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Never once did I wear those cream white polyester pants (remember when?) outdoors in the city while on my ten speed bike! But on that day I decided to take a long overdue self-portrait with my beloved bicycle...inside my apartment, dressed completely unlike how I actually looked riding it (usually with sweats in the cool months, cut-offs and later spandex bike shorts in the warm months).

Nevertheless, the time had come for me to record myself with my imported Italian bike I bought with money from a summer job at 16 years old. It was called Premier and it was a color I had never seen before, a sort of metallic burnt orange or what I always thought of as the color of the sun at the horizon's edge.

Another photo taken a few months after the first one shows me in jeans, which again I rarely wore when I was on my bike.

But it didn't really matter. We had so much fun together, me and my two wheels, bike flying on the streets and waterfront, many times with my best friend, during my high school and early college years in Chicago.

The adventures we had continued even more intensely and for a much longer period of time after I moved to NYC at 25 years old.

Not long after I brought my bike to the big metropolis, I began exploring all five boroughs. More incredible times occurred repeatedly in Prospect Park, down Ocean Parkway to Coney Island, or along Flatbush to Riis Park and the Rockaways, through Fort Greene on the way to the Brooklyn Bridge, through Crown Heights and Bed Stuy on the way to the Williamsburg Bridge, and even on the Queensboro Bridge. There were countless days and nights with Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village as a destination, and journeys on the West Side and uptown all the way to the George Washington Bridge.

Eventually I took more photos with my bike, although unfortunately none showing me actually on my bike. Nevertheless, we were companions for decades, until I was 48 years old, or a total of 32 years. And every moment was sheer Ten Speed Glory.

27 years old with my bicycle in Grand Army Plaza

Prospect Heights

Brooklyn

June 1980