A Bike Ride Down Memory Lane

It started with a plastic tricycle with which I probably did much damage to the walls of our apartment in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).

Another very early memory - a new bigger (again plastic) bike, and trying it out on the windy rooftop of the apartment block, because down on the street, in was too dangerous. Skidding around in the echoy green-tiled walls of the apartment's corridors ... my first taste of mobility and the ability to use something violently.

Next, a proper bike (a banana bike!), pink, with tassels, and riding up and down the compound street in the Bole area of Addis Ababa with all the other neighborhood kids - the concept of sharing, others not being so fortunate, the concept of consequence for one's actions when mom saw the splatters on clothes. So fun to splash through the puddles caused by the rainy season, the hail stones still melting, the weak sun in my eyes.

A birthday (10? 11?), a bit older, a big bright yellow BMX with the frames covered with ultra cool thingies

attached by velcro. Cruising the streets in the suburbs of our house in Nairobi... freedom, mobility, striking out on my own (though my sister was always behind me on her orange BMX). A rock thrown at me by a cousin who's turn to ride I had ignored. A sense of power, ownership - yes he is a boy, yes he is older, but it's MY bike.

Teenage years and bikes were childish, other things more important.

College years ... bikes as a statement against nasty gas-guzzling trucks that were the status symbol in the Ohio backwoods. Riding around campus, I was an unusual site. The bike was old, a second hand purchase, no real love for it this time. It was a means to an end - I could get to my boyfriend's house and back within my one-hour lunch break.

1996, a few months' stay in Asmara (Eritrea). I buy a Chinese made soulless thing for 800 Nakfa and set off from Radio Marina to my grandparent's house. On the way, curious stares and open-mouthed, gaping. A slow realization that I had, until then, not seen a single female on a bike, in a country whose military was 30% female. Defiance and a sense of history.

A flea market in Frankfurt (Germany) and a cheap set of wheels being sold by a Polish man. Fork over a few tens and I had Bella. Summer sun and rides in the parks, in one hand the handle bar, in the other a dripping ice-cream cone. Taking Bella by train to the hills to the north of the city, to coast down back home on her. Till Bella got stolen from behind our apartment. I knew it was coming, but rage nevertheless.

Then I fell in love. In a magazine for second hand goods, I saw her picture and was struck by her elegance. We went to the seller's house and the man selling this black beauty, standing there in his underwear, said she was his wife's bike but they divorced. I christened her Jaguar, she really did have one on the bit that spread out into handle bars. She had a graceful back that tapered in an unusual feline way.

We stuffed her onto the back seat of our convertible (quite illegal to cause such a road hazard in Germany) and hoped the gathering clouds would hold while we drove home. Half way there, the heavens opened, a raging summer storm, ozone in the air, howling winds, and the hubby dumped Jaguar out onto the street and rushed to close the car. I loaded her on to a train and emerged into a Frankfurt in the grip of a violent storm. I drew in my incredible fear of lightening, got on her and in my t-shirt and sandals, pedaled home furiously, over the 400 year old bridge on the river Main.

I cut out the picture of her from the magazine and put it up on the wall in the kitchen.

When the hubby left for 6 months to Nigeria, we sold the car, and Jaguar became my only set of wheels and my secret lover - we spent entire weekends exploring, riding off into the sunset - a book, a blanket, the river, Jaguar and me.

Moving to Delhi and on the last day of hectic packing - oh no, what to do with Jaguar? She stood outside, chained to the bike stand, and looked like an orphan already. No time to try to sell her - I decided to stick the key into the chain and let whoever wanted her 'steal' her.

Three months later, on a visit to Frankfurt, I happened to be strolling around that part of town, feeling homeless and aimless, I decided to walk by our old apartment, and what do I see? Jaguar ... still there, with the key in her chain! Incredible, a miracle, the hubby's bike had been stolen from the same place not too long ago.

I patted her lovingly, and said I was sorry I left her. Though one of her tires was flat, I took her up the river promenade for old time's sake. At the end of the day, I brought her back to the stand. This time, I took out the key from the chain, and pocketed it. She didn't want to be taken. And now I had a key to something in Frankfurt.

Delhi is too rough for bikes, the war of cars, motorbikes, trucks, donkey- and horse carts, rickshaws, cows and teaming hordes of people takes away the pleasure.

But Jaguar waits.

Story By Milena Beyene.

A bit about Milena: Currently bikeless in Delhi, she is one year into a 3-year Indian adventure - when she is not working, which is pretty much all the time.