One day in the early months of last year, when I was in Toronto, I decided I wanted to buy a bicycle. Why? I still can’t remember exactly how I got into it, but after I built on the momentum, a serious cyclist friend helped me pick out my five hundred dollar Trek3900 bike — the cheapest bike in the shop. I bought it from Duke’s Cycle on Queen West. We hopped around a few places but they were all pretty much out of my range. We went back, I spent all my investments for a vehicle and rode my killer twenty four speed mountain bike from the shop to my (now former) house. My friend wished me a safe trip and I was on my way uphill along Bathurst street for a ten mile hike… for the first time. Honestly, it really wasn’t that bad. I think I was sore for the next couple days but I really loved it. I traveled from home to downtown roundtrip, I’d say ten to fifteen times that summer. I found a bike path too, so I wasn’t on the dirty Bathurst street any more. There aren’t enough bike lanes in Toronto, what’s up with that? I’m glad people inspected all the rouds and found paths for cyclists, otherwise you have to find your way beside cars and the angry drivers.

So, cycling became my new sport. It was since I had left Iran that I hadn’t been on a bicycle. In Iran — oh my goodness, I don’t want to get to my childhood memories because I’ll cry — it was heaven. I had a wonderful childhood amongst nature, fruits and vegetables, large swimming pool and large family gatherings that will only exist in all our memories and reveal their documented beauty through photographs. Back there, I biked a lot, that was the point I was trying to get at.

I went down to Sarasota Florida (as some of you may know or have noticed) for a mobility/exchange program through my school in Toronto Canada. I lived there for five months without knowing a living soul. I met my roommate through craigslist on the phone and it turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences in my life. Anyway, again, the point is, I bought a bicycle the second day from a non-profit bike shop called the Alliance for Responsible Transportation (A.R.T). It was forty five dollars. I went everywhere with it. Biked to Lido Beach the first week, biked all around Sarasota and biked til I dropped. Florida is just natureful. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I loved the bird sounds, the palm trees, the aloe veras, the customized colourful houses and their mailboxes, and I absolutely loved the weather.

Getting back on track, so, now I’m here in Chicago doing an internship at samatamason; if you read the last post, you’ll know the details about my daily roundabouts, and if you read even before that you’ll know where I got it from.

The difference between my bike now and my previous two bikes, is that it’s a road bike. It has thin tires and you lean forward — it works your triceps a lot. It was quite a drastic difference between my other bikes. It’s really easy to pedal hands free with my Trek bike because the steering head doesn’t move and you can feel that it’s stirdy and secure. With this bike I couldn’t do it. It was way too risky and every time I took one hand off and then tried the other, I’d immediately go off balance and grabbed on to the steel. Must be the bike, I thought. Well, I’m going to write about the moral of the story after this entry, just so I can get all my thoughts together.