Bike ride

What is it about the smell of new bike tires that brings back childhood faster than anything? I just went to REI to get a new helmet and had a flashback. There was nothing more magical than picking out a new bike, though I must have had no more than three new bikes in my life. This isn't counting the second-hand bike I got for college which met with a strange fate that still pains me, and of course my newest bike that I got six years ago to go riding with Trev. But we hadn't gone in two years because of my ankle surgery, and then because we never had a decent bike rack. But all that's behind us now and we took our cobwebbed bikes over to Half Moon Bay and rode like the wind! Like a slow wind! But it was such a blast. Bikes must represent freedom to kids, but there was also something about the big wheels and bright colors all lined up in the store, and that new-tire smell. The clean blue sky, the yellow flowers on the dunes, the yellow-green spot that was Trev receding before me, the whitecaps and the clouds...