I LOVE VELO

A little stream of consciousness to get rolling into the good stuff.

One of my favorite words is VELO. What does it mean? It’s short for velocipede which translates to bicycle or tricycle. What I love about VELO is if you scramble the letters you find LOVE. Nifty, eh? And it encapsulates exactly who I am. I LOVE VELO.

Sometimes I can be a hermit, and I leave the house only to ride my bicycle. When I lived in a little cabin in the woods by Lake Champlain in Vermont, I hung all my bikes up from the wood lighting panels that surrounded the living room. It felt like my own bicycle shop, and that was the point. It felt like I was on retreat living there, immersed in my nest of bicycles soothing my soul. That’s all I needed.

Today, nine bicycles adorn my life. The most I’ve ever had is eleven. I remember meeting a guy in a 30,000 rider event in New York City who had 20 bikes. At the start line of the event, I asked him why he chose the fixie for that day’s event. He said the bike decided to ride the event, not him. He was just along for the ride. A personification pedaler. I could relate.

I remember when my friend Roger told me he had fifty bicycles (all rideable, I believe) in his basement, my jaw dropped as if he had the Fountain of Youth and the Holy Grail in his house, his house Heaven on Earth for any bike lover like me.

When I moved to New Haven, CT for a year (that hiatus from Vermont came with my first marriage of 18 months), I wanted to find an “old beater” bicycle that no one would steal. Before I moved, I went to the Old Spokes Home, a local used bike shop in Burlington, Vermont. The mechanics encouraged me to go upstairs to browse the shop’s plethora of bicycles. I walked up the creaky stairs and found myself in a dark attic that posed as a museum of rusty ride relics. The floorboards sang a song about the passages of time as I meandered in and around the bikes, some on the floor, some hanging from the ceiling, all packed in like sardines in a haze of shared whispers about rides once ridden. I was seeking a rideable bike, emanating antique energy, a flare of junk vibe that deflected theft, and a seat that would be mildly comfortable for enduring short block-to-block rides. Nothing stood out. It was hard to see too. But, when I rounded the far end of the attic, the one small window that was covered by hanging bikes revealed both itself and one bright sunray that made its way through the medley of frames, components and wheels. And what did that one sunray beam itself upon? A gold and crimson red 1968 3-speed Huffy with an impeccable soft brown leather saddle. I could see stars float around the bicycle, and I could hear tunes lighting up my soul. I was in love.

I walked over to the sunlit bicycle, and said, “Well, hello there. Would you like to come home with me?” I was a little noodly in the legs and when I managed to make it to the bottom of the steps with the bicycle in tow and told the mechanics my experience, one of them said, “Oh, when a bicycle picks the customer, we call that ‘The Shining’.” I blurted, “That’s a thing?”

The bicycles that have come into my life since then are due to my sought-after approach. They’ve been good bikes, and they have their own shine, but not as flirtatiously radiant as the Huffy’s. When I moved to Colorado, I couldn’t take all my bikes with me (that's another story for later), and I looked at that Huffy and heard it say it wanted to return to the Old Spokes Home. And so that’s where I dropped it off. This is after having had the bike for eight years, mind you. The mechanic who came outside to retrieve it was so excited. He didn’t know ‘The Shining’ story, but I could tell he was a personification pedaler because he said, “Ok, ‘ole boy, let’s go inside.”

I trusted someone else would experience ‘The Shining’ with that bike just as I had. I was sad to see it go though, for I had visions of riding it into my 90s with a pet owl in a little basket attached to the rickety handlebars. That Huffy was a happy home-hopper, and sometimes I think about writing a book about its supposed life journey. Taking the time to imagine the scope of a bicycle’s existence is as vital as doing so for our own.

The following poem was inspired by that Huffy. My goal was to include as much bike lingo as I could (featured in italics). It turned out a tad weird with its cranked up velo verbiage, but I had a blast writing it.

**** “All You Need is a Love Tune” ****

When I first saw you,

I thought you looked a tad rad

with some screws loose perhaps,

masked by

tricked out flashy swag.

Too good to be true, I reasoned.

I was convinced you were a half-trick pimped out poser.

And as I was about to jet,

hardtail it out of there,

you started to glow.

There I was,

gonzo’d by your light,

seduced by your mack-mojo,

clamped by your frame-physique,

and your lustrous filet brazing.

With the propulsion of blood flowing

through my heart’s valves,

I dabbed a toe.

I was launched into the moment’s momentum

with my head set on you,

and my approach stoked with

accelerated nerve

and lovestruck verve.

