For the next few days Greg was confined to his bed with his arm suspended at his side, and his movement seriously restricted as a result. Unable to do anything else, he was able to reflect on his life on two wheels. He was no stranger to falling off bikes of one sort or another, but this was the first time he had actually been really hurt.
From a very early age, Gregory Shephard had the bicycle dream. From the time he was removed from the comfort of his pram, to take his first tentative steps. From the moment he realised that he had toppled backwards onto his nappy padded backside, he knew there were far more exciting and dangerous ways of falling over impressively. A bicycle was the perfect means for achieving that goal.
His first bike, or rather tricycle, had been a well loved friend. Although his parents couldn’t afford to buy a new one at the time, what they lacked in money, his father made up for in ingenuity. He had found an old one in fairly good condition at a local scrap merchants, he’d stripped it down and repainted it, cleaned everything up, then put it back together. Apart from being rather old fashioned, it looked like a new trike. The one major modification Gregs dad had made was to cut off the old basket on the back because the old one was buckled and broken, he replaced it with a front opening bread bin welded in place. Once it had been painted, it looked as though it had always been there, like a little car boot, just the right size for a teddy bear companion to accompany Greg on his adventures. Granted most had been in the confines of his back garden, or the gardens of his grandparents.
It bore the scars of some of these adventures, although it had always been well looked after by his dad. The chain was kept oiled, and it had almost always found it’s way back into the garage at night, so as not to suffer the ravages of overnight rain. There were patches of paint that had been scuffed and touched up with a fairly close match. And there were a couple of little dents in the bread bin boot, from the day a makeshift camp that he built collapsed with the trike underneath. Well loved doesn’t necessarily mean kept in pristine condition, wrapped in cotton wool and only there to admire. Well loved is well used but cared for, and that is certainly what this trike was.
Of course the time came when the trike was too small for him, and also, well – a trike which was designed for younger children. His next step was a proper bike, with stabilisers set just high enough to give him confidence, but allowing him a little sideways movement to lean. The bike had solid tyres It wasn’t long before he asked his dad to remove the stabilisers. Greg remembered with a smile as he lay in his hospital bed, the day he rode it without stabilisers. He had been down at the local park with his mum, cycling along by the duck pond. The path had, over the years become as wrinkled as an old mans hand, as tree roots had pushed up to mis-shape the tarmac of the path. Before the trees, the path had been a smooth flat surface, and as they approached the rooty area, his mum had asked if he wanted to get off to feed the ducks and let her push the bike for a while. Of course Greg knew best, and said he would be fine riding over the roots, then proceeded to clip one at the wrong angle and toppled over sideways, cutting his knee open and grazing his hands.
That had been Gregs first taster of bike related injury, and although nothing serious, it did instil in him a little more respect for the bike. Granted it wasn’t a great deal of respect, and that certainly wouldn’t be the last time he would tumble on the tarmac.
As he lay in his bed, Greg remembered with with a laugh the most serious accident he had had on that first bike. He was riding round the park with his school friends. By now, the tree roots were no enemy, they were there to use as little jumps. To ride at straight on, then pull up hard as he hit them, to get a little air between the path and his tyres. It was a game he loved playing with his friends, and they all dared each other to attempt bigger and faster jumps. There was one area of the park near to the swings that only the bigger children attempted on their bikes. The grassy area was broken up into three distinct terraces, the first separated by a fairly steep slope, but the next by two large concrete steps, as deep as they were wide. There was no way to ride down them, but there was a small concrete slope, about a foot wide. You couldn’t see it until you were on top of it, but if you knew exactly where it was you could ride down to the lower level safely. Few people rode down it though, for one thing it was known to be dangerous. But it was mainly because if the park keeper caught you he would give you a good telling off and threaten to tell your parents. That was incentive enough to most of the boys to be cautious.
On one particular Saturday though, they threw caution to the wind, and would ride the slopes. Two of his class mates, Richard and Andy had lined up at the top of the narrow concrete slope, to ride down it, but Gregory decided to go one better. He saw where the slope was and rode up the next terrace, so that he could get the next one at speed. Of course, he had misjudged it slightly, and as he reached the top of the slope, he realised it was not. It was the top of the steps. He barely had time to pull the brake levers, and had he not done so, he might even have cleared the steps in the most impressive jump any of them had done. As it was, he achieved a slightly less impressive skid on the grass, before his front wheel dropped off the top step, and pitched Gregory over the handlebars. He was very lucky to have landed flat on his back on the grass below the steps. A bruised and shaken Gregory never attempted that slope again.
Gregroy was snapped back into the real world as a nurse came over to take the regular observations, and make small talk.
“So was that your first bike Greg?” She asked
“No, it was my second one on the road, but I had a couple of little bikes before I got on the road.” He went on to explain that although he never took part in competitions, or trials, he had owned a couple of school-boy trials bikes during his last couple of years at school.
Time went on, and with it a couple of slightly larger bikes as he grew, but nothing quite gave the same thrill as his first bike. Nothing that is until he found out that a school friend was selling a little motorbike for a couple of hundred pounds
No comments:
Post a Comment