Days sans Petanque: I Sing the Bicycle Electric

A quick jaunt around the park. What could be the problem. I'm sure Tim wouldn't mind.

How droll. Do wait your turn. This motor bike is no penny farthing but a finely engineered vehicle for which I will demonstrate the proper motoring technique.

Hey fellas. I've got dibs on that 'lectric machine 'cause I saw it first. I did. I did. I did.

Oh woe, oh woe, oh woe is me. If only I could ride that bike I might be able to catch enough flies to feed my tadpoles. But no. It could never happen to such as I.

Ahem. Gentlemen. I am afraid I must insist you show me your proper certifications qualifying you to operate said vehicle on city park motorways.

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Sequestered at home. Time weighing heavily on your fingertips. Go ahead. Do it. Unsubscribe. What could it hurt? How often have you thought to yourself, "I could unsubscribe. Nobody would know. I wouldn't even have to wear my mask. I could just type it out, hit the send button and go to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water like nothing happened." And nobody would know. Except for me. Of course. But I won't tell a soul. Reader/writer client privileged communications.

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This morning I lay in the bathtub thinking how wonderful it would be if I had a dog like Rin Tin Tin. I'd call him Rin Tin Tin too, and I'd take him to school with me, where he could stay in the janitor's room or by the bicycle racks when the weather was good. —Anne Frank

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. —H. G. Wells

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. —Christopher Morley

* In 1951 Christopher Morley, an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet, died on 28 March 1957, and was buried in the Roslyn Cemetery in Nassau County, New York. After his death, two New York newspapers published his last message to his friends:

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

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Illustrators: E.H. Shepard, Michael Hague, Michael Sporn, Angel Dominguez