By Nick Bikeman
My first bike belonged to someone else. Dad had picked it up second-hand from a mate at the pub—a pressed steel framed Cyclops brand tricycle, with solid dished out one-piece rubber wheels and pedals. I fell for the lusty fire engine red rusticated paint job. It wasn’t a new bike or a ‘big kids’ bike, but it was mine.
I was six years old. ‘Red’ was my first bicycle love.
Red and I went everywhere together, exploring the gravel road and visiting the creek where redback spiders and blue-tongue lizards lived. Even then, I dreamed of riding further than the road could take me.
Australia was always somewhere else, hundreds of years and thousands of miles away; out past the ‘Black Stump’, Dad said, elusive, out of reach and beyond understanding.
At home in Footscray. I would stare endlessly into the Albert Namatjira landscape print of Central Australia that hung above the kitchen table. Namatjira’s vivid watercolours running across the landscape over the horizon. For the first time, I could hear Australia calling me, singing out across a cloudless shimmering vastness. “Surrender to me and I will tell you all my secrets “.
As a child, time moved slowly like a dinosaur, heavy with the promise of excitement. The cosmic order hadn’t yet coalesced. I could still make time bend to my will so that summers lasted an eternity as time itself slowed to a crawl, days lingered forever in that timeless land of childhood.
Time itself is absurd, a finite commodity, an agreed artificial measurement: 60 seconds in a minute; 60 minutes in an hour; 24 hours in a day; 365 days in a year; so many years in a life.
Some physicists claim that the past, present, and future coexist in a multiverse, while Einstein proved that time is relative, not absolute. That it was theoretically possible to travel at the speed of light, back and forth to points in time, all that’s needed is a device or conveyance that would transport you: A Time Machine!
I remember being spellbound by the movie The Time Machine in which Australian actor Rod Taylor played an Edwardian H.G. Wells spinning forward in time to save humanity from a dire future.
My time machine was a purple two-wheel Dragster bicycle with white sidewall tires, a light-generating dynamo, a banana seat, butterfly handlebars, and a three-speed center gear shifter. The complete bicycle gave off that curious effect of appearing to move even when stationary, as if it were in two places all at once.
Leaning forward, pushing my head between the bars, and pedalling fast, I could feel the edges of the future rub up against me as I caressed the contours of the road. Time oozed away, like one of Salvador Dali’s melting clocks.
Cycling through the succeeding years, I did answer the call, heard the songs, and whispered the secrets, all the while wrapped up in the comforting embrace of my country. I cycled the length and breadth of the land, then further still exploring the world from the seat of a bicycle.
It’s not a real adventure until something goes wrong, such as being detained by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in China, having my bike and belongings stolen in Stockholm, or being hit by a car in Greece.
My favorite bicycle ride of all is the Williamstown Foreshore trail. I slip easily into my regularly cycled route, feeling right at home, relaxed and comfortable in the familiar. I’m in my element out in the elements, riding through the seasons, celebrating the rhythm of nature. Recently, I have had a new cycling companion, my 6-year-old granddaughter who rides a hot pink Barbie-inspired 2-wheeler complete with basket and streamers attached to the hand grips.
Together we cycle in search of unicorns, mermaids, and new adventures.
Time and tide wait for no man, says the old proverb. I can feel time speeding up, or perhaps it’s just the cycle of life .
