He wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but he was curious to know if it could work. No, he knew it would work; he had seen others do it before without a hitch. And they always made it look so fun. Besides, he is much lighter than myself he thought. Combined we are not even 400 pounds. He stood on the sidewalk under the piss-yellow light of the streetlamps, and he knelt to roll up his right pant leg before swinging it over the frame of his mountain bike.
"Okay, get on," he said, and he felt the weight of his friend straddling his bicycle's rack. He gave a push on the pedal and the bike started off with a wobble, which gradually dissipated as they picked up speed. He was wearing the only helmet.
"Hold me by the waist," he said. "I need my shoulders to steer." He felt his friend let go of his shoulders and pinch his jacket by the pockets. They coasted down a gently inclined one-way street. From the light of the passing streetlamps, he could see his passenger's legs swaying as they went over bumps.
"My crotch hurts," his friend said, straddling the metal plate of the bicycle rack. A signal turned yellow up ahead and he gingerly squeezed his mushy breaks. They went over some more bumps. He felt bad for his friend. They rolled through the intersection, passing a car on its right, just as the light turned to green again and he started cranking a little bit to build up some speed.
They started wobbling and he got nervous. He could feel it in the handle bars, the almost imperceptible flits of the handlebar each time they hit a crack in the pavement and shifted the weight of his load that was gripping him by his jacket and swaying with each bump. He thought there was a car behind them, waiting for them to take a large bump and wipe out, so that it could run them over into a mangled pile of aluminum and dumb college kid. A car passed them on their left and his unease grew. He didn't want to look over his shoulder to see if there was another one waiting to pass. He didn't want to accidentally shift his shoulders and drift around in his lane. He focused straight ahead and they followed a straight line.
They rolled up to the apartment and he pulled onto the sidewalk. He was alive.
"Well, that was fun," his friend said. They had made it there in record time.
1 comment:
A lot of the locals in the mainland are pros and double-riding single bicycles. A lot of chinese couples do it, it's pretty cute
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