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The Worst and Best of Us

By Joe Kurmaskie

Those first moments after discovering that your bike has been stolen, those are the ones that hang out there in suspended animation.

Time slows down, and not in a hip Hollywood action montage kind of way. Disbelief mixes with confusion that reluctantly gives way to the dawning realization that you’ve been pinched. You go through a compressed version of the five stages of grief right there on the street, or the Safeway parking lot or your own backyard. This is followed by any variation of the “people suck” dance. Mine involves swearing as I kick something, then spitting at the ground. The spitting is an important cathartic gesture because I’m not a spitter. It also explains why in my first year of high school I drifted away from lettering in two sports, choosing basketball over baseball because, well, I had a great outside shot, a hook that was money, and I couldn’t spend countless hours a week spitting stuff like chew or sunflower seeds.

But it wasn’t my bike that was stolen this time. It was my son Enzo’s ride, a sweet silver and black Specialized — his first “real” bike, with 26-inch wheels. It cost me real money and he rode it with a pride that comes from knowing his old man didn’t cheap out on him this time.

Last January, Enzo decided to ride to school on his own, in nearly any weather. Since school is only a half-mile at most, it’s nothing for the record books, but it felt like the passing of the torch. I smiled every time I saw him clip on his helmet, smile at me and head out the door. One morning I was headed to the post office at the same time and, without forcing it, we were riding together to his school. The next morning he said if I had any mail I needed to deliver he’d be fine with me riding along. It’s how a 10-year old invites his dad to ride with him. From then on, three or four mornings a week, we saddled up without needing to be asked. One of those father/son bonding deals that gains meaning in the remembering more than at the time it’s happening.

It was only right then, that we discovered together that his bike was missing. Things were kicked. I spat. He’s a puncher, followed by almost silent tears. This could not stand. That bike tied the whole summer together. I felt like posting a sign in the front yard reading, “When you stole my son’s bike out of the backyard you broke a 10-year-old’s heart. Enjoy flailing about in that dirty dishwater pool you call your soul.”

Instead I posted it on Facebook — nothing more than an exercise in venting, I thought. By the time I’d posted the bike’s serial numbers and done the things you do in hopes of recovering stolen property, things that have slim odds of success, I returned to the Facebook post and found it crowded with comments ranging from rage to encouragement. Then there was a post from my friend Dave Guttler, owner of River City Bicycles. He offered up his daughter’s XS Sirrus from his own garage. She’d outgrown it. The fit was spot on and, well, it was a bike that I would have laid down real money for. This was not Dave looking to do something that would promote his store, this was the simple but towering act of a friend with a big heart, one who appreciates that with four boys, my life is something akin to a round-the-clock goat rodeo.

He doesn’t know I’m plugging his act of kindness or his shop, but if you make your way down to Portland, Ore., be sure to spend a bit of coin at River City Bicycles. And ask for Dave, one of the best of us on two wheels.

You Might Be A Cyclist if... is Joe Kurmaskie’s latest book — a collection of inspiring and humorous affirmations that every cyclist will recognize themselves in.