Growing up in Benson as a 10 and 11 year old always involved a bike. Sandy Sandoval lived down the block from me and we ran around together a lot. I had a second-hand bike that we rescued from the dump. My older brother, Brian, convinced me that if I painted it black with yellow dots, then it would look to be going really fast! The theory was that the dots would blur at “high speeds”, which my one speed bike was totally incapable of! Anyone who saw me racing was sure to be impressed.

Sandy had a new 3-speed British racing bike with front and rear hand brakes. One day, we were racing on 8th Street (Sandy was always ahead of me, on account of his racing bike… I know that my dots surely were blurred from my speed). I often saw his back! Something caused him to hit the brakes, he hit the front wheels only and became airborne, flying over the handle bars and plowing up the sand on our dirt street! To my young mind, that seemed like sweet revenge for my being forced to ride a hand-me-down bike.