Favorite Things: My Steyr Bicycle

Some time in the late 1990's Philip found this bicycle at the Goodwill in Petaluma California where we were living.  The only thing wrong with it was two flat tires.  Philip brought it home and fixed it up and has been keeping it in good shape for me to ride ever since.  It's made by Steyr which is an Austrian company.  I don't know exactly when it was made but most likely in the early 1970's (or late sixties?) before the company stopped making them. 

Philip equipped it with collapsible wire baskets in the rear years ago so I could go grocery shopping on it.  Just this Christmas he bought me front and back lights so that I can ride at night more safely.  It's a great bicycle and feels like an old friend.

I rode this bicycle to do my grocery shopping and to acquire plants for our first herb and vegetable garden in Santa Rosa.  This bicycle took me all over town on strange little housewife missions...visiting friends, going downtown for coffee, through my lovely neighborhood to look at all the gardens developing, and to and from the Junior college where I took fencing, math, and French classes.  Riding my bicycle meant I never had to worry about parking- the steady loud student lament at the junior college.  Maybe I was a little smug from time to time, but I promise that I would always do something stupid the minute I felt smug, like crash my bicycle into a retaining wall in front of 50 students. 

When I was pregnant I rode this bicycle until it hurt too much and my sense of balance was thrown off by the giant stomach I had grown. 

The minute Max was able to hold his own neck and back up* we put a front facing baby seat on my bicycle so I could take Max everywhere on it.  We went grocery shopping together with Max on the front and our groceries in the saddle baskets in back.  Without being smug at all I felt sorry for all the moms at the grocery store wrestling with multiple kids who couldn't just get on a bicycle to do everything the way I could.  I felt free and light and capable.  Max loved being on the bicycle looking in front of us with the wind in his face and the world whizzing by him. 

He was able to ride in front until he was about three and a half years old at which point he was on a tricycle.  Then I would ride my bicycle slowly next to him on the sidewalk  all over our neighborhood and sometimes I'd ride on the street and give him the space to really get going. 

When we moved here my bicycle riding was curtailed for a while.  Partly because Max decided he hated riding bicycles to get places.  That was a really hard period.  I felt so much more trapped with him refusing to go places on the bicycles. 

I am having a little renaissance of bicycle love because I am once again using it to run most of my errands.  In all weather except ice/snow.  This week I've  been watching a lot of episodes of "Foyle's War" which is a detective show set in Britain during World War II.  Because of petrol shortages the show has a lot of people riding bicycles.  I feel close to that.  I feel it coming to us again.  People having to get on their bicycles to do a lot of things they used to do in their cars.  My bicycle may not have been made in the 1940's but it looks classic so that when I'm riding around on it I can pretend that I am riding because I can't get any gasoline and I'm shopping frugally because food is much more scarce and doing these things because it's the life you believe in and not because the government is making you keeps it from being depressing. 

This past month hasn't been as tight as the previous several months have been.  I could probably set some money aside to fix my scooter wheel and not have to use my bicycle anymore.  But as much as I love my Vespa, I don't want that to be my primary vehicle.  I like having to ride my bicycle everywhere.  I'm riding between 12 and 18 miles a week that I didn't used to do.  My plan is to eventually fix up my Vespa as an emergency vehicle and to use it when I have to take Max to the doctor or when I need to make a run to a farm for 100 lbs of tomatoes. 

I love my bicycle.  It has a Bambi bell on it that Max and Philip bought me years ago.  It's red and cute and totally beefed up to carry up to five bags of groceries.  It doesn't require gasoline and it's helping to improve my heart health. 

It's like an old friend now. 



*I think he was 3 months old when I first started bicycling him around.