An Audience with the Highway Patrol 

Back when I was a kid, if you had free time, you didn’t sit inside staring at a screen until your eyes turned to jelly. You got outside, kicked a kickstand up, and pointed yourself toward whatever mischief the neighborhood had to offer.

To start with, I had an old bike that came from somewhere lost in the deep, hazy folds of my grey matter. Don’t ask me the make, the model, or who handed it down to me, because that information left the building decades ago. What I do remember, with absolute clarity, is that it had a banana seat. If you don’t know what a banana seat is, I’m truly sorry for your deprived childhood. It was a long, padded vinyl bench curved upward in the back like a crescent, supported by chrome struts, designed specifically so you could slide all the way to the rear to pop a wheelie or squeeze two or three neighborhood kids onto one frame with zero regard for human safety. It wasn’t sleek, but it had character.

Then came high school, and with it, a proper upgrade.

I got a brand-new machine. It was green, solid, and had exactly one speed. No gears. No hand brakes. No headlights, battery packs, or any of that fancy nonsense they try to sell people nowadays. It had two pedals, two rubber tires, and a set of coaster brakes that required nothing more than kicking your heel backward until the rear tire locked up and skidded along the pavement. The only accessory I ever added to that two-wheeled tank was a little mechanical distance counter clamped near the front axle. Every time the wheel made a rotation, a tiny metal finger struck the gear and clicked the numbers forward: tick, tick, tick.

I rode that green machine every single day. Three miles was the bare minimum, but most afternoons I’d push it further just to see where the road ended. Back then, traffic was an entirely different creature. If a driver saw a kid pedaling along the shoulder, they didn’t rev their engine or try to nudge you into the ditch. They actually tapped their brakes, gave you a wide berth, and waved as they went around. It was an absolute pleasure to ride. Just me, the green paint, and the hum of the asphalt.

That routine held steady right up until I started attending the Technical College. That’s when the clock sped up, adult responsibilities barged through the front door, and the bike fell out of the rotation. It ended up parked, shoved to the side, and slowly surrendered to the elements. Over the years, the chrome pitted, the chain seized, and the frame rusted out from pure, unadulterated neglect. I take full credit for that crime. I let a faithful companion die of sheer loneliness.

Years rolled by. Life happened. And then, as so often happens when you catch your reflection in a mirror at an unflattering angle, an idea struck: I need to start riding again.

I went looking for the old green bike, but there was no resurrection in the cards for that pile of rust. It was gone. So, like any reasonable man on a mission, I hauled myself over to the K-mart in Northport to see what the modern world had to offer.

What I found was an abomination.

It was a ten-speed bicycle, complete with skinny little hand levers, cables running everywhere like an explosion in a spaghetti factory, and absolutely zero soul. I bought it anyway, brought it home, and immediately realized I had invited a demon into my garage.

Riding that thing was an absolute horror. The handlebars were curved down like ram horns, forcing you to hunch over like an arthritic vulture. The gear shifters were temperamental, clicking and grinding between sprockets, usually slipping the chain off just as you needed power. And those hand brakes? You’d squeeze the levers with all your might, only for the little rubber pads to squeal in agony while the bike lazily drifted another thirty feet forward before slowing down.

It reminded me an awful lot of the way cars have changed over the years. The old ones made sense. You opened the hood, you could see the ground between the engine block and the fender, and if something went wrong, you grabbed a crescent wrench, a screwdriver, and a hammer, and you fixed it before supper. The new ones? You pop the hood and stare at three acres of molded black plastic, thirty-two computer modules, and not an inch of clearance to drop a socket. The soul gets designed right out of them in favor of “progress.” That ten-speed was the automotive equivalent of an emissions nightmare on two wheels.

Every time I tried to tackle the local hill on that contraption, it exacted a heavy toll. By the time I reached the crest, my lungs were burning, my chest felt like an accordion, and my legs would quiver and ache so bad I could barely hold the pedals flat. Being stubborn, I refused to blame the machine or my creeping age. I just gritted my teeth and told myself I was out of practice. Just gotta build the endurance back up, I thought. A few more weeks and I’ll fly right up this thing.

Nature, however, had other plans.

The final chapter of my cycling career occurred a few months after bringing that mechanical torture device home. The plan was dead simple: a quiet, two-mile loop over to the local church parking lot and back. I’d pedaled that exact stretch of pavement dozens of times over the years without incident.

I set off down the road, and about halfway to the church, my body decided it had had quite enough. My knees were complaining, my back was tight, and the bike was fighting every revolution of the crank. I thought, To hell with this, I’m turning around and going home.

Being a responsible citizen of the road, I sat up, checked over both shoulders, and scanned the street. Empty. Not a single car in sight, front or back.

I leaned the handlebars to make a clean U-turn to the left.

I never made it.

Halfway through the arc, my speed just evaporated. Physics decided to take a lunch break. I lost all forward momentum, the skinny front tire wobbled, and the whole contraption leaned past the point of no return. Gravity took the wheel. Down I went, hitting the asphalt hard, instantly tangling my arms and legs into the cold, jagged mess of ten-speed tubing, pedals, and handlebars right smack in the middle of the road.

I lay there for a second, catching my breath, completely trapped in a cage of cheap department-store steel. I started the awkward, ungraceful process of trying to extract my limbs from the gears, groaning like an old tractor trying to turn over on a sub-zero morning.

Then, a sudden, piercing wash of brilliant solid blue light lit up the pavement.

I blinked, looked up, and right there—not twenty feet away—sat a state trooper cruiser, nose pointed directly at me, his all-blue light bar blazing away.

To this day, I do not know where that man came from. The road was a ghost town five seconds earlier when I looked. But there he was, parked dead-center in the lane, engine idling, silently sitting behind the windshield bathed in electric blue, waiting on my fat ass to recover my senses and unhook my shoe from the spokes. He didn’t get out. He didn’t draw his weapon. He just sat there, illuminating my complete lack of dignity under that unforgiving blue glow.

I eventually managed to haul myself upright. I dragged the demon bike off the road, stood up on shaky legs, brushed the gravel and dust off my jeans, and turned toward the cruiser. I gave the trooper a sheepish, polite wave—the universal hand signal for “I know exactly how stupid that looked, officer, thank you for your service”—and he gave me a slow nod back through the glass.

I turned the bike around and walked it the entire rest of the way home.

When I reached the house, I rolled that ten-speed into the corner of the garage, leaned it against the wall, and made a firm, solemn vow to the heavens: That was the last time.

And, brother, it was.