I got my bearings,

and cruised closer and closer to you,

so close I could see your fine lines.

I was reeling in the hub of you!

And then you spoke and spoke

of a chain of dreams,

of timeless travel, you spoke

of a gallant trek, you spoke

of floating in full suspension above the skyline, you spoke.

You spoke and spoke and spoke

of the ascending grinder to the rim of our romance, you spoke.

And off we went with a racy pace

over time and every climb,

rolling over, through and under all of what

you spoke and spoke and spoke.

Clipped in to the euphoric buzz of us,

we cranked up the tunes of our old cassettes,

and rode the revolutions of strokes,

sending it while both ascending and descending

spinning strokes,

pumped up with big air to share.

We were saddling and straddling

and rolling, rolling, revving ...

Then, brakes stomping our flow,

you mashed the revving.

Revving replaced by perpetual whining.

All that you spoke and spoke and spoke,

around and around and around,

now incessant whining in shrill tones.

Shifting your cadence from linked-in-love-strokes

to rotations of jilted flow berming backwards,

to a flat bonk of a pause,

to boosts deflated,

to riding the spines of jagged turnarounds,

and to spotty switchbacks

that did tire me out!

With no levers to snag my pout from the dust ‘n dirt

on blazed trails with bent bars

and a wonky line on the charred rock garden

of our quick-released fling ...

… I was flung.

This was it!

The big END-o!

The lockout wiped out!

The washed out digger!

The whip-it kicker!

The biffed faceplant!

Your big bail hammered home!

Graveled with grime,

scratches and drilliums were dialed in,

and your devotion was dialed out.

“Watts up with damping our apex?

A fork in our path?

A wrench in the crux of us?”

I was CRUSHED,

alone and “studless.”

And so it went,

sketching our dismal descent

where bleeding hearts have no pedals (petals) or stems.

Your whining persisted

while my flailed frown was mounted on sorrow’s saddle,

and my heart was skewered on gripe’s gravity.

Oh, wah-wah, whine, whine!

Sometimes we just have to say, “Well, huck that!”

So I wailed, “Huck that, huck that, huck that!”

in unison with your spoken whining, spoken whining,

ceaseless and pining

for WHAT?!

So, I unzipped the ties of being dropped

and got a grip in the zone of “I’ve been derailed” repair

where I jumped the drama of my own bracket-thinking

and scoped you out real close ...

… oh my dear, your fine lines ...

thrashed, seized and frayed,

punctured pressure on display,

creaking, corroding and grinding,

and your sprocket unwinding.

Pranged by the truth,

I drafted the reality ...

… I-had-neglected-you

to rust and rot and rigid ruts,

no polish to pump up your soft spots.

Love that is NOT!

And I realized,

with a grunt of “Yo!”

from my single-tracked brain,

“LOVE unscrambled is VELO!”

I snapped out of the breakaway saga,

flicked the grindies and tears,

and got my grit in gear.

I tucked into the tandem of how we roll, and said,

“I’m doping you up with a dash of patch kit honeymoon!

All you need is a love tune

to tweak that sag into a smile

-- a little lube for luster --

-- the breakdown buster --

And even Stan’s drip-dropping in to seal the deal.

I’m mounting you,

and you’re rolling with me,

we’re jumping this rebound gap in time,

so take your pull and I’ll take mine …

… Oh nirvana, NOW we’re spinning your fine lines.”

And in that pivotal moment

with your trackstand tried and trued,

we resumed our story,

carved and spoken through epic glory.

Revving and stroking,

pogoing and rolling

the chutes and peaks of our pursuit!

Ole Saddlebags, those were gnarl times!

And here we are, bike and betty,

not too cranky in our eras lived shredding.

I’ve loved our cycles of life, the …

… close calls,

footfalls,

dirt squalls,

pitfalls,

skid stalls,

ride-recalls,

boulder walls,

phat overhauls,

pedal protocols,

bike ‘n body sprawls,

rock n’ root brawls,

freeride rainfalls,

gearhead installs,

dry trail withdrawals,

GPS curveballs,

knee guards for downfalls,

urban playground curb crawls,

and ‘ride that again’ curtain calls!

NOW ….

I’m happy to roll with your granny gear,

with no trailing behind!

Off-camber terrain in our old age domain

is nothing we can’t navigate.

I wheelie love you.

All you need is a love tune.

Me too!

Thanks for reading, and for considering a clicked heart, comment, Pledge and Tip if you so choose. See more of my writing and info about me here: Jessica Amber Barnum