Exactly 22 years later, I got another baby elephant…
May 30, 2014, 10:36 PM
So today was my birthday, meaning that I am now 33 years old. And for my birthday, I got a baby elephant. Check it out:
So if you’re thinking, that’s not a baby elephant, I can explain. When I turned 11 years old, my parents got me a full-size bicycle for my birthday, to replace this red one:
However, I didn’t know that I was getting a new bicycle for my 11th birthday. My parents told me that I was getting a baby elephant. The idea behind their telling me that it was a baby elephant was that they wanted to keep the real gift (a bicycle) a surprise. “Baby elephant” was supposed to be so ridiculous of a concept that it was easy enough to dismiss out of hand. But then this is me that we’re talking about, and when they told me that I was getting an elephant for my birthday, it became my understanding that I was getting an elephant for my birthday, though admittedly, even at the time, I thought it was a tad strange. But they said “elephant”, so that was what I expected. I even looked up elephants in the encyclopedia in school to find out how one takes care of an elephant (after all, it was my elephant), and told a bunch of other kids that I was getting a baby elephant for my birthday.
So on the morning of my 11th birthday, I saw this, a Huffy Stone Mountain bicycle:
Image: Huffy
Then I asked my parents, “Where’s the elephant?” That’s when they explained that the bicycle was the “elephant”. I was actually a bit disappointed at the time that I didn’t get the elephant that I was led to believe. While I thought that the idea was a little odd at first, I warmed up to it, and was geniunely looking forward to receiving an elephant when my birthday rolled around. When Mom found out about this thought process, and how I actually genuinely believed that I was getting an elephant for my birthday, she got a little sad about it. But it’s okay – we can laugh about it now.
I should also add that I probably ought to consider myself fortunate that we moved from Arkansas to Virginia the same summer that I got that bicycle. School ended on May 29 that year, and my birthday was the 30th. And then we left Rogers for good on August 29, 1992. So I never had anything to live down about the elephant that I never got, because when I went back to school the following fall, I was halfway across the country with a whole new group of kids who had never heard the elephant story, and to whom I never told the elephant story.
(By the way, if this sounds familiar, it’s worth noting that I told this same story on here once before, back in 2002.)
I ended up riding that bicycle for about five years, from 1992 until around 1997, when I got my driver’s license. Once I could drive a car, I put my bicycle down and never looked back. My parents ended up holding onto my old bicycle until well after I moved up to Maryland, and then, unbeknownst to me at the time, they got rid of it at some point.
I got the urge to ride a bicycle again about a year ago, and asked my parents about the possibility of getting my old bicycle out of storage and up here so that I could use it again. That’s when I learned that my old bicycle wasn’t mine anymore. However, my sister’s old bike was still available. I remembered that it was similarly sized to mine, and so Mom agreed to bring it up. This was my sister’s old bike:
That bike was in great shape for 19 years old, mainly because she didn’t use it all that much. However, before I was willing to take it out, I was concerned about whether any components had dry rotted and needed replacing or otherwise needed maintenance due to the long period of inactivity, and I was not qualified to identify and repair these things myself. I did fill the tires up, though, and you may recall that I did this using an electric pump and the car. I ended up taking a couple of test runs on it around the parking lot of my apartment complex after filling the tires up, but a feeling of apprehension about the still-uninspected bike, combined with the fact that I had no idea how much air to put in the tires (and literature that I could find online about that was no help) kept it at home. It also didn’t help that my ham-handed filling of the tires caused one of them to blow later on while it was sitting in my living room. A piece in the valve stem gave out, making a loud hissing sound as the air escaped through it, which scared the heck out of me when it happened. I had intended to take the bike out for that inspection, but other priorities such as getting a Class B commercial driver’s license and finding gainful employment in a new field took priority.
Plus I had another realization: when I had done the test runs on it, I didn’t quite fit right, and in playing with the height settings on things, I realized that even if I got the seat high enough, I would be bent so far over that it would give me a backache, and that wouldn’t be a good thing. But don’t forget that we didn’t buy this bicycle for me, but rather, it was intended for my sister, who is a little bit smaller than me. So it’s okay. Besides, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I still learned a lot from it,
So my thoughts turned to needing to look around for a new bicycle. When my mother asked what I wanted for my birthday, I pitched the idea of a new bicycle to her. My original pitch was to sell the old bicycle and apply that towards a new bike, but, to my surprise, Mom asked me to bring it back down if I wasn’t going to use it. So the next time I head down to Stuarts Draft, I’m going to be bringing a bike down with me.
I ended up getting a new bike at Dick’s Sporting Goods up in Gaithersburg. I looked at a few different styles, such as a mountain bike like I had before, a road bike, and a few others, and eventually ended up with what they call a “comfort bike”, which is a hybrid bike designed with rider comfort in mind, including a suspension on the seat, and higher handlebars. After all, I’m not going to be racing on this bike, nor will I be commuting on it, or doing anything too extreme. I intend on using it for more casual riding, such as on the various bike trails and such around here.
I went up to Dick’s in Gaithersburg with my friend Suzie (one of my friends from the pool), and we got the bike. Here it is getting final preparations for sale:
I also took the opportunity while there to outfit the bike with a white LED headlight and a red rear LED taillight, since I was fairly certain that I would end up riding at night. I don’t think I will necessarily intentionally ride at night, but rather, it’s more likely that a ride would unintentionally run long, and it would get dark on me before I got back home. This bike also has an aluminum frame, which makes it much easier to carry up the stairs because it’s much lighter. My sister’s old bike was a pain to carry up to my third-floor apartment because it’s made of heavier materials.
And since this bike was picked for me, at my 5’10” height, it’s a bit bigger. Compare my sister’s old bike to my new one:
Even though my sister’s bicycle is a foot or so closer to the camera (the wheels are the same size), you can definitely see a size difference, as my new bike is noticeably taller, and that’s fine by me, because it means that it fits me well.
Otherwise, now that I have a bike that I actually feel comfortable riding, I have a list of things to do. First of all, I have to become proficient in riding this bike. I did a little test run on it in the store, but that wasn’t very long, and I was wearing flip flops when I did it. But it was a good fit check. I also need to learn what the various hand movements are to signal turns and stopping when riding in traffic. Then there are a few pieces of equipment that I don’t have just yet: a water bottle holder and a lock. I deliberately tabled a water bottle holder for now, because I wanted to make sure that whatever I got fit my 27-oz Klean Kanteen water bottles, and still need to do a little more research on that. Klean Kanteen makes a nice one, though, so that’s a possibility. As for the lock, I don’t know enough about these things yet to feel comfortable picking one out with any sort of confidence. I need to know what to look for in a lock and how I’m supposed to attach it and such. I want to eventually start biking rather than driving to the pool, and so I’m going to need a lock for that, because a bicycle will not fit in the lockers at the pool. Any suggestions/advice that you might have about locks are welcome, and I strongly encourage that you leave a comment below with any thoughts. And then as for a helmet, I have one of those already, and it fits me well.
So there you go. 22 years to the day that I got my first “baby elephant”, I got another one.
Song: "Baby Elephant Walk", of course!