Long before I knew any better, I imagined life after a successful cycling career similar to that of say, Sean Kelly or Eddy Plankaert. My last race bike, I dreamed, would eventually be altered with upright handlebars and a rack and child seat jerry-rigged to the stays for my kid to nod off in as I soft-pedaled around town reminiscing victories over cobblestones and mountain tops.
I have fond memories of myself as a pip-squeak on the back of my mom's green Huffy 3-speed. It had a black, metal framed child seat on the back. The vinyl cushion for the seat was red and black plaid. My thighs and back peeled off it, soaked in sweat, when we arrived at destinations. The bike creaked and moaned as she pedaled. The clunky shifting, marginally effective brakes on steel rims, and the whirl of the freewheel between bursts of her turning the pedals made the frame flex so much that the cranks scraped the chain guard. Riding on the back of her bike was a rhythmic song that often lulled me to sleep. I nodded off as dead weight, that nearly crashed us, numerous times.
Dreams and reality mix for a bitter cocktail. My last race bike as it turned out, the one I brought home from Belgium as pay-back for a harsh reality, was a Bianchi in celeste green and black. Two years later I pulled it out of a travel case and started to occasionally show up to Saturday club rides. It was then I realized the beautifully hand crafted bike on which I'd suffered and starved was cracked in three of the lugs and was, effectively, a ghost of a past life. No child would ever ride precariously on the back of it. There would be no absorbing the passion and legacy of their father through osmosis.
Twelve more years rolled by and finally, as A managed through the last three months of pregnancy, I spent my days recovering from a broken hip and elbow, an odd combination of injuries that cursed me to a wheelchair until the week before our son was born. I spent a large part of my recovery time scrolling the internet. Of all my internet discoveries, the bakfiets cargo bike was my newfound mechanism of escape.
Over the course of the following year, while A began navigating a hellish recovery from child birth and continued to be in and out of the hospital, I kept myself sane by imagining what sort of adventures G and I would have on our Bullitt cargobike. It would be the first bike I purchased new since I was 14 (which also happened to be the same year I took wood shop in 8th grade). I was excited about the cargobike. But the cargo box for $400 extra did nothing for me. What kid wants to sit in a box? I thought to myself. Kids turn boxes into spaceships! I knew I could do better.
My mobility returned and I took G for walks in his stroller that doubled as a walker for me. I tested his interest in bike riding with trips through the neighborhood in a milk crate on the front of the Schwinn I inherited from A's grandfather. During his naps I deconstructed the wheelchair ramp that my dad built in our garage. By Memorial Day I had a plan. I decided to start building a boat to go on the front of our newly purchased Bullitt.
Like all good projects, I have since learned, what I thought would take a holiday weekend plus seven days turned into ten weeks. At the time, I owned a drill, a circular saw, a hand saw and a beer fridge. The most recent project I'd completed was ten years prior, right After A and I got married. I made a head board and two bedside tables. Not since 8th grade though had I made anything that actually functioned. Neither bedside table was square or level. Had it not been for the fact that we couldn't afford to buy furniture, I would have burned them in the fireplace. So my boat project started innocently enough by ripping 2x4's into 5/8th strips and cutting half-inch plywood into ribs that looked sort of like what I had read on the internet about boat building.
I had roughly two-hours a day to work during nap time or after G went to bed. That included time to clean up and put tools away. Sometimes that even happened. For the most part, I was frantically working against the clock in a pile of sawdust and vague idea of what I was doing. I wanted this project done by G's first birthday.
Building a boat to fit on a bike is not the same as building a boat to float on water. On the one hand, the boat I was building did not need to float. On the other hand, making room in a boat for a front wheel (for example) posed a design issue. Regardless, I fought on. I cut long pieces of wood into smaller ones. Small pieces into scrap and cursed quietly as I cut scrap wood into dust. Occasionally, I cut a piece that would fit into what ended up being perhaps the heaviest boat-shaped pile of wood ever. Everything about the project was a challenge. Even the paint refused to dry. Yet, by G's first birthday, the boat-bike was ready to ride. Or set sail. Or both.
To begin with, we started with small rides through the neighborhood building strength back into my leg. We stepped it up to the route along the riverfront path and looped around downtown before heading back toward Mt. Tabor. I was surprised by the attention the boat-bike received. People drove dangerously close, swerving at us while attempting to take a picture and tell us what a great bike we had. My favorite though, was a guy in a pickup truck yelling, "That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen!"
G took well to riding. We explored park after park and found ourselves far from home, out of diapers, teething crackers or snacks more than once. I learned that he especially enjoyed riding next to the MAX tracks as the light rail trains rolled by. Most evenings, and nearly every weekend, we spent exploring his new world, sometimes a few blocks from home and other times miles and miles away. He learned to count and recite the alphabet on our rides. A was able to get much needed rest after multiple surgeries while G and I were boat-biking. I was able to ponder and appreciate the fact that real life is never what we dream it will be but so much richer than what one can imagine. In hindsight, now five years later, the 50 pound boat I made out of a wheelchair ramp, led to the most fun and cherished bicycle adventures I've ever had.
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