Photograph by Aleksandar Nakic
“Pedal!” my dad yelled as he launched me down the steep hill behind my elementary school. It was fall in Alabama, but he had dressed me for winter in Antarctica. More layers would mean fewer scrapes. It was time for me to learn how to ride a bike.
Approximately 933 attempts later, I did.
I rode my bike everywhere—to friends’ houses; to the university with my dad when I was too small to stay home alone; to swimming, soccer, and softball practice. My entire world existed within a six-mile radius, one filled with towering pine trees, chirping birds, and insects of every variety, including cockroaches as big as my fist. On foot, I was not known for my speed or grace: I had a habit of walking into wall corners and potted plants. But on my bike, I was an Olympic figure skater, gliding through figure eights to Mr. Mister’s “Kyrie” on a loop in my head.
As I grew older, my bike gathered dust in favor of friends with cars. My final summer at home would be the last time I rode for 12 years.
I met my husband the summer I turned 30. He had a bike he parked right in his living room and urged me to acquire one of my own. Previous summers in Brooklyn had been muggy and miserable, ripe with sweat and chafe, but this summer, the summer I fell in love with him, was tropical and vaguely European. Every outing with him was an adventure. A friend gave me her old green Schwinn, which we named Kermit. Kermit lived on Henry Street, double-locked to my street sign.
Kermit took me everywhere, trailing just behind my soon-to-be husband down the tree-lined streets and through Prospect Park, over the Brooklyn Bridge and into the city, through the apricot-colored sky of twilight. Ice cream trucks parked on every corner, their jingle ringing in my ears as the hot wind unstuck my tank top from my skin.
My dad had taught me the basics of bike riding, but my husband taught me how to enjoy it. Both of them are dead now, but they’re with me when I ride.
My husband was with me when I took our sons out in the bike trailer the summer he died, both of them squeezed into the seat just inches from the hot asphalt beneath our tires. They were five and two at the time, and getting them up hills was no easy feat. “You can do it! You can do it!” they would chant from behind as I groaned my way up, sending them into fits of giggles.
My dad was with me when I taught them how to ride bikes of their own, using an old T-shirt to keep them upright as they pedaled. I wrapped the body of the shirt around their waists and held the sleeves, running alongside each of them as they wobbled through the green grass, gnats feasting voraciously on our skin.
“I’m a cheetah!” my youngest yelled as I unfurled the shirt and let him forge his own path, my husband and father watching from the blue sky above.
Great bike rides
The Stone Mountain Trail
Beginning at Centennial Olympic Park, the trail rambles 19 miles through Virginia-Highland, Decatur, and Clarkston to Stone Mountain Park.
The Silver Comet Trail
The iconic Silver Comet extends a picturesque 61.5 miles from Cobb County to the Alabama border.
The South Peachtree Creek Trail
Boasting a long stretch of boardwalk, it meanders through forests and wetlands and connects with trails to Emory University, Medlock Park, and Mason Mill Park.
Zoe Fishman is the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year in Literary Fiction. Her latest book is The Fun Widow’s Book Tour.
This article appears in our August 2024 issue.
