True Bicycle Tales

[mallorys_camera]

Another favorite old photo of mine. I still mourn the tee-shirt!

Bob Benjamin and Bibbit lived next door to us on Benvenue Street in Berkeley. Housemates, not couple: For reasons I could never understand, Bibbit was officially in LUV with a very bland guy named Ron. Ron was nice-looking enough but seemed to me to have no personality whatsoever, so I was a less than enthusiastic coconspirator in Bibbit’s various schemes to get Ron to fall madly in LUV with her.

Bob had had the misfortune to be born to ambitious, relentlessly upwardly mobile parents who sent him to Philips Exeter Academy, a very exclusive, very expensive prep school in rural New Hampshire. They also gave him a BMW when he graduated from UCB. Bob spent at least 20 hours a week washing and polishing the thing, and he would never, ever drive it let alone chauffer us around in it on our various mad jaunts.

Bob was very neurotic.

I was living in the Benvenue Street flat before my marriage, and I was so intrigued by Bibbit in those days that I started spying on her every chance I could get.

How to describe Bibbit? She was otherworldly! A being from another time/space continuum. Maybe a little like Robin Williams’ Mork but without the body hair and the testosterone. She pulsed pure delight, but she was very fussy about her little rituals and intensely competitive about the (few) things she cared about. Bicycling was one of those things.

Several of my trips through Europe had been made on bicycles. Bikes were my favorite mode of transportation. I wasn’t all that into racing bikes at the time I first met Bibbit, though.

But after spying on her and determining, yes, that it was absolutely necessary for me to annex her (somehow) into the inner circle, I got into bike racing. Bibbit was a racer.

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Bikes also brought me together with Bill, my first husband.

After one of the marathon training sessions described above, my habit was to coast to the Café Roma, park my bike along a wall, and drink caffe lattes, nibble scones, and write in my diary on the outside terrace until it was time to report into the ER in time for my 3pm nursing shift.

One summer day in 1982, I was writing in my diary about how I wanted to fall in LUV.

And while I was writing, I felt that prickle that one often feels when eyes are focused intensely upon one.

So, I looked up.

Sitting about 10 feet away from me was this very intense young man. He, too, had a bike parked against the café wall. He looked just like Gerard Depardieu in Le Retour de Martin Guerre, which at that time was one of my very favorite movies.

The young man and I continued trading surreptitious glances at each other for the next ten minutes or so.

And then I got up to replenish my caffe latte.

When I got back to my table, the young man was gone.

And I felt a pang of disappointment.

But then I looked down at the cover of my diary (which I’d closed when I wandered off for coffee)—and there was a note: I think you’re very attractive. And I like your bike! Blah, blah, blah. Here is my phone number.

Barbara Angell lived two blocks away on Aetna Street, so I immediately loped off to consult her.

“Yeah. I think you should call him,” Barbara said. “He didn’t interrupt you while you were writing, did he? I think that indicates thoughtfulness. Do it.”

So, I did.

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The Café Roma is still there although it has a different name these days.

It’s right across the street from UCB’s law school, which it's now politically incorrect to refer to as Boalt Hall.

So, Max spent three years in close proximity to the very spot that without which, there would have been no Max! I think he even bought caffe lattes there from time to time.