Ballad of the Mongoose Part I

My twentieth birthday was unforgettable.  My roommates Perry and James gave me a child’s Mongoose BMX bike.  It was a brilliant candy red and navy blue color.  It had an obnoxious horn and pink streamers on the handlebars.  But best of all, it had pegs on both the front and back wheels.  It was my Cadillac.  And even though it was a gift for me specifically, it was really a gift for all of us.

From that day forth, whenever all three of us would go anywhere together, we would ride the Mongoose.  I would sit in the driver seat and pedal.  James would stand on the back pegs, clinging tightly to my shoulders, and Perry would sit on the handlebars, usually smoking a fat cigar.  If it were night, Perry and James would both carry sparklers. 

Trips to the dining hall were the best.  The only route to get down to the dining hall was by taking a long, fast, highly trafficked walking path.  The horn came in handy on the path, and more than once we narrowly missed small girls talking on their cell phones.  On the way down we’d pass classrooms whose walls were big, open windows. 

While sitting in class and listening to a boring lecture, people would see three grown men riding one Toys-R-Us bike fly by at speeds of up to 20 miles an hour.  The Mongoose was meant for an 80-pound child; somehow it could sustain all 450 pounds of us three.  

 Balancing 3 men on the Mongoose was an extreme test of our physical dexterity.  We’d get a running start to make sure everyone was onboard.  I’d get maybe 10 pedal strokes before we hit the hill—the bike’s tires bulging out and rims scraping the pavement as we began our descent. 

Riding down the hill we chugged past afternoon classes, professors, and students like a freight train on the wrong sized rails.  Any crash would have meant instant hospitalization for all three of us. But I am a trained professional.

Upon arrival at the dining hall our phones would explode with text messages from the people whose classrooms we had passed.  If it were from a girl it would be, “you guys are so funny.”  If it were from a guy it would say, “you guys are jackasses, can I be the 4^th rider?”

I never really cared about transportation before the Mongoose—cars were to get from point A to point B, not for flash.  The Mongoose taught me that flash is good—if you’re trying to get somewhere, get there in style and have fun doing it.