Thanks for the Welcome to Bostonbiker.org.  I rode my bikes all the time while growing up in Marshfield,  a small beach town on the South Shore in Massachusetts.  In high school, I would even drag my 10-speed  across the sand dunes into the next town to meet my friends in Humarock! At low tide, I could also ride on the flat hard-packed sand.

After college, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and stopped riding, as the hills were a bit too much. Besides,  I no longer had a bike. I became an avid walker and hiker.

In my late twenties, I rode my own motorcycle for a few years, until I blew up my engine. Then I went back to hiking the wild wilderness of Marin County.

I borrowed a bike to use for my first and only trip to Burning Man in 1996.  Riding across the desert under the stars at night was magical, and riding to get ice in the heat of the day was fun! But even though I lived in the county where Mountain Bikes were invented, I still never got into riding a bike regularly until I moved back to Massachusetts, without a my former truck, Jeep Grand Cherokee or cars I had relied on to get me out into nature, ironically.

When I returned from decades in California, I first lived in Jamaica Plain, and would borrow my sister’s spare bike to ride in the nearby arboretum and on the Corridor Park paths.  I lived in Roslindale for a few years up on a hill,  and a neighbor who was an avid rider eventually gave me his old Miyata, which he had made road-ready.  I had by then returned to J. P., but was leery of traffic, so I resisted riding at first.  This year I really got into riding a lot, for the sheer joy of tooling around the lovely neighborhoods here, and in the Arboretum, where I was thrilled to learn that I could ride up both Bussey Hill AND Peter’s Hill with my 21-speed!

I often rode across town to work, and took my bike on the T to ride from North Station to my other job in Cambridge.

Recently I had taken to late night excursions in the quiet streets and neighborhoods of J.P.    Biking had become for me not only transportation and a means to exercise, but an escape from the mundane world into a magical world, where I could fly along in the breeze, feeling free and unfettered.

So it is especially poignant that I have started this blog right after my beloved old bike was stolen. Without my bike, I realize just how much it meant to me. How much easier it was to get around, while living without a car.  Easy transit to work,  a strong workhorse to carry bundles and bags on my errand sprees, and more than anything, a means to let my soul fly free.

If  my bike does not show up,  I will have to replace it soon, because as I stand at bus stops and walk long paths, I look longingly at the bikes that joyously speed by me.  I don’t want to be left behind!  Having a bike to me represents the ultimate freedom!

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