Bicycle Safety Week in Saskatchewan was commemorated from May 10-16. The provincial RCMP reminded riders to follow a set of now familiar safety tips: always cover the noggin with a helmet, ride in single file on the righthand side of the road, use arm signals when turning or changing lanes, look both ways before crossing streets, detect and follow traffic lights and signs, glance at the roads for obstacles, remember that drivers have blind spots and ride with attentiveness. Everyone knows the score.
With the warm weather arriving, bicyclists of all ages in Saskatchewan will be hitting the roads on their two-wheeled contraptions if they haven’t already. The freedom of pedal power is a wonderful statement of independence for children, giving them a mode of legal and affordable transportation.
Regretfully, bike rodeos are out of the picture this year because of the pandemic, but this won’t stop children from getting on their bikes for tours around town on their spoked chargers this summer, if they haven’t been riding already since the early spring.
A crucial point: bicyclists should be able to place their feet flat on the ground before pedalling off into the sunset. This rule-of-thumb should be obvious.
Dad purchased my first bike off a teenaged neighbour, who sold the monstrous CCM at the door. At age seven, with the heightened frame pressed against my chest, the monolithic beast appeared to be twice my size.
After falling off several times, I left the fiendish CCM to wither against the house underneath the boughs of the neighbour’s aspen and borrowed a friend’s bike – a much lower, smaller machine. But when my dad found out, there was hell to pay. He told me to stop ignoring the brutish device and climb back onto the saddle, or there’d be trouble.
So, I devised a way to get on this skyscraper of a bike. I leaned the giant against the side of the house, swung a leg way up over the mountain-high frame then heaved my backside onto the saddle with an elbow clinched to the wall. After a few more disastrous, wobbly rolls along the driveway to the road and several more falls, I started riding the monstrous creature to school with near confidence, except when meeting corners.
When balancing on the leather seat, my feet had to have been at least six inches above the pavement. Still, the rush of gliding above the world with the wind rushing into my face produced an unforgettable sensation – as if I were piloting a motorcycle without a gassy, earache-producing motor belching smoke.
But the glide kept breaking into jerks and spins whenever I negotiated corners, especially with magazines and books tucked underneath an arm.
I often fell off the diabolical CCM on the way from home to school, thankfully avoiding head injuries long before the age of mandatory bike helmets.
For a while, I ignored the CCM for a go-cart a neighbour had made for myself and his son in the shape of a coach with a roofed-cab. The vehicle used the chassis of my sister’s pram, giving the wooden car poor turning abilities, but sturdy wheels and bouncy suspension.
Two years later, I acquired a sleek bicycle with ape-hanger handlebars and a banana seat. This bike possessed more stylish and agile qualities than the CCM, but this machine was heavier and harder to pedal and the spokes often jammed after racing through mud.
Later, I received an Apollo five-speed. This bike certainly wasn’t a racing machine, but lighter and faster, allowing me to ride to the surrounding towns or along country roads, discovering corners of the world far from the living room at home in Didsbury by pedal power.
