The Brown Biker

It’s a weekday in the summer; July, maybe. My mother and I are probably— no —definitely headed to the grocery store. Trader Joe’s and then Whole Foods. We’ve just gotten off at the exit on interstate 78, and our black Jeep Grand Cherokee sits still at a red light.

From where I sit in the passenger seat, I see a man riding a bike in the distance. This strikes me as peculiar. We’ve traveled this road to the grocery store countless times and I can’t remember ever passing pedestrians or cyclists. It doesn’t seem like the kind of street a person rides a bike down unless it’s out of necessity.

I sit up from my relaxed position in my seat and watch intently as the man pedals in our direction. He gets a bit closer and I see his brown skin and long grey beard. Immediately I start to sympathize, imagining a long, hard life for the brown biker.

He gets closer now, and I feel betrayed. His twelve-inch beard looks silky; exceptionally groomed. Airpods rest in his ear. My story crumbles. He is not the poor old man he’d led me to believe.

I keep watching, and my feelings shift from pity to enthusiasm. I begin to conjure a new story. We are near Maplewood, a New Jersey Suburbia. Now, I imagine him as a feverous old man, asserting his vitality by maintaining his athleticism. I assume a lofty number of miles he averages a week. “Good on him,” I think.

The light changes and I get one last look at the brown biker before we pull off. What I thought was a burnt orange helmet, I now realize is a perfectly tied turban. He wears a crisply ironed plaid shirt and khakis shorts. I chuckle, mostly at myself. This is not the seasoned cyclist uniform of moisture wicking spandex I’d imagined for him.

My narrative is shattered once again, and my thirty seconds are up. There is no time left to imagine a new life for my momentary companion. I guess, really, there is no narrative. He’s just a man riding a bike.

I relax my position in my seat and ask my mom to repeat whatever she’d said while I was preoccupied as we make our way up the road.