Biking In Phila During the 70's.

This day is one of high winds and bright sun. What a joy to ride a bike in it. Someone asked me "do you still ride?" and I could honestly say "yes, I just rode today." Riding is such a good way to burn off extra energy and to go somewhere without burning anything more than calories.
When I was young, I honestly felt that riding my bike around was God's way of giving me trouble and pain. Man has that attitude changed over the years gone by. I was a fat, husky kid who couldn't wait to get behind the wheel of his own car. My Dad put me behind the wheel once I turned sixteen. And I put away the English Racer three speed that I had been using to travel around with. I ignored it and it fell to the junk pile in no time at all.
I turned that attitude around when I was in my early twenties and living in Philadelphia in Center City down near William Penn Hall (at least I believe it was called by that name) or the original site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was on Pine Street around 11th street where a bike shop took hold and I passed by it whenever I was walking up to the Academy of Fine Arts on Broad Street and Cherry. In it's show-window was hanging a work of art in the bicycle world, it held up a Frajus ( spelt wrong but it sounds like it) 18 speed bike from Italy (remember this was around 1972 and multispeed bikes at this level were rare) and with it's caramel colored plastic molded handgrips and upright handlebars and a bell with a sound that couldn't be beat well I had to have it. And in a week or so I did buy it. Against the wishes of the bike store owner who said the frame size was a little too small for me, I told him to adapt it to my size if he could. He told me that he would do what he could and to come back in a week or so.
It was upon my return to the Pine Street Bike Shop that I met a mechanic in the back of the place in a dark an greasy room full of parts and frames, derailleurs and a whole bunch of other fun to see stuff that we guys go nuts over. He promptly lite up a joint and told me that my bike was ready to go. "Test it out" he said while passing me some Jamaican in a some Zig-Zag papers. It felt just right to me. He mentioned that if I wanted any more adaptations to just come back through the back door of the shop and he'd take care of me.
That bike lasted me through hundreds of miles of street riding in the city and also a five hundred mile journey down the shoreline to Alexandria and home again in ten days. People almost always wanted me to ring my bell whenever they spotted me, it had such a charming sound when it chimed with the clanger. I loved riding it, and I wish it hadn't been stolen from me years later in a foolish instance of trusting that no one would take it. I actually mourned it's lost for weeks and then again I still feel a lost of some magnitude even today when I think of it. It was my Frajus.

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