender men in what my wife dubbed rubber shorts and the Tour de France was suddenly something people actually followed. Everyone had a bike and you could engage in endless conversation about carbon steel vs. aluminium frames (the highest-end chrome-molly 531 tubing of my youth had completely disappeared).
Going cycling now became a 20-minute suit-up. I bought a mountain bike–the Macintosh of cycles–and discovered dirt roads within a mile of my home that I’d never known were there. Still had the road bike, a purple Bianci now, and if it weighed 25 pounds, my attitude was if I lost 20 pounds, the bike would be weightless. After some medical problems in 2003, I lost the energy to cycle like I did. I’d drive roads I used to cycle, remembering the feel of settling into the cadence and chewing up miles on my way home.
Now, on a four-day trip to Provincetown, we’re staying in the East End. My son-in-law and grandson both are riding now, and the first night we got on our bikes and rode to the Point at the West End, straight through the crowds in the middle of P-town. We hop on the bikes to go the store, chaining all three together. My speedometer and pump are in the room, no one is using helmets (fashion statments, I am sure), and there’s no need to change into cycling clothes. In short, I’m bicycling again, feeling the joy that comes from accelerating walking, getting where you need to go and back again in a quarter of the time. There doesn’t seem to be much theft of quick-release wheels or saddles and my bike is locked in front of my motel with the other bikes. I haven’t put on my cycling clothes or done an exercise ride since I’ve been here.
All I’ve done is ride my bicycle.