Just messing around -- long

[OnTerryOh]

I thought I would write a short story, but it got a little boring. Or maybe I'm just insecure. So here's a fragment. If you'd like to write the next part, feel free.

The folowing is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any real person living or dead is purely coincidence.
======

My friend Beth's fear of road bikes dated back to 1970, when she used to ride a blue 10-speed Schwinn that kerchunked into new gears whenever it felt like it.

Beth would decide to blow a red light, cars zooming at her from the side at about 500 miles an hour in a 30 mile zone. She'd be screaming at herself inside, "Go, go, go, go!" when her bike would grind and jerk into a new gear.

She would make it across the intersection with her heart racing at 642 beats a minute, wondering when the bike was going to make her crash. Surely it would be the bike's fault if she did crash.

For the next 39 years, (egad!) she rode the safest, cheapest, easiest to maintain bikes she could find, one-speed cruisers with coaster brakes, upright bicycles that did as they were told.

All decisions were Beth's -- braking, pedaling, steering and blowing red lights. The bike couldn't decide to hold her back in some sneaky, gear-shifty way.

One cold Chicago morning a year ago in March, when we had a snow that wasn't sticking to the ground, Beth called to tell me she'd just finished a 12 mile ride on her cruiser in Lincoln Park. She asked me if I'd be up for riding with her some time.

The two of us used to run together, but I hadn't heard from her in many moons, actually decades of moons, since I'd given up running and gotten into bicycling.

I ride just about every day and have toured across just about every state in the country. I like to enjoy the scenery instead of speeding along at a million miles an hour.

Anyway, Beth told me she'd recently injured her knee and couldn't run anymore. We started doing weekly Sunday rides in the 40 to 60 mile range, leisurely, stop and drink a frappachino, take some photos of the daffodils type of rides.

Our longest was a 78 miler that went beyond Wolf Lake and into Indiana. We passed the army tank at Torrence Avenue near the Chicago Skyway, and Beth got tears in her eyes because she hadn't been there since she was a little girl when her father would drive she and her mother and five brothers and sisters in their station wagon to get frozen custard somewhere near the tank.

Beth said the fronts of her thighs had turned into wooden planks in the days following our 78 miler. My other biking friends would wonder how she could go so far on a one-speed bike. They would ask about "the one-speed rider".

I once offered to lend her a mountain bike to give her an easier ride. She rode it for about 2.79 seconds and then chickened out. She admitted she was chicken.

She hated the insecure feeling of anything other than an upright position. She wanted nice, secure foot brakes, always there in the rain and snow, not some wishy washy slippery hand brakes that would wimp out in wet weather.

She didn't want some clunk-O bike deciding to shift gears in the middle of traffic. She thought pedal clips were some kind of weird fashion statement.

The first seed of change got spat into Beth's consciousness when we rode through Caldwell Woods with Lane Foley, a friend who once biked with me across Kansas.

[Biciclista]

Lane Foley rode a unicycle, the longest ride he ever did was 200 miles in two days, the Seattle to Portland ride. When Beth met him, life as she knew it was over. After the ride, we went to my favorite Mexican restaurant where Beth and Lane seemed to forget me as they started talking about joining a circus together. Beth loved doing stunts on her bike and of course, Lane did too.

[OnTerryOh]

I'm laughing out loud.

[SportySam]

Beth and Lane talked for hours that day. Consistently they came back to the circus idea. Over the next few months, my rides with Beth dwindled as her and Lane spent more and more time together. As I pulled into my driveway, I had a feeling that I should check my mailbox (seeing as I hadn't heard from Beth in a while). In my mailbox was one letter, no return address just my name and address on the front. I opened the envelope and out fell some pictures. The letter was from Beth. It said, "Don't worry about us...we found our calling and our hearts...one tricycle at a time!" The first picture was of Beth in a white sun dress perched on Lane's tuxedoed shoulders both on top of his trusty tricycle. On the back, in Beth's handwritting, "Our wedding" was written. I had to smile. The second picture was of them performing in Utah under a circus tent. I smiled again, shook my head, wiped a tear and went back to my car to get my bags from work. I went inside my house and changed my clothes and got on the bike that Beth had left behind. Maybe just Maybe I would find my happiness, like beth found hers!

