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The Freedom Machine
By Lucy Jane Bledsoe
In a neighborhood full of baby-boomers, I had the clunkiest, oldest bike. I was the fourth child in a large family and the ancient bike had already served several owners. I loved it, just the same, and through sheer will-power made sure I was the fastest kid on the block. I rode that thing down steep grass embankments and whole flights of cement stairs. I rode it through woods, across construction sites, and once, on a dare, through the halls of my elementary school. My favorite cycling game was to ride through the city, flipping a coin at every intersection. Heads meant right, tails meant left. The game was most successful if I managed to get very far from home, and better yet, lost.
My bikes-from that pale, yellow, Schwinn, one-speed clunker to my current sleek racer-have always been synonymous with freedom. Today, as an adult, cycling is the only way I know of to recapture that sweaty, hard-breathing feeling of childhood. Actually, it's more than freedom; sometimes my bike feels like salvation. Time and again it has lifted me out of bad moods or stimulated the endorphins that gave rise to a good idea just hours before a deadline.
A few weeks ago, though, I gained a whole new understanding of the relationship between freedom and bicycles. A friend and I were doing some high-speed desert driving on our way to a backcountry trailhead. I was feeling stunned by the heat and the intensity of the desert's foreverness. When I saw cyclist ahead on the road, I thought it must be a mirage. It was noon and we were a good 80 miles from the next town.
As we flew past the cyclist, I saw that she was real enough. The woman's panniers were flapping open, some clothes spilling out the top. She had two Evian water bottles tied loosely to the stem of her saddle and they bonked against the panniers as she rode. The bike was a hybrid and cheap-looking, the kind they give away if you spend more than $150 at Penny's. The cyclist moved slowly, pedaling steadily but without joy. This was no ordinary bike tourist.
I wondered out loud where she was headed at this hour, in this heat, so far from nowhere. Then suddenly, I pulled the van over, made a U-turn, and headed back. The cyclist now was pushing her bike up a gentle rise. I called out the window of the van, "Are you all right?"
She squinted at me.
"Need anything?"
"I could use a ride," she suggested.
So we unloaded her panniers and threw them in the back seat, put her bike on top of our packs, and she crawled in the back seat next to the panniers.
Barbara was hungry so we gave her three Powerbars. She drained her Evian bottles and we refilled them from our water bottles. Then, for the next hour and a half, we asked questions and listened to her story. Barbara had been married for 20 years. Her husband had broken her arm twice, three ribs once, her jaw once, and left her body covered with bruises more times than she could remember. He'd prohibited her from leaving the house, earning money of her own, or having friends. The couple had two children, the second of which just left home a month ago. That same week, Barbara took her son's bicycle and panniers, which had been left in the garage, and made her getaway one morning after her husband went to work.
By the time we met Barbara, she'd cycled for 24 days and covered about 600 miles. She was far from an athletic-looking woman, so the average of about 25 miles a day would have been a full work-out for her. She usually slept in the heat of mid-day and rode mornings and early evenings. Occasionally she stayed at KOA's for the showers, but more often slept in culverts.
I've talked with many travelers in my wanderings and it's not hard to pick out the story-tellers and con artists. Barbara was neither. Her story held water, the details fit together without contradiction, and her raw and blistered skin proved her long days riding in harsh climates.
Barbara hadn't the money to fly or take a bus anywhere, but with the bike and enough cash to buy peanut butter and bread, she was making her way to the small town where an old high school friend lived. She chose that destination because her husband didn't know the friend or have her address. Barbara had kept her escape a secret even from her own mother and sister for fear the husband could coerce them into giving him information.
As it turned out, we'd found Barbara on the last leg of her journey. The next town was her final destination. As we pulled over to let her out, I asked if she felt safe there. I meant from her husband, but she'd already begun worrying about the future. She didn't know what kind of reception she'd get from the high school friend, and uppermost in her mind was whether she'd be able to get a job after 20 years of not working. I told her that I hoped there'd be some sensible employer in that town who would realize that riding a bicycle 600 miles, over mountains, and across a desert, said a lot more about a person's character and capabilities than previous experience serving bacon and eggs. We gave her the rest of our Powerbars and $20.
Driving away I realized that my bicycle and I had only played at freedom. For Barbara, the desert sunsets may have been things of beauty, but mostly they meant relief-the coolness of evening. Her bicycle wasn't a companion in fantasy, as mine had always been, but a metal vehicle transporting her, painfully, to a destination. For Barbara, the bicycle meant freedom in its most literal form: survival.
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of Sweat (Seal Press). Her essay "Above Treeline," also appears in Seal's anthology Solo, and won Honorable Mention in the New Letters Literary Awards. She lives in Berkeley, California.
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