FROM APRIL/MAY 2022 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

I was eight or nine, spewing hot tears on the corner of Bloor and Howland. My 10-speed white Peugeot, a Euro Pegasus in a sea of CCMs, had been nicked in broad daylight. My innocence was shattered and shocked but also enlightened with the sudden realization that personal property is fleeting and nothing is forever.

Fast-forward a few lifetimes: Just around the corner there was a crime, a break and enter at my house. The loot was anything they could carry in an overnight bag: a laptop with my ex’s unfinished book (the only copy), cameras, irreplaceable personal items. It was a stinging loss and invasion of privacy but I couldn’t get away from the fact that I was an accomplice, foolishly providing the getaway vehicle: my cherished Phoenix, a Chinese-made deep emerald beauty of a bicycle.

A kissing cousin to the more famous Chinese brand Flying Pigeon, the Phoenix weighed a million pounds but somehow balanced its heft with tight style in a proletariat-approved upright cruiser, apparently gifted by Chinese officials to visiting foreign leaders. It could ramp up to dizzyingly fast speeds but it took forever to accelerate – a rising Phoenix with a hangover. The ironic image of a thief making the slowest getaway imaginable made me laugh. The thought of never seeing it again made me frown.

Months later, I Google-Earthed my address and saw my beloved Phoenix frozen in time, safely locked to the pole outside my house. It was like a sick joke, a loud taunt that I should have kept it there instead of “strategically” bringing it inside before a trip. I had patted myself on the back for my forethought. “Not this time, bike thieves!” I thought.

One day, without any warning, the image was updated. The Phoenix vanished for the last time. My only hope was that it was hanging out with my long-gone Peugeot in the great utopian cycling afterlife.

My first bike was red with fat white tires. If I put the brakes on too hard, the wall of the tire swelled and I had to put the bike away. The second bike was a 10-speed that came in a box from Sears. Assembling it, I got the brakes reversed. I had to explain this to anyone who took it for a spin. My friend Darryl forgot and zipped down Mount Batten Road in Corner Brook, full speed, only to press the front brakes by mistake, and I can still see Darryl, a trapeze artist, doing a full somersault and landing in his own front yard. I spent a summer as a 13-year-old delivering The Western Star on that bike and riding at 3 a.m. to the Humber River with a fly rod hooked to the frame. I caught three salmon that summer. I put them in the bike’s pannier. One morning, in the dark, the police pulled me over and asked if I’d seen this young woman. If they could look in my pannier. The next day I read of her disappearance as I delivered the paper.

The last bike I still have. I was 19, walking to university in St John’s. An old man was selling his touring Raleigh for $100. Made in England. It had a generator with a big chrome headlight. I went to Turkey and came back wearing salvar, which are baggy men’s trousers. I got doored on Water Street and flew in the air like my friend Darryl, but the salvar snagged on the handlebars and helped alter my projection. They saved my life. I landed on my feet completely unhurt. The driver couldn’t believe it. I took that bike to Toronto in a box on a plane. I was having the first real salad of my life in Bar Italia while someone down the street tore off the front headlight and generator. You could see the angry twist of their theft in the white metal left screwed to the frame. The vandalism was worth it, just to experience an insalata Bresaola.

Another time I came home with groceries laced to the handlebars, and made a little jump of the front wheel onto the sidewalk, but the handlebars split in two from the weight of the groceries and my torque, and I ended up cutting my leg. I still have the scar.

I was eight years old, and had outgrown my first bike, which was a hand-me-down from a family friend. Like most kids that age, having a bike meant freedom to explore the depths of the neighbourhood. I needed a new bike, but convincing my parents that I needed a brand-new bike was a big challenge. While flipping through the Canadian Tire catalogue, I saw a glittery turquoise SuperCycle with a pear-shaped seat. It was one of the cheapest bikes in the catalogue but still cost a whopping $79.99. No way I could save enough allowance in time for summer. But inside the drawer of the dining-room sideboard, I found the answer. A red plastic wallet from Speedy Muffler King where we kept all the Canadian Tire money. My parents had been saving for years, so the plastic was stretched out and the stack was thick. I counted and made little piles of bills and kept a tally on a notepad. It was just enough. My parents took me to the store and I counted it all out again at the register.

Anyone who knows me well knows I have long been a dedicated runner and walker. Cycling was another story. I didn’t bike much as a kid and have tried to take it on in spurts, but part of my reluctance was not having the skill to do it comfortably, and mostly being afraid of getting mashed up by a motorist in a bike-lane-free part of town.

That is, until I met my current ride, a green jalopy, sparkling in the late spring sun the day I first laid eyes on it, in 2016. It’s just a beaut of a ride. I was immediately in love when I picked it up at a High Park-area giveaway. The first thing I wanted to do was give it a name.

I went to social media for suggestions and got a bunch of good ones. Green Lightning – not bad. Hot Wheels, said a former work colleague. The names kept flooding in: Green Hornet, King Cog, Greenacres, Maud, Betsy, Canada Dry.

Charlene, maybe?

But none of them stuck, until one moniker landed in the thread and the contest was a wrap.

Bike Tyson.

I couldn’t stop laughing. The name evokes my favourite boxer ever (another story for another day) and a bike that could likely take on the tough Toronto streets and drivers, crowded trails and whatever else I encountered.

