Like most kids I had a bike with training wheels. I loved having the safety of those wheels and it took a lot of convincing from my father to get me to take them off. Then there were the inevitable crashes into bushes and spills on the gravel that more or less convinced me that it was a mistake to have taken those wheels off. My dad had bought me a real dirt bike that couldn't use training wheels. So it was time to grow up, even if I didn't really want to. While my dad was off getting the tires filled with air I decided to take a crack at riding my bike without help or safety. Turns out I was pretty good at it. Something about it felt very liberating. After that I rode my new dirt bike everywhere. Need me to get the paper? I'll ride my bike to the end of the driveway and bring it back. I really used any excuse to ride my bike.
That bike stayed with me for a long time, but eventually I got to the point where I outgrew it. Like the bike with training wheels, I didn't want to give it up. Even though my knees were hitting the handlebars, I didn't want to upgrade. Once again my dad took me kicking and screaming to the next level, which was mountain bikes with gears. Back then ten speeds had been around for awhile, but not very practical in a rural area like ours. Those thin tires wouldn't have lasted more than a few miles. Plus I liked to ride off the beaten path. My dad was looking for a way to get healthy and a mountain bike was a good option because he could go riding with me. So we got mountain bikes. I remember the gears being a mystery to me at first. As far as I knew if you wanted to go faster you just peddled faster. If you were going up a hill then it meant you had to stand up on your bike or walk it. Now I was being told that you would shift gears to account for the situation. The idea was ludicrous to me and seemed unnecessarily complex considering biking was supposed to be fun. Once again I didn't know how much fun it could be to ride a mountain bike. That bike did everything my old bike could do, but better. All the limitations were seemingly removed, which of course lead to several biking debacles where I attempted too much with too little experience.
Eventually I learned how to drive and the bicycle became something I would only use if I couldn't get the keys to a car. I still liked to ride, but my world had suddenly grown exponentially to a point where a bike didn't seem practical. There was only one problem though, I didn't own a car. My dad didn't want me owning a vehicle because it was potentially a money pit. I think this was partially true, but I think there was also a bit of fear that his son was going to driving around in an uncontrolled situation. With me not having a car of my own there was some sense of control, which I'm guessing is very important when it comes to raising a teenager. When it came time to go to college I went without a vehicle. Thankfully the college was fairly close to where I was living. There was a slight problem with that though because college was in Phoenix and it was July. Rather than buy a car, which would still be a financial drain considering I had no job, my dad opted to buy me another bike. As I've mentioned before, that bike was doomed from the start.
I'm not exactly sure what finally made my dad give in on the whole buying a vehicle thing. It could have been the combination of my misadventures and strategic comments from my mother. Or it could have just been the time where he felt it was necessary. For me it had been necessary for a long time, but as we've covered, what do I know about things? So it was decided that my dad would help me buy something so I could get to and from school and hopefully find meaningful work that wasn't within a block of where I lived. At the time my grandmother wasn't doing too well. Alzheimer's had started to really show itself and there was a very limited amount of time left to be with her as she used to be. My father, brother, and I all flew out to Wisconsin to see her. On the trip we would look for vehicles because they might be a little less expensive than in Phoenix. I should have known something was up when I was stuck in the Minneapolis airport for twelve hours while I waited for my dad and brother to land. Turns out there was a mild case of tornado near by and we were politely asked to step into the storm shelter area, in the event that it turned into a serious case of tornado landing on our heads. After taking a scenic detour to picturesque Fargo, my dad and brother finally arrived and we were on our way to my grandmother's farm.
Years before my dad had made an attempt to teach me how to drive a manual transmission. My test vehicle was a 1979 International Harvester Scout, which isn't the most user friendly vehicle out there. Things did not go well. Eventually I learned how to do what was necessary to stop the thing from lurching forward or making horrible grinding noises, but I knew from that moment that I would do everything I could to avoid something with a clutch. So in our search for a suitable truck, I had to make sure that it was an automatic transmission. Turns out in Wisconsin farm country that's like looking for a four leafed clover. We did find the truck that I would ultimately get by chance on some random Sunday. At the time it wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but it was what I needed. About a day after I bought it I was driving somewhere and I ran over a cat that had darted into the road. If it had been a black cat and all the mirrors had exploded I may have took it as a potentially bad omen, but I was so excited to be the owner of a truck that I didn't really notice until later.
It finally came time for the real test of both the vehicle and myself as a driver. We were in Wisconsin, but I was still going to school in Phoenix, which meant road trip! I was both nervous and excited about a long distance trip on my own. My father was just nervous. It must have been more nerve-wracking than when he left me at college a couple years before. The drive back to Phoenix was a blur. The only thing I really remember about that trip was that I didn't really stop except for gas. Otherwise it was pretty much a straight shot through seven states. Over the years I would take that truck back and forth across the nation a few times. Each trip came with its own surprises. Being pulled over by the police and told to slow down. Getting lost in a national park. Experiencing statewide construction. Desperately trying to make out the road during a blizzard. Trying to buy gas from a station nowhere close to the interstate and realizing something potentially bad may have happened inside before I got there. Being so tired that keeping my eyes on the road was like trying to bench press a bulldozer and finally stopping only to realize that I couldn't sleep because I was too wired.
Exactly one year after I bought my truck I got into an accident. Or I should say collision because accident implies no one was at fault and the woman who pulled out in front of me was definitely at fault as I smashed into her. With a vehicle it's a lot like the human body in the fact that once it suffers serious damage it may never be the same again, no matter how much effort is put into repairing it. The entire right front end of my truck was smashed. It wasn't a high speed crash and no one was injured, but in a way the damage was irreversible. They were able to fix things back into working order, but looking back I have to wonder if that wasn't the point where the problems started. Every vehicle is going to get old and need parts and repairs. It's just how things are. Within a few years of that crash my truck started having all kind of problems that required quite a bit of money to resolve.
Through it all though I held onto that truck because it was mine. It was my first vehicle and for all its problems, it had done a lot for me. I had gotten used to its idiosyncrasies. We tend to adjust our driving to match that of our vehicle and it may take someone else driving it to realize that there is an issue. Now I'm at a point where my little truck just can't be held together any longer. I know I'm overdue for a newer vehicle, but it's hard to think about getting something else. It's been my first and only. At the time I bought it, it was the most expensive thing I had ever owned. Now it's worth less than a new computer. It seems to be the nature of things, that given enough time their usefulness inverts on you. My truck has become like Elvis, doomed to carry on long after it should have passed only to die an embarrassing death when you least expect it.
