Part One

Introduction:

Wheels

I am a biker. And it is a funny thing when you come to the realization that you are something as strange as that. You say, I am a biker, as if that means something; as if there is something there to actually be.

But like any trade you do what you do. A builder builds, a salesman sells, a farmer farms, a writer writes…you get the idea. An actor acts. But a biker rides a bike. And that is what I was doing. I just went for a ride. Just me, my bike, and all of the bags and baggage both packed away in my panniers, and here in my heart. What was I looking for? Well, that changed from time to time. But I knew I was available for whatever it is I might bump into. And there was more than a few “adventures” to be sure. But more so than that, I think I was looking for a home, or at least a new place. Oh sure, I was heading all the way to the end, but I would let anyone who seriously wanted or needed me have me, just as long as the contract was fair. And that was the hard part, the fairness. I would just allow my heart to ride whatever road I came across, and that includes full pulls on the hills. So I guess I just had to find out the hard way what is probably the oldest bicycle philosophy I know: You just never get back on the down hill what you spend on the climb. And I know that that doesn’t sound fair, but if you have been listening, I am a biker. And so that just is the way it is. And as a writer writes and a dancer dance’s, a biker must ride. We just have to accept that as being the way it is. I guess that some of us just need a little more road to ride on sometimes.

So this story took place on a longer ride. It started at one end of the United States and went all the way to the other. I was heading from Selma into Montgomery Alabama on the same road Dr. Martin Luther King marched that day in 1965. And don’t think that this white guy, still amidst his own march for freedom wasn’t thinking hard about that. Maybe if my rear wheel had not gone bad, none of this would have happened. Or if I simply had had enough money to just buy another, I would have missed this. But then again, sometimes wants and needs are what the whole world is about. Breeds empathy, right along with the anger and pain. And so it all started with a call from a borrowed cell phone to this guy, located just on the edge of the projects, asking him if he might just have the correct spokes to fix my collapsing wheel. And if he had the key, so I could fix it again in the future, then I would do my best to find the correct deal to offer back. Maybe the deal I was offering was maybe a key for him as well. I mean, we’re all just climbing hills anyway, aren’t we?