The name has stuck. Bike Tyson and I face the world with a fierce bond that I thank my friends every day for christening. Keep fighting, BT!

The year after we were married, my wife, Mimi, and I rented bikes on a wine-tasting tour in Niagara. After a day of some not particularly memorable wines, we learned that the tour bikes were sold at the end of each season. For $200, I became the owner of a silver-blue Schwinn Sierra hybrid, a much sturdier beast than my ’80s 10-speed and more suited to Toronto’s potholes and streetcar tracks, with its chunky tires and rugged steel frame. It became a dependable commuter, as well as a capable off-roader. We added a child seat once our son was old enough, then a trailer. People laughed at the bike’s weight, but I completed three Rides to Conquer Cancer from Toronto to Niagara Falls, while lightweight road bikes wiped out on loose gravel. Countless parts wore out and were replaced, like the ship of Theseus.

Mimi died unexpectedly in the summer of 2017. My almost 20-year-old bike was falling apart, but I persevered, riding through winter for the first time. My local bike shop essentially refused to fix it, but by then I was in a new relationship, one that involved plenty of bike dates. It was finally time to let the bike go.

When I was growing up in Thunder Bay I had a paper route. Every week I took my neatly gathered piles of fives and twos to the bank until I had enough to buy a beautiful red 10-speed Miyata at Petrie’s Cycle and Sports.

I fucking loved that bike. I rode it to my summer job. I rode it to Chippewa Park. I rode it to volleyball practice before school, until one early morning a man made a left turn into my back wheel. I was okay, but he didn’t give me his name, so later, when I realized the back fork was in fact toast, I was out the $300 to get a new one. That’s when my dad came through for me in the most amazing way: He drove me to the intersection where the accident happened every morning at 7 a.m. for a week, until I finally spotted the car that had hit me. We tailed it until the man stopped, and my dad approached and told him politely but firmly that he had to pay for a new bike. And the guy just did it. He wrote out a cheque and that was it. I couldn’t believe it. My dad’s mild vigilanteism had paid off, and I got my new bike.

A bicycle is a machine designed for dreaming on. It is also a mode of transport that can take you directly to the past. I cycle every day, in County Sligo, in the Irish northwest. After a sullen morning at the desk, I get on my bicycle and pedal through the drizzle and the quiet. So many memories are stirred as I drift on the slow, turning wheels through the bleak and beautiful countryside. The effort required for the steep gradients of the hills releases endorphins, and these cause a giddiness. As I ratchet up the gears, I make up nonsense songs and sing them aloud. There are farmers in the vicinity who may believe that I am not quite the full Happy Meal.

I drift all over my life when I’m on my bike. I remember being peeled from the walls of questionable nightclubs in the city of Cork. I remember the slow months in a room the size of a cupboard in Barcelona—I could make tea and toast without getting out of bed. I remember being a kid in Limerick, a serial truant, lying low around the back lanes and sidestreets of the city, and that chill of excitement when you learn the hidden town.

But if I cycle a little faster, the past gives way to the moment, and the moment has its own romances. It would take a heart of stone not to imagine a music for the place names I pass by: Templehouse Lake, the Plain of Moytura, Ballindoon Abbey, the Caves of Keash. These names have melody, and are themselves a song, and they will do just fine for now.

My biking has been a salute to liberty, and I mean that quite literally. For anyone who is familiar with NYC transit, the F train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, pre-pandemic, was an exercise in how comfortable you were spooning a stranger. How desperately did you need to get on that train? Could you wait for the next, less packed one or were you late and needing to go “full spoon”? You probably didn’t even sleep next to someone that tightly. But it was NYC so what could you do? I quickly figured out that biking eight miles to work on the Upper West Side not only helped me avoid the subway but relieved me of some post-Trump election stress (the rest of the time I simply screamed into the void). I flew down Clinton Street, past President Street (you see what I did there) on my fold-up bike and was on the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan to complete my daily salute to Lady Liberty, whom I fondly call “M’Lady.” No matter the day, the stress or the political climate, I could always count on her to remind me of freedom and the yearning to breathe free. What more could a girl on a bike hope for?

I poke my head outside. It is raining. Snowing. Grey. So humid. Scorching hot. Nighttime.

Do I really want to go biking in that? Is it worth it? I putter around, considering, while also gathering what I might need: Rainboots. Winter jacket. High-viz vest. Water bottle. Sunglasses. Bike lights. Am I really going to let a little weather stop me? I grab my knapsack, clip on my helmet and wheel my bike outside. Check the street for people driving, people running, people strolling. All clear. I climb up and push off.

I pedal my six-year-old charcoal-grey Kona Dew Deluxe, digging in with every uphill, exhilaration with every downhill. Earning every kilometre. Moving under my own steam, all muscles engaged. All my buzzing thoughts fall away, my focus firmly on the road. Aware of all the moving pieces around me. The city sharing some of its secrets along the way. A replenished little free library. A frozen Humber River. A fox running. A curbside treasure. A new laneway shortcut. A moonrise over the lake.

I reach my destination, a little sweaty. Triumphant. Every time, satisfaction. I can’t believe I even considered not biking.