Remember when we used to get on our bikes and just ride?

Remember when we used to get on our bikes and just ride? There were no chat rooms, no advocacy meetings, no spandex arm warmers. All of a sudden the wheels stopped wobbling and you got past the driveway, down to the corner and around the block. Then one day you wake-up early, tie-up your bedroll and ride straight out of town with no itinerary. That sensation of going as far as your legs will take you is the definition of freedom. That’s what it means to
weigh the value of everything you know and wager it against the simple promise of riding down a new horizon.

I like that bet.

That’s how it was in the in the fall of 1996 when Mobile City was conceived over several beers in
a DC bar which no longer exists. We were underemployed poets and out-of-work rockers scribbling our credos on note paper caged from Congressional offices. Mobile City’s early editions were surreptitiously photocopied after hours in the workplaces of friends, the pages full of photos and drawings supplied by bike messengers who delivered their urban visions in water-resistant FedEx envelopes to our old office at Metro Messenger. Subsequent issues attracted an ever widening range of contributors from a broader slice of life in the mobile city. There were press events, NPR interviews, and spectacular fundraisers—we were enjoying the wind in our faces.

Mobile City #6 was published in the fall of 2002 and we set the magazine aside for a while.
Other priorities began to dominate our lives and longer periods of time elapsed between bike rides.

One year ago I was reminded that there is never a good time to catch-up with life. Our friend and fellow longtime bike messenger Leo Seferlis passed in October of 2009, and like many who knew Leo
I was not prepared for the news. It seemed like we had just spoken at an event somewhere, but the years had slipped between us, and knowing I would never again hear him shouting my name as we passed each other at some blurred intersection in the heart of the city made me aware again that this instant
is the one that matters.

This is not about nostalgia people. This is about jumping back onto the moving stage and reclaiming your part. Step out of line at the Coffee-Suplex, dump the Sudoku and tomorrow’s convention agenda into the trash bin and get on your bikes! Go out and ride! Grab your bed-roll and a full water bottle and get out of town. Maybe if you ride south down 14th Street toward the Mall, somewhere around G you might get a little extra tailwind urging you along. That’s the way Leo always said goodbye: with firm, gentle insistence.

I am telling you now I like that bet.

James Kerns