Sometimes
you can’t help but laugh out loud . . . and count yourself lucky at the same
time.
Over a year
ago Tim and I purchased aging but working “banana” bikes from one of our dear Cowes
neighbours, Ray Bulman, for the princely sum of £50 for
two, including the locks. The bikes are fine for local travel, but mine is the
really old-style version: in order to stop, you pedal backwards. You DO remember
those, yes? In fact my first bike was one of those. I can still remember riding
up and down Lexington Avenue, and on warm summer days when it was still light
out taking the round trip from Lexington Avenue, turning right on Kennedy
Boulevard to Oxford Avenue and heading down that narrow street that didn’t get
much traffic, then another right and a fast pedal on the not-so-safe Bergen
Avenue before heading right down Lexington Avenue again. We’d lived on
Lexington Avenue for years and most of the people who lived there with us,
including the less savoury characters, knew us as the kids on the corner and
let us be as we zipped by. (Well, all of us except my sister Debbie, not one to
exactly “zip,” but I’ll save that for another time.)
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| Not mine, but very similar! |
I had been
looking to upgrade those bikes, mostly because I do love to cycle and the Isle
has wonderful paths but you need a sturdy bike with good tyres and gears to
handle the terrain. Previously we’d hired bikes from the local shop when we
wanted to do more than just go up and down the seafront. I had been eyeing an
ad in the Evening Standard for folding bikes, but they could only be delivered
to the UK mainland and not the IoW; not a show-stopper, but a bit of a faff.
Then there was an ad in the local IoW paper for two like-new folding bikes in Cowes for what was a reasonable sum. Tim
contacted the seller and we arranged to meet, and at the appointed time we walked
over to Fellowes Road to inspect them.
Forgiving
the one tyre (it’s spelled that way here) that kept going flat, and the one hand
brake that needed adjusting (which the seller promptly had a neighbour take
care of), the two bikes were in good nick, and after a trial ride we decided to
take them, the single broken reflector that could easily be glued back tucked
into my pocket.
Stay with
me, the laugh is coming . . .
Thrilled
with my purchase, we took the short cycle ride back to our place.
Pause. Yes,
you read correctly that we had a flat tyre when first inspecting the bikes. The
sellers didn’t have a pump, so Tim was going to walk back to our house to get our
pump while I lingered on the sidewalk with Ellie (the seller) and her beau and
chatted about her studies in veterinary nursing at uni. Not more than two
minutes later Tim reappeared, a pump in hand that was not ours—in fact there
was no way he could have been to our house and back that quickly. It turns out
that he coincidentally saw someone on the next road with a pump in hand and
asked if he could borrow it. Without hesitation the stranger handed it over, no
questions asked. How can you not love
the IoW?
New folding
bikes now in our possession, next to consider was what to do with the old
bikes. We offered them up to Ellie as she had a friend who recently had her
bike stolen along with her colleague’s. They are members of the RNLI team who need to get to
rescue quickly—their one-minute bike ride had suddenly turned into a
four-minute sprint, and while that doesn’t sound like a lot of difference,
trust me, it is a world of difference when you need to be rescued in The
Solent. We gave our address, Ellie had
my mobile, and we waited until the next day, Sunday, to offload them in case we
heard from Ellie’s friend Heather.
We did not.
Tim remembered a charity shop not far away, and it was nearing lunch time, so
we decided to make it an outing—we often have a cheap and cheerful lunch on
Sundays after a long walk, and usually in a place with a view, to absorb every
bit of the time we spend being near the seafront.
Right. To
the shop, then.
Tim’s
second question (after enquiring about where we’d have lunch): where’s the car key?
The key is always placed in the same drawer in the house so that regardless of
who needs it we always know where it is. The key, alas, is not in its place.
I remind
Tim that when we were unloading the car the previous day of boat-related goods
now that Coh Karek was in the water I needed to have an urgent
break, and left the key for him to lock up—Maggie (aka The Blue Peugeot that
Could) can be fidgety when you press the Lock button on the key, and will
simply demand you open one of the doors and lock her the old-fashioned way.
She’s just that kind of girl.
Having
relived that moment, the thought occurred to me to look out the window of the
kitchen, where the top of Maggie can easily be seen.
Sitting on
top of the car roof. In plain sight. One entire
day later. The key to the car.
Cue
laughter. I do love the Isle of Wight.
Our parking
area is a public walkway. Dozens of people stroll just to the left of our front
door through a small alley to cut across to the high street, or simply because
they live in the mews or nearby. Our next door neighbour has a bright motion
light that flashes on whenever someone passes in the evenings. The key,
naturally, would have been in plain sight at night as well as during the day.
No one bothered. Okay, she’s old, but c’mon, she’s still “wheels”! Heck,
neighbours did have their bikes nicked recently; why not Maggie? Truth be told
with her fiddly locking nature we have more often left the car unlocked for
days while we were working in London, so I suppose I should not have been
surprised that the key was perched untouched for 24 hours on the rooftop.
The story
concludes: we managed to get the two banana bikes into Maggie and headed to
East Cowes – usually a quick ride over the chain ferry that spans the River
Medina, but currently out of service while being refurbished. A lovely day, we happily took the longer
journey, found the charity shop open, and were delighted that they were willing
to take the bikes off our hands. We also offloaded some old cushions, in good
shape but collecting dust in the utility room where the folding bikes now take
up less room than the previous bikes and await adventures across this beautiful
island.
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| The view from the Folly Inn. |
Lunch, by
the way, was at The Folly, a well-known pub in nearby
Whippingham where Saturday night it’s the place to be if you want to hop onto a
table and dance to disco. Really. I’ve not. Been. Yet.
I suspect
that may be another LOL moment.
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