Matilda and Me

I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t care much for material things. After my daughter and our passports, I always thought that my journals were the only things I would rush from my burning house with. But now, there’s my bike.

I took her in to Sunshine Bikes Monday for a tune-up before the Jensi Gran Fondo next week. The guy looked her over and quickly estimated five, six hundred dollar’s worth of work. Now I love the folks at Sunshine, and I trust them like I trust my car mechanic. But his cavalier delivery of the estimate punched me in the gut. I made the appointment for the work and then walked out numbly without even giving my name. He had to call me back in: who are you? He was laughing at me, but I was thinking that’s a lot of overtime, mate.

This afternoon, I went back for pickup. Brand new tires, new drive train and chain, clean as a whistle. Looking great, and for only $405.25! I wheeled her out to my car and strapped her on the Thule. Then I had to run across to Good Earth to pick up the food I’d ordered. My bike rack has no lock, and I almost never leave my bike unattended. As I walked away  I had the horrible thought: what if she gets stolen in the 4 minutes it will take me to pick up my food? Everyone will say: you left your bike on an unlocked rack in town? What kind of idiot ARE you? I’ll have to post one of those sad-sack messages on Nextdoor and nobody will really care. I’ll have to put up Missing Bike posters and offer a reward. And I’ll have no bike.

It was still on the rack when I got back with the food. I drove home, fed dinner to Jessie and her friend, and immediately clipped in to try the new drive train and ride away my week with the dying folk. The drive train was a bit slippery, it made some clunky sorts of sounds. I don’t know bike mechanic speak, there’s probably a technical term for it. But it soon stopped making the noises and it got me up Pine Mountain. Plus I no longer had to worry about getting a flat on my stripped tires and having to walk eleven miles home because my daughter never answers her phone.

I was thinking as I rode how important my bike has become to me, as a thing. I’ve had many bikes in my life, all junkers or yard-sale bargains. My road bike is a Cannondale 900 and she was given to me by my friend Emma-Louise in a calculated attempt to make me into a road-biking addict. She is the only bike I have ever had with a gender and, yes, a name. 

I was on a ride early in my addiction when I suddenly realized that I had reached a point of such attachment to my bike that she needed a name. My cars have all had names. This is a subject of faint ridicule in my distinctly unromantic family, but I am impervious to that. My cars are named after greek goddesses. I’m currently driving Artemis, the patron deity of hunters, which is wildly appropriate since she is a Jaguar, but also a bit of a misnomer in that Artemis helped Xerxes to conquer Greece, whereas my car barely starts on cold mornings. 

At the moment I decided to name my bike, I had been humming Matilda by Alt-J. It’s a peculiar sort of song, the lyrics of which have never made the slightest sense to me. But it reminds me of Jessie’s first few weeks in high school, and her first real boyfriend, so although Matilda may seem like an odd sort of name for a bike (what would be a sensible name, you might ask? I have no idea), it stuck.

Somehow, in a fire, I will now have to grab my daughter, our passports, my journals and my bike. New drive train notwithstanding, I just can’t rely on her to evacuate the building by herself. Our passports are well hidden, and my journals of no possible interest to any thief, but my bike is right there in my storage behind the kitchen. So on the occasions when I leave home and don’t bother locking the door because hey, there’s nothing of huge value in my house, it’s a safe neighborhood, and possessions are only things...I now have to think about Matilda. 

I grew up in Ireland. Your head would be stolen if it wasn’t firmly attached to your neck. I had bikes taken, bags, and lots of spare change. Dublin pickpockets were generally under ten and impressively skilled. In my childhood home, we locked the windows. My dad even put a post in the ground behind the car every night, and it still got stolen. But I’ve lived in peaceful Marin for twenty years and I quickly came to love the notion that I could leave my car and house unlocked and everything would still be there when I got back. But now, there’s Matilda. 

I’ll come right out and say it: I love her, and I don’t want anyone else to have her. Plus I’m going to look pretty foolish doing the Jensi without her. So I guess I’m someone who locks their doors now.