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When I was a few apprehensive steps away from my first birthday, as family folklore goes, just before bed I would park a pedal car outside the room I shared with my parents. My tricycle would be banked by the potty. The point of this toddler triathlon was to never just totter about when you can traverse the length of your extended family’s rented Geylang shophouse in style.
Upon awakening, I would hop into the car and drive to the potty, get that business done, then cycle to the dining table for breakfast, after which I would run off to the day’s first matter of mischief. It’s apparently unusual to be legging it out as steadily as I did 10 months into the world, but I’ve never known any other kind of movement.
In 1980, we moved into a brand new HDB flat in the brand new housing estate of Bedok Reservoir. To own a five-room apartment — secured with government pricing, subsidies and payment plan — with an air-conditioned master bedroom, a bathtub in the master bedroom and a balcony overlooking an unfurling two kilometer-long park was the developing country’s suburban bliss come true. With all that verdant, undulating parkland and shiny, colorful playgrounds to trawl through and explore, my share of that dream was realized when Dad bought me my first bike.
It was a no-brand metal contraption with plastic training wheels, a junior version of the new bike Dad also got for himself. I had insisted on blue, the discerning tomboy’s hue. Four-year-old me took that bike all over the new neighborhood, at a time when helmets and elbow pads and knee guards were the privileges of those who could afford not to live in an HDB housing estate. In 1981, I didn’t know what adrenaline was, but I knew that pommeling down at top speed the long concrete path to the park (I’m facing the way home in the picture above) was the most rollicking ride I had ever known. Naturally, I soon hit a snag, and took my first spill off a bike. Knees were skinned but that was an unavoidable transaction. I’d just paid my first due for the pleasure of cycling, and I’d signed up for the lifetime membership. One of the rudimentary training wheels was knocked askew and instead of righting it, Dad yanked it off. He said, “It’s time to learn how to really ride a bike.”
For the next few months, I continued my cavalier cycle-abouts leaning towards the solitary right training wheel for balance. Each time I started tilting left, I’d hitch towards the other side to not break my stride. One evening while flying down The Path, my front tire got caught in a crack, and I was flung off. I split my lip big time, gashed up my left knee. Complacency is a most treacherous armor, one that does little to mitigate lung-busting bawling.
Dad picked me up and took me home, and for a few months, I was too scared to get back on the bike. I can’t remember how the inspiration to ride again bubbled up, but it was Dad who put me back me back on a bike, still with one training wheel — that’s what he does. Less than one revolution in, all fears of flying off a bike vanished. At some point, Dad removed the other training wheel and I didn’t even know it. That’s what dads do.
In the 40 years since, I’ve cycled across the Sapa mountains; in and around European burgs like Bruges, Salzburg and Cancale; Beijing traffic; the perimeter of Singapore; completed triathlons up to half-Ironman distance. It’s my favorite mode of transportation, even though I’ve been wrung through worse (such as tumbling while dismounting and requiring 11 stitches in my left knee).
During Circuit Breaker, I’ve been riding as much as my days of half-Ironman training, seduced by congestion-free roads and the freedom of breaking out of the house. Since The Lens Men, our family optometry practice, remains open and offers free delivery to support staying home, most miles are racked up sending contact lenses and glasses to customers and patients, or bringing treats to friends. As I pause briefly at the bottom of that Bedok Reservoir path and thought about all that fun I had as kid, I think, “Thanks for the wheel power, Dad. I wouldn’t be right here without you.