Personal Narrative: Big Girl Bike

“A lap around the court and down Willard’s hill?” is something that has been asked within our group of bikers ever since we were all able to ride without training wheels. I can remember my very first “big girl” bike that I rode and raced against the neighborhood kids with. The body was baby pink with the word “Princess” written in a cursive and glittery style on the right side next to the star stickers from the dollar store that I put on her. I can remember that bike riding was the most important thing in my life, and I never thought for a single second that it would not be. Growing up in a trailer court with about 15 other kids can be hectic, especially when we are all zooming by as fast as our little legs would allow us to up and down the

I finally agreed to go and look for a new one. To me, finding a bike that was good enough to take over Princess’s job would not be easy. I looked at what seemed like hundreds of bikes. There were big bikes of every color and even some with flames on it, but none of the ones that I saw would be able to replace Princess. My dad sighed as we started to walk out of the store leaving empty handed. Right as we were walking out, a staff member of the store called us over and said that he had one last bike that was in the back that he could show me. At this point I really did not even want to look at another bike, but my dad made me check it out. As soon as I saw that shiny red bike it practically spoke to me. When I looked at this bike, every memory of Princess left my mind. My thoughts of me riding Princess were easily taken over by images of me completely crushing everybody else during a race, and of me doing tricks that I have never been able to accomplish before. With one look, my dad saw how much I wanted the bike and he bought it for

As time went on, our bike races changed. When I got into sixth grade Brandon moved to Kentucky. Nobody else in the trailer court had a bike tire pump, so more and more bikes got flat tires that were not able to get pumped back up right away. Nobody wanted to ride into town on a bike with a flat tire to the nearest gas station to fill their tires up with air there. A new trailer was brought into the trailer court and was put in the empty lot by Willard’s hill. An elderly woman named Barb moved there and did not want us racing on the hill any more because the end of it led into her yard where she had planted roses. The gravel roads became paved which made us crash more because we were so used to riding on the gravel. We went from about 15 kids in each race to about seven. By the end of that summer, there were five of us total who still raced. One by one, the kids stopped racing and would sell their bikes. Eventually I got too distracted from school and my other friends that I also stopped