The first time I crashed my bike as a freshman was before classes had even started.
This is an embarrassing story for me — one of the stories that I whispered to my mom on FaceTime and then tried not to speak of again. So bear with my overexplanation.
It was a bright, sunny first day of fall quarter, and while I was nervous, I was primarily excited. How could I not be? I had moved into my seaside dorm just over a week before (which meant I was an Official Adult) and everything was new. I spent Week 0 on the beach and was actually excited for the first week of school. I decided to take my cute rusty yellow and blue beach cruiser (you know the one) into Isla Vista for coffee before heading to my first class.
I left Anacapa Residence Hall without incident, turning onto the bike path by the MultiCultural Center and going on my merry way. It was the roundabout that gave me issue — not because I don’t know how a roundabout ]works (I promise), