When I first moved here I assumed there was a charity that distributed bikes to the homeless each summer. Bicycles show up all over the streets at this time of year; some tie up bags on them and some succeed in bringing them everywhere, a temporary magical fifth limb. Most treat them as ephemera, a summer love affair, here until they're gone. A flirtation with freedom. You find them left leaning against trees and fences. There are never any locks.
And I'd like to put this up without any additional commentary or judgement. My own double standard sends me spinning, here. Under most circumstances, my antipathy for bicycle thieves is fanatic as a cowboy's hatred of horse thieves. Yet I can't extend that ferocity to the first moment I saw S on a bike, standing up on the pedals coasting downhill with his long hair sailing behind him and his face lit up looking thirty years younger.
Oh, that ability to lift up out of your body and move, and sail, and go where you want to go when you want to go there-- to feel your body working on becoming strong again, to choose your aches and pains. I have spent a life on foot, years sick and in pain; and I have felt the delirious joy of lifting up out of that, to a bike. So I buy another lock and I register my serial number and I look into marking my own bike with photographs of me, and I imagine the total devastation I would experience if my bike were stolen... and I still smile at every homeless person I see lit up with joy on a bicycle.
There should be a charity that passes out bicycles to the homeless in the spring.
