The Mustang

Do you remember your first bike? Not the trike, and not the little one with training wheels, either; the first real bike that allowed exploring your world possible? That thing of beauty that you may or may not have nicknamed Rocker, or Speed, or some such. That vehicle of freedom! I did not name mine. It's not that I was lacking in imagination, far from it, I was spilling over with it; it's that I was, and still am, a pragmatic soul. It was a thing, regardless how stirring mounting it was. Mine was a green CCM Mustang.

Not me, but that's the very image of my CCM Mustang

Banana seat. High back bar. Chopper handle bars. It had streamers trailing from the handlebar grips when I got it. It was the epitome of cool in its time, much like the BMX that replaced it would be the go-to bike that everybody owned afterwards.

I hit a parked car on my first solo ride with it. Years later I ended up in the hospital from a concussion while riding it (but that's another story that will follow in due course), but in between I hit the roads and trails behind Pinecrest School, behind and below where TDH, the Timmins District Hospital, now stands, if it didn't then. There were streams and what we thought of as lakes back there, not to mention hastily erected forts and cut trails, later expropriated and widened by the Mattagami Region Conservation Society, and still in use today (I still walk that trail today). We scampered over Scout and the much further Cherry Rock. They were tall and had precariously perched boulders atop them that made narrow caves that we imagined bears slept in. We waded in those streams, caught minnows, or tried to anyways, chased frogs, searched for snakes, and a little later, stole our first kisses on those trails. Pecks then, certainly, nothing like those that would soon follow. First steps.