I got my first bike that I remember as truly and just mine when I was 8 years old. It was a prefabricated bicycle from another one, fixed up, with new tyres and brakes, and painted silver grey. I guess back then it didn't matter that you had a new, store-bought bike. We were happy with the attention the gifts we received, they didn't have to be new at all.
Later, when I was a pre-teen, my parents bought me a new medium-sized red bike and my sister got a fancy bike with several speeds and cool features. Her one was nicer, I thought; however, she was older so it was normal she got a bigger and more expensive one. A few months later someone entered our yard and stole her bike. Then, I was happy my bike was more modest so no one stole it.
In my late teenage days, I bought a used bike, a kind of a racing one - I suppose because my boyfriend had one too. In the summer, we drove every day to the river. That was a really nice way to spend the summer, between the school year and studies. Once, we had an adventure where our bikes were involved in the story. We went by bicycle early in the morning to a friend's town (which was 29km away from our hometown) and only came back late in the evening, dead tired. My parents got a little angry because they were worried as I was gone all day...
I had a little analogue photo camera with me to immortalize some moments. When I developed the photos, I made a story accompanied by these photos glued in this notebook. I am bringing today for this #TBT a part of it.
In a very, very short summary, my story says that I hoped that nobody knew that I would like to make this photo story but the problem was that I had trouble putting the film roll into the camera. I got help just when we arrived at our friend's home and his brother fixed the problem with the camera. I think he spotted one famous F1 driver at that time, Mika Häkkinen carrying me on his shoulders. 😂
Ok, you are right. It is not the real Mika, just his double.
Already rested and refreshed we went to a lake to swim. If it was not enough of the ride that we did, we again used our two-wheelers to go to that lake. {It was just 6,5 km away so it was not a huge problem.}
A nineteen-year-old version of me can be seen in this photo, conquering the streets of the village on one early summer afternoon.
I also got back the camera into my hands. The friend of Mika Häkkinen's double spotted my intentions but it was too late. Click - and the moment was written on the film roll. 📸
Btw, I am sorry that I am hiding the written parts from these pages. Believe me, you don't want to see my handwriting and anyway, not many people would understand the text. The photos filled many of the pages from this notebook, all glued and accompanied by the story part.
Today, while reading it I remembered some of the details. Like the episode with the train conductor. We wanted to go back to our hometown by train so we bought the tickets for it at the train station. When the train arrived we greeted our friend and wanted to board... but the train conductor didn't allow us to travel with the bikes! Oh, that was not the best news we could get that day...
Apparently, I survived the extra 29 kilometres of pedalling and the day spent on two wheels, otherwise, how could I share this with you?
