I CAN'T REACH THE GROUND!

As I spoke in another blog about Christmas past, there was one gift come to mind today. I was at an alkward age where I was too big for a wagon and not quite there for a bike. I was short for my age until I was in my teens. I ask for a bike that year. Grant you, I'd been on one once and I won't go into how bad it ended.Lets just say one leg still has a scar on it today. I hit them with hints every chance I got with Mom's usualy being, "you'll kill yourself!", and Dad saying nothing. I even devoted to memory the different sizes, speeds, and spec's from all the different brands. Something in my pea brain told me I was getting lucky and in a big way. Santa wouldn't lie to a six year old, (see prev. blog entry.). Christmas eve rolled around and sometime after dark a noise was heard outside. I nearly fainted and lost control of by bladder when I was told there was something I had to see. I raced out in my pj's ,(don't laugh I bet they made you wear them too.), To see the most GIANT of a bike I ever saw! You remember I said I was six and short for my age, right? Before me stood a Schwinn 26" MANS bike. I told myself it just looked big in the light while they said this way i wouldn't outgrow it as fast. i couldn't wait for morning to take the big 'red" one on it's maiden voyage. I got up ate breakfast like a starved dog, ripped open the rest and ran outside. Soon I stood eye level with the bar that would make sure I had no children until well past my teens. I tried to climb on only to have it topple over on me. I got up along the steps only to launch myself over the other side. All thought it was funny but this short, fat six year old kid that was gonna tame this beast if it killed everybody. Then they got the idea to help me on and give me a big push so I could start to pedal. It almost worked until I discovered my legs were too shor to reach the pedals and the cat was dead ahead too scared to move. I managed to miss the cat but nail the mailbox head -on while being introduced to birth control for the first time. Lesson learned? A cat is more likely to move out of the way than a mailbox mounted on a railroad cross tie. What else did I learn from the big red one? Lets see, If you hit a ditch just right you fly over the handlebars like Superman. I could almost tell you which quarry a gravel came from just on taste alone. Handlebars feel like a dull sword when they stab you in the chest. Stop = crash if you can't reach the pedals, and which hosehold chem's. burn the worst when applied to raw skin Oh yeah, too big a wheelie and a city street=broken talebone. I did at long last "grow" into this beast but by then I had my eye on a mini-bike but thats a story for another time. Peace out