Here’s my column from this week’s Palestine Herald-Press. I thought it was entertaining, at the least.

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Imagine this. You’re walking back from the University of Texas campus at sunset. It’s starting to get dark, but not so much that you’re scared of going home by yourself. You’re walking right along the edge of the road because you’re in one of the many neighborhoods in Austin where there’s no sidewalk. Everything’s going fine until you hear something behind you. You cast it aside, attributing it to the growing darkness and your mind playing tricks on you, but then you hear it again. This time it’s louder, and it seems to be coming closer. It’s the steady pop pop pop of hard plastic striking metal, almost like when you’re trying to tighten a stripped screw and every time you start to get it tight, it pops back out of place. You hear this sound barreling at you from behind, and there’s no signs of it stopping. What is it?

In all likelihood it’s me, riding my bicycle. You see, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a piece of junk. That clacking sound comes from who knows what, as I’ve yet to figure it out. Whenever it’s in motion the chain running sounds like a four-year-old choking on hummus. The left brake is the only one that works, as the right one sticks. In fact, the right one is perpetually stuck about one-fifth of the way down, meaning the back wheel always rubs against during its revolution, scrubbing off speed. The amount of rust collected on the various metal pieces could probably be used to build a shelter for the entire homeless population of Austin. And yet, it’s not the worst one I’ve seen being ridden.

Strolling around campus, you of course see some fairly expensive rides, classy road bikes and high-priced mountain climbers. But then you also see bikes like mine, those hand-me-downs from great-great-great grandparents, bikes built from the scrap heaps, and then the most unstable looking things you’ve ever seen, bikes that were quite possibly constructed during WWII when all quality resources were being exported for the war effort. But I suppose that’s what makes Austin and UT great, because the difference in bikes reflects the difference in cultures, the difference in beliefs that you get at such a large university. You have your poorer kids (myself and my bike), and then your more well-off students (the expensive roadsters). You’ve got white kids, black kids, Asians, Mexicans, Spaniards, you name it. It’s a veritable melting pot.

That pot includes some poor drivers as well. My first two years, I rarely rode a bike, and therefore was one of the many students who griped about those who do. Those crazy kids and their pedaling with reckless abandon, weaving in and out of large groups of students, barely missing them and at times even hitting them – during my freshman year I saw a girl get pretty much laid out by a biker who thought she was going to stop, and when she didn’t, they collided. She was okay, but I think she developed a huge fear of cyclists.

That being said, I’m now on the other side of the equation since I’m always riding a bike to and from class. Now I’m the one weaving in and out of large groups of students, but I’ve come to discover that you have to if you want to stay on your bike. Large groups of students behave like birds who stand in the middle of the road and fly away just as the approaching car gets close to hitting them. Likewise, students do this to bikers, standing right in the middle of road and staying there, only to dart away at the last second. Therefore, as a cyclist, you have to try to squeeze through whatever holes you can, otherwise it’s bad news. If you slow down and try to let them go, they’ll just get confused, try to go one way, then try the other, until you’re forced to come to a complete stop and your bike falls over.

It appears that I should have added a fifth class to the schedule I told you about last week, a course titled “How to ride a piece-of-junk bicycle without mowing down pedestrians or falling over and busting your face open.” Maybe I’ll suggest it to the folks who create the course schedule. Until then, I’ve just got to work on my weaving skills. Who knows though, you can hear my bike coming from like a mile away so maybe that will give people enough time to get out of the way.