City Life, Part Fourteen: Boy Bike Meets Girl Bike

Frozen Mountain Men

Lonely Bike Couple

On either side of the entrance to the ever popular Flo and Santos (at 13th and Wabash), the same two lonely bicycles remain chained, as they have since last summer, to the same two parking sign posts. One is a girl’s pink Schwinn. The other, a boy’s mountain bike.

They typically lean against the posts to which they are bound. Every so often, the wind topples them. They lie there, neglected, unless I pick them up. I’ve never seen anyone else care for them in any way.

When they are prone, their wheels tend to protrude over the edge of the curb, from whence they have no protection against big-bully parking cars that knock into them. I want to beat up those cars. “Show some respect! These are valuable pieces of machinery. They live here; you’re just visiting.”

Lonely Girl Bike

Over the winter, the bikes disappeared under the snow banks that lined all of Chicago’s streets for several weeks. But when the snow melted, there they were, two rusting remnants of childish dreams, not much worse than they had been, preserved like frozen mountain men.

Lonely Boy Bike

If they could speak, I’m certain one would say to the other, “I sure wish we were chained to the same post, so we could snuggle.”