Am I Evel? No I’m not.
I saw quite a few patches of ice on the sides of the roads as I was biking into work on Wednesday morning. Biking past patches of street ice always reminds me of one of the many hundreds and thousands of smart things I did when I was a kid.
It was a chilly Sunday after noon in late February of 1983. There wasn’t much to do and the usual “gotta go to school tomorrow” cloud of depression was sinking in so I hopped on my bike and went for a cruise to lighten the mood. I ended up at Pine Tree Park, a lovely little park about a half mile or so from our house. Pine Tree was pretty sweet – at the front was a dark green octagonal (at least that’s the shape I remember it being) warming house for the outdoor ice rink to the left of it. Behind the warming house and to the right of the ice rink was a small area with a slide, swings.. the usual 70s/80s park “rides”. Behind all of that was a small forest full of you guessed it, pine trees, and trails, which is a chapter in a book all in itself.
There was still snow and ice everywhere because it was February in Minnesota. That’s typically things work there, usually the ice melts some time around July and then the month of summer finally arrives before winter returns in September.
I digress. The park was completely empty. If you’ve never had an entire park to yourself it’s pretty awesome. I rode my bike past the warming house and over to the swings where I plopped my bike down on a bank of snow to give it a rest as I did some swinging. The swings just so happened to face the ice rink and as I was swinging higher and higher I noticed that roughly half of the rink had melted back into a tennis court, its summertime alter-ego. The other half of it was still rock hard ice.
The gears started turning: Hm. There’s enough dry tennis court on that first half for me to really get going on my bike and hit light speed once I hit that ice!
Before I knew it I was straddling my bike at the starting line in the tennis court portion of the rink. I left my logic and risk assessment at home that day as I did most of the time… Alls I knew is this was going to be the most ass-kicking high speed bike ride ever.
Gentleman: Start your engine.
I put the shoes to the pedals and headed toward the ice, really putting my legs into it. I could hear nothing but my heart beating and my bike chain squeaking from the dry, cold air. By the time the ice and my bike tires met I had to have been going at least 8mph. I stopped pedaling and slammed on the brakes, for some reason thinking it would be best to keep my wheels still and just let the ice propel me into the speed of light.
About 3 feet past the tennis court/ice rink equator my bike and I went our separate ways.
After about a millionth of a second of deafening silence I saw my bike getting smaller as it pinwheeled on its side across the ice rink horizon. I didn’t make it quite as far, landing hard on my left side as explosions of purple-white sparkly hurt blossomed throughout my arm, side of my leg, and my ass cheek. I got up really fast and played it cool just in case anyone happened to be watching but was still in full-on “Did I break anything? Am I bleeding? Shit, this HURTS!” panic mode.
I’m not sure how I walked away from that unscathed but I did – I don’t think there was even any bruising. As I rolled my bike out of Pine Tree Park I quickly came to the conclusion that from that day forward I probably didn’t ever need to try riding my bike across an ice rink again. So far so good.