[Biciclista]

(it's not OVER yet, sportysam!)

[OnTerryOh]

Wow. It's really interesting where the story can go!

I'm not going to interrupt again. Thanks to all for future installments!

[Zen]

The next morning I was roused out of bed by the bright sunshine. I had a terrible hangover but at least I was finally sober.
What was I thinking yesterday? No man is going to make me happy, I'm going to make me happy!
I called into work and told Captain Blowhard I wouldn't be in.
"When will you be in?", he asked.
"Oh, about never o'clock" and hung up. I was feeling better already.
The next order of business was to get two darts. I threw them at the big US map I had tacked on the wall.
Thwap! Start
Thwap! Finish.
Then I dug out my Adventure Cycling maps to see if there was any route in that vicinity.

[Biciclista]

The dart had landed somewhere near Boise, Idaho. I got onto my computer and googled it to see what kind of bike things they had going there. I must admit I am not ready to crosscountry on my bike, so i loaded my bike and essentials into my car and asked my next door neighbor to come in and water my plants while I was gone and I drove towards Boise.

[OnTerryOh]

I buckled my seat belt for the 1700 mile ride from Chitown to Boise, 24 hours on interstates until I would reach the Boise Greenbelt trail. http://www.visitidaho.org/thingstodo...greenbelt.aspx

Reckoned I would stop in Lincoln Nebraska for a night. Probably I'd stop at The Albany in Cheyenne, too -- have a steak and a few drinks before I found a cheap motel. http://www.albanycheyenne.com/liquor.html

As I drove past the soy bean fields and corn fields in Iowa and Nebraska, I found myself thinking of Lane Foley, with his happy exterior and the dark, hidden side that few people ever saw. Lane is fair-skinned, blonde and muscular, with a dimple on his chin and a joke never too far from rolling off his tongue.

He unicycled as if he were dancing to a fast and happy tune, like maybe Glen Miller's "In the Mood" was always playing in his head. I'd seen oodles of women fall for him, but I was never one of them.

We'd grown up next door to one another on Burling Street. At times Lane had been my best friend and at other times my brother's best buddy.

I remember him unicycling back and forth to school at St. Margaret's when he was about seven years old. One time I saw him wheeling along and singing, "I've got the joy, joy, joy, down in my heart."

When he was 14, he unicycled in Chicago's St. Patrick's day parade, circling and smiling and tipping his green fedora to the reviewing stand where Mayor Daley and other bigwigs looked on, the river dyed green and the bagpipers and drummers conjuring up sounds of the old sod, Lane Foley, such a fine lad, at the center of it all.

No surprise really that I hadn't heard from either him or Beth much since they'd gotten hitched and joined the circus. In a way, the circus would be the perfect home for my dear old demented friend Lane.

As to myself, I'm divorced, alone, no regrets. Got a song in my mind just about all the time -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhApYxZisBI

[Biciclista]

The dark part of Lane wasn't something I liked to think about. All kids go through sprees of petty theft, but Lane pushed the envelope there. He financed his hobbies with the spare change he got by selling things he stole to other kids we knew. He started in the 6th grade and continued as far as I knew, until he graduated from highschool. But Somehow he never got caught. I always rationalized about it, blaming his crazy mother for not giving him the attention he needed, or his father, for abandoning the family when Lane and I were only 6 years old.

Lincoln, Nebraska is near a lot of feedlots. Big giant fenced in congregations of steers standing on giant mounds of manure. The smell is un-mistakeable. However, I saw something else as I pulled into Lincoln, there were a lot of billboards which advertised "CIRCUS MAGNUM IN TOWN"