Describe your relationship with your bike:
It’s complicated
I love it/them/they. The joy is nearly unsurpassable. The ease, the exercise, the community. The bike.
Exciting and new...
I brought it over the mountains from Colorado. Sometimes I think of cleaning the chain and meeting up with the League. Hasn't happened yet!
Broken. Evidenced by their right gear shift and my left clavicle and 3 ribs. But I have high hopes for us getting back together. When we do I suspect we will be closer than ever since now we both have metal components.
Distant
Pretty good. It's kind of like a relationship where you go months in the winter without contact because you're busy and it's cold out and the days are so short you don't feel like you have time spare on anything but the essentials. But then when summer rolls around, you're going out once a weekend and loving life.
Liberating, fun, in the moment, intense, and bringing me closer with my con-vivant
I am walking zombie who just bought a bike
I love my bike!
I LOVE my bike. It's about 10 years old. It has mountain bike tires (that I dreamt I completely flattened last night) and a more upright frame. It is the perfect bike for me. It has at least 15 gears and a big soft seat. This beautiful blue bike works for me because it is stable, it is comfortable, it doesn't go too fast and the multiple gears allow me to climb any hill in town (albeit very slowly). I like funky, and I have owned funky bikes (a refurbished single-speed pedalbrake 1960s Schwinn for example) but my blue bike is not funky. It's not even cool nerdy. I would say it falls more in to the category of ''a bike for a middle aged woman" And it is. A couple of months ago during a strong windstorm on a road trip to Southern Utah, my beautiful blue bike blew off the back of our car and tumbled to the freeway behind is. We were able to recover the mangled mess and later that afternoon we stopped just short of tossing it in a dumpster Cedar City. I tell the mangled bike story because I realized as I looked at the twisted mess of medal that I LOVED THAT BIKE! I wasn't excited about picking out a replacement bike, I had no desire to own a newer or different or funky or younger looking bike. I wanted big blue back. My bike suited me perfectly and I was shocked and a little embarrassed about much the loss of it had impacted me. And then my husband took Big Blue to the bike shop on the off chance it could be repaired. And it could be! And it was! In the end, my sorely missed bike bell and bike basket were the only real casualties of my beautiful blue bike blowing off the car. I have never loved or appreciated any bike as much as I do my 10 year old Cannonsale. It's comfortable and it gets me me where I need to go...at just the right speed!
I get along with her pretty well. Although, she currently produces a rhythmic scratching noise when I pedal. It kind of bugs me.
Comfortable, but casual
I don’t think a lot about my relationship with my bike. But it’s a nice reliable transportation option in my small community. Great for getting to a friends house, local convenience store, bars and restaurants and I love that I can stay out of my car for days at a time!
I use it for transportation to places that aren't too far away. I hop on it to go to the Glendale Library or to work at the Sorenson Unity Center. Sometimes I ride my bike while my dog runs next to me on the Jordan River Parkway Trail.
It’s a rarely used tool to get me places slowly.
It's a lot of love, and a little bit of hate, er, frustration. I love riding my bike. I ride it almost every day—to work, to run errands, to exercise, to clear my head. Because I ride my bike so much—rain, snow, or sunshine—it needs a lot of maintenance. Either my disc brakes rub, or my chain makes a crunching sound, or I get a flat. Something always seems to be going wrong. My frustration lies in the fact that this maintenance is a constant and that I’m not great at doing the upkeep myself. But, I am trying to learn how to fix things so I don’t always feel so frustrated and hopeless when something goes wrong. Even though my bike can be a bit needy at times, it makes me happy.
I ignore it and then act like we are all tight when we are together
In a committed polyamorous relationship, but currently getting no play...🤷🏻♀️
I love my bicycle. It’s like who I want to be—beautiful and functional. When I ride it, it makes me feel like we’re a new thing that is powerful and brave and a part of the world on our very own terms.