The Many Bikes of Toph
Gwendolyn: The Destroyer
Fed up with the fact that Glenda might never ride again, I bought the
$50 mountain bike special at Target and named her Gwendolyn: The
Destroyer. Eater of Souls came in as a strong second choice for
subtitle, but I decided to save that one.
Gwen changes gears and everything!
Glenda
Meet Glenda as I met her. Pretty in pink selling for $1.09 at the
Goodwill Outlet store. Despite the girl's frame, she was in far better
condition than her peers. Anna named her "Glenda."
My initial plan was to do a repair job, but then I gave up and bought
Gwendolyn. Doh.
Ghetto Bikes 2000-2003
Throughout college I had a succession of bikes named Ghetto Bike
200(N) where N is basically every year I was in school. Like Glenda,
these bikes were rescues, most from the dump. The reason I kept
getting new ones was that they kept getting stolen. The reason they
kept getting stolen was that I refused to ever lock them up under the
belief that someone would have to be crazy to steal them. Of course
someone always was.
I remember one time Ghetto Bike 2002 was stolen. Disheartened, I began
walking back to my dorm, only to find it at the bottom of the hill
with the chain hanging loose. Silly thief, I thought to myself. You
tried to change gears.
Once a Ghetto Bike was stolen, it wasn't necessarily gone. One time
Evan found my bike in the bushes outside of Dodd almost two months
later. By senior year I had finally learned to use a lock, but
accidently left Ghetto Bike 2003 outside all winter, only to discover
that its spokes had rusted straight through by spring. On graduation,
with no desire to lug a broken bike back to Maine, I removed its lock
and released it back into the wild. For all I know, it still roams the
Williams campus to this day, feral and free.