Bicycle Dreams

I guess now that I have committed to riding a bike through Cambodia, I really should actually start riding a bike. I have a long history of pining for a bike, but have actually only ever had one until now. 

I still remember my first bike with all the clarity and joy of an episode of the Wonder Years. 

It was the night before Christmas and I was a giddy braided-hair four year old, heady with the smell of tinsel and plastic decorations begging my father for a bike.

“Please, please, please daddy can I have a bike?”

“I don't know, I think you are too short. You can't have a bike until you are at least up to my belly button.”

Mustering the tallest thoughts I could, and straining my feet without obviously standing on tip toe, I lined my self up to be measured. Joy of joys belly button reached!!

Christmas morning itself is a blur of shredded wrapping paper and shapeless gifts bar one. A 1970’s yellow glitter banana seated pushy with ribbons on the handle bars an a white basket adorned with plastic daisies on the front. Oh the elation, the pride, the joy.

My brother and I rode that bike for years until the poor thing finally rusted away in a heap in some back ally under a fence covered in blackberries. 

And that was that. I never owned another bike, although I secretly dreamed of one for years.

We recently got bikes for our two boys, and on the days when we are all organized on time, they ride them to school. I have found myself wistfully staring after them, caught up in childhood memories of biking adventures. Dreaming of the crisp morning breeze through my hair and the sense of freedom pulling me forward.

Then one day in a semi casual, offhanded kind of a way, I was having a conversation with my dear friend Kerry, when a dream was born to ride a bikes through Cambodia to raise awareness on human trafficking. What a great idea we both thought, our only stumbling block – neither of us actually had a bike. Never ones to let a small technicality stop a us we put out the word we were looking for bikes to train on, and low and behold we both now have bike. Both are reclaimed from the local tip, scrubbed up, being fine tuned as we speak and awaiting a paint job and the next chapter in my bicycle dream; the adventure of a life time.