Whenever I see a rainbow, I always think of my first bike - which had a Rainbow Brite theme and was given to me by “Santa”… For those of you that had an empty childhood are unfamiliar with Rainbow Brite, her primary method of transportation was a rainbow-maned horse named Starlight. Starlight could fly. I assumed that if I went fast enough on my bike it might also be able to fly.
One afternoon, while my mom was making dinner, I decided to see just how fast that little bike could go. I walked it to one end of the driveway and peddled furiously to the other. Much to my surprise the bike did fly - albeit right off the end of my driveway, down the hill and into the nearest tree. Luckily, I was wearing a helmet. Unluckily, the helmet did not have a face gaurd. According to my mother, by the time I got inside the blood from my wounds had mixed with my tears and my entire face was bloody. She initially assumed that I had been hit by a car.
The funniest part of the story is the fact that, throughout the accident and many of the months following, my bike still had training wheels on it. My father managed to fix the bike, but the training wheels never fully recovered - whenever one touched the pavement, the other would teeter several inches above the ground. In hindsight, I assume they were left off balance to encourage me to learn to ride without them. Instead, I happily rode around the neighborhood with the wounded wheels in all of my fat-lipped glory.
