My Kingdom for a Bike

In the vending machines, there is a flavor of chips (okay, a flavour of crisps) called “roast ox.” Hmmm…but enough about that; I won’t need to visit the strange and overpriced vending machines any more, because I have bought a bike!

As a student at LMH, a bike really comes in handy, even more than for your average student. Oxford is completely walkable, but we’re located all the way to the north of the town, past Norham Gardens and everything. There tend to be those days where you’ve got five minutes to make it to a meeting with a tutor in a building that’s a mile away, and two wheels are a lot faster than none, most of the time.

I guess the exception to that rule would be my bicycle in, shall we say, its natural state. I acquired the Europa Concept at the porter’s lodge cycle auction (which, by the way, is another point of confusion: how do you react if someone starts a story, “so I was on my cycle today when…” because I react with confusion). The auction started at noon on a cold but sunny Friday, with a rabble of students standing around as the porters, looking both florid and rotund, wheeled a collection of twenty or thirty bikes around from the shed. Or the field. Or the duck pond. And I suppose I should say hauled rather than wheeled, because a lot of the bikes didn’t exactly have wheels, or if they did, the tires were flat, or the frames were bent, or maybe the seat was missing, or the chain was rusted, or there were no pedals. One particularly exciting BMX-style bicycle had dead ivy all through its spokes.

Before the head porter started heckling the small crowd, trying to convince us that he was giving all of these things away, and what about his family, and so on, we all had a good look around, and were understandably slow to snap up these excitingly dangerous-looking machines. However, after one student jokingly opened with an offer of two hundred quid, was not beat out by any higher bids, and suddenly became the owner of a bike without handles (although fortunately with a reduction of 199 pounds), we got down to business. After that point, the bidding started at a pound. My fuchsia Concept went for 3 pounds, although I could have had it for less if a suspicious old man hadn’t popped out of the woodwork and driven up the price by a staggering 150%. What kind of man wants a purpley-pink ladies’ bike? Apparently the sort that goes around to college cycle auctions and tries to steal from poor hardworking students. I think he left with four or five fixer-uppers. Horrible.

The next challenge was to make my Concept into something rather more concretely rideable, which meant calling up Back on Trax, your friendly mobile bicycle repair service. Trying to cut corners and pay half of what a new bike would cost sort of backfired on me here, but I did manage to come in significantly under the figure most people pay for bike, lock, lights, etc (130 quid, eep!) and my bicycle is now fitted with every luxury (except a kickstand and a water bottle holder). It’s also registered to the school (so the porters won’t come around in a week and throw it back in the duck pond to get ready for next year’s auction).

Still, even though I’m not completely in the black, I’d say I was pretty lucky: the demand for pink girls’ bikes was fairly low, and three pounds is not a bad deal for a bike frame – with basket and bell – that I’ll be able to use to go anywhere I want in Oxford. Dave, one of the other Americans, bought his for ten pounds and then had it declared “unfixable” (I told him to get a second opinion). And the repair costs I’m just going to mentally equate with gas prices were I still in the States, especially with the exchange rates getting better and better…plummet, economies of the world, plummet! No, stop.

Well, I’m now off to get some groceries, or maybe buy some shoes online with the help of Owen and his British credit card. For some reason my American one won’t work online. Yes, I think to shoes…biking can’t get you everywhere, after all.