Still loving the bike, riding every day. But, jebus h. christos, I need my ass to get used to the seat pronto.

It’s positively undignified for a woman of a certain age to be wanting to rub the soreness out of her rump all day and night.

Be that as it may, the best part about riding the bike to work is feeling like I’m 12 again. At 12 the bike was transportation. It was freedom. It was the means to go further and farther and hang out with kids outside my strict neighborhood.

My pink Huffy never tore up the road, but mileage rolled under it. It went to the convenient store for a Coke. It circled the mall, which was open air when I was a kid, endlessly. I looped and slalomed zig zags around parking islands.

By bike I was able to circle the historic, Revolutionary War era graveyard to scout whether other kids were hanging among the stones. In that cemetery, lunch money could get you a joint or two. In that hallowed space, I learned about all sorts of shit that was new and dangerous feeling.

My bike was the chariot to almost the earliest of an illicit rendezvous. It consisted of my nerdly inner self (surrounded by a rather mature looking outer self) being talked into giving a backrub to one of those guys who invariably hung out wherever teenagers congregated. The guy that was just a little too old to be hanging with a few 12- to 15-year-old folks but not so old it was criminal.

Now, waking up in a morning, jumping on and rolling out the driveway, a little bit of that fun is still afoot. The bones at 43 ache as they didn’t then, though. And the recovery of shaking off a fall is an eon or two longer.

Worst of all, I don’t ever remember sitting on that seat ruining me for sitting on any other. Maybe I’ll be looking at one of these soon: