h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So the story of my first love I did last week wasn't strictly speaking accurate: the guy in question was my first relationship. I've made an oblique reference to my real first love in the letter to my 14-year old self and here's the full story. Thing is, she wasn't exactly human.

As I mentioned in that letter just before I turned 15, my life got really crappy and I ended up being homeless, estranged from my family and without a clue what I was going to do with myself, all just in time for Christmas. One of the teachers at my school, who has become a sort-of foster parent now and pretty much the closest thing I have to a dad (my actual dad isn't the nicest person in the world), wanted to give me a present but given how unsettled things were he wasn't sure what he could give me. I was staying with him and his wife while social services tried to decide what to do with me and he asked me to go in the garage to grab something for dinner and that's when I saw her: his old hybrid town/country bike. Older than I was, pretty rare, and kept in great condition.

If any of you are familiar with Firefly, the scene where Mal sees Serenity for the first time and falls in love with it is pretty much how I felt when I saw this bike for the first time. (For those who aren't familiar check out the last 10 seconds of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhASt-DGOns as it is that scene).

I loved cycling as a kid, I was the only one of the 3 lads in my family to even learn how to ride a bike and once I had it came naturally as breathing to me. This bike was a real beauty and I couldn't stop looking at it until my foster dad came and found me (he was worried I'd been gone so long: I realised a few months down the line I was on runaway/suicide watch) and there and then gave the bike to me. The next morning I took it out for a ride down to the beach (this beach A5839121 in fact) and the world went away. All the trouble I was going through was forgotten because I was so wrapped up in how smooth and responsive this bike felt, how it felt like it was a part of me and how I felt I could just race away from it all.

One of the other teachers at my school, who became another sort-of foster parent and is now part of my family, gave me Lord of the Rings for Christmas and the description of Shadowfax as a force of nature, semi-divine, the bolt of silver on the flowing green, was how I felt about this bike so she came to be known as Shadowfax (yes, I know Shadowfax is a stallion in LoTR but I felt something as graceful and beautiful as that bike was had to be female).

Over the coming months, when things got too much, too scary or too unsettled, I'd take Shadowfax out and sprint away from it all and I ended up making a couple of little dens in the dunes and woods on the Sefton coast so I could run away for a night or two and escape from it all. She was freedom and most importantly she was a measure of control which was something I had precious little of in my life while social services, my school and my (natural, as opposed to constructed) family wrangled over what to do with me (the school, led by my foster dads, ended up winning). They could argue, but so long as I had Shadowfax, I had control over where I was going.

As things settled down she was a companion for me: it might sound daft but it sometimes felt like she had moods and everything. I could tell when things were wrong with the bike by the tiniest differences in the way it rode. At university she was a safety net for me: even if I ran out of money or there was no public transport I'd be able to get back to my foster folks in a few hours by sitting on her and peddling. I got to explore the Peak District and big chunks of Yorkshire on her, which was one of my favourite bits of Uni. For the last 18 months or so of Uni she started to show her age and took a lot of maintenance to keep going: it'd have probably been cheaper to replace her but I couldn't do it so I worked on her mostly weekends, keeping her together. When the time came for me to leave Manchester (which I was devastated about - seriously, look at my journals from 2006) I loaded her up and she carried me home.

After I finished Uni I cycled the entire trans-Pennine Trail from Southport to Hull on her and then a couple days after I got back I was in a car accident and Shadowfax was written off. I was mostly uninjured but she was mangled beyond repair and I was *devastated*.

So there it is, the story of my first love and a relationship that defined me for nearly a decade.

I don't have anything to say, but that post was very moving.

What Z said.

She was your friend, and she gave you your freedom.

That's a beautiful memory to share with us

Gosh.

To give you a bike - that wasn't just generous, it was an inspired act. What a nice man.

what a loverly memory, thanks for sharing

I found it moving, too. And that coming from someone who has a hate/hate relationship with her bike.

Naming her Shadowfax was an inspired choice.

15 is such an important age.

I finally have found the time to really read this. ... Ummmm, ...

I do know the need and necessity of getting out of a hell-hole. I was a bit older, and never turned back. Just me and the world. Ya know, an anchor to something real and substantial as you had, that would make so many things easier for them that have to. For me, it was Shank's Mare, 40 mile stretches at a time.

A suggestion, now that you are solvent and professional. Perhaps buy a stout and sturdy pair o' wheels. You may well meet a lad who seeks home and freedom as well.

what a lovely story. thanks, HI.

>>What a nice man<<

Nice doesn't even begin to cover it: without him and his wife (and my other set of sort-of foster folks) I really doubt I'd have made it to my twenties.

When I moved into my own place at 16 (which he arranged: it was school-owned and he convinced the governors to let me live there rent-free), him and his wife had beaten me to it and been in and decorated, filled the flat with loads of cushions and trinkets all in my favourite colours and styles, filled the fridge with my favourite foods. Turns out over the previous few weeks the pair of them has been discretely finding out all my favourite things and I hadn't realised, just so when I moved into this flat it felt like home from day one.

I'm a lucky guy.