LIFE

When a Vintage Bicycle Reveals the Journey

It’s not about the bike, it’s about the ride

1988 Team Miyata. Photo by the author.

This retrospective isn’t about bicycles.

I’ll write about them, but this is about how a passion that involves equipment has dimensions beyond just using it.

Horse tack, sewing machines, woodworking tools, surfboards… equipment is integral to one’s hobbies and memories. For me as a cyclist, bicycles changed how I thought about the relationship between equipment and the experience of cycling, but in retrospect, it was more than that. How I thought about the world beyond my hometown and what I value changed, too.

Recently, I bought a used bicycle for a few hundred dollars. That’s a lot but not to cyclists; it’s probably the least I’ve spent on a bicycle in decades. Despite its pedestrian price and its birthday approaching 40, I inadvertently bought a window into formative years of my life that a fancier, new bicycle never could. It reminded me how bicycles shaped my sense of independence, athleticism, perception of foreign countries, and identity.

It all started in Florida, visiting my grandmother late one January, when my parents surprised me with a little red bike for my seventh birthday. Two days later I ditched its training wheels and within a week I flew home to…