This summer, I experienced an unfortunate loss. My beloved Dodge Neon, Peter, drove his last terrifying mile. Peter was a car with character. He was purple, with a black bumper, making it impossible for me to sneak around in high school. What was I going to say? "No Dad, that was another purple and black car with U.Va. stickers and key marks all over the sides at the club last night."
Clearly, my father purchased Pete for a reason.
By his last 100 miles or so, Pete was getting dangerous. I had trusted in my faithful steel steed for nearly three years, but I began to feel unsafe in him. I often told my friends who wished to borrow him, "Start braking about 100 yards from where you want to stop." His right back door didn't lock, subjecting him to a traumatizing break in. He leaked from about every opening a car can leak from.
I never had enough radiator fluid, motor oil or windshield washer fluid. The worst of it: Pete had begun stalling whenever he was in the mood, including one time in the middle of the street at 9 p.m. The friend whom I was dropping off asked me, "What do we do now?"
"Get out and push," I told her.
So when the day arrived that Pete refused to start, I was not surprised. OK, I was very surprised, as I had a meeting to go to, and proceeded to panic. I tried to turn the key again, and Pete turned over, turned over, turned over and died. Fortunately, I got a ride to my meeting. Pete, however, would never be the same.
I suffered for two weeks without a car. I asked for rides to every workout, feeling guilty for mooching and rearranging people's schedules. Nervously, I sat on my doorstep like a little kid waiting for his mom after school. Sometimes I walked places. That sucked. Mostly, I missed Pete.
Then one day, someone suggested I get a bike. A light went on, and I said to myself, "This is a great idea." So the bicycle search ensued. I borrowed one from a friend, a "vintage" racing bike. It was actually just rusty as hell. Supposedly a bike for taller people, it left my knees wavering dangerously near the handlebars. I had a bike with training wheels as an 8-year-old, which was coincidentally enough, still too small for my 5-foot-6 frame. The training wheels never came off. But apart from that, my training on a bike consisted of sprint workouts on a bike in the gym.
But I persisted, and told myself that this would be easy. Lots of kids did it, right? I saw them cruising from class to class effortlessly, so surely, as an athlete I would have no troubles.
I was totally wrong. My first trip was from my house on Rugby Road to the Corner. I was sweating profusely by the time I arrived, in a tight T-shirt and denim shorts, my first mistake. There was a huge hill I had to climb leaving my house. After rolling back down it twice, despite my efforts to pedal faster, I resigned myself to walking up it, bike in tow.
Then I rode my new bicycle from the Corner to John Paul Jones Arena for workouts. This was my second, and last, mistake. My legs burned from the hills. I almost wobbled and crashed into more cars than I would like to count. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I was the cause of several accidents and maybe even made the evening news.
When I got to workouts, my legs were burning. Conditioning after that heinous bike ride left my legs feeling like noodles. Thankfully, one of my teammates thought my bike was the coolest thing she had ever seen, and asked to ride it home. I hitched another ride, in a car.
Now that the school year has resumed, my poor little racing bike is in the back hallway of my house. We had a great adventure, especially with all the near death experiences, but I think I'm going to wait it out for another Pete. Well, correction: another Pete with brakes that work.
Simone's column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at s.egwu@cavalierdaily.com.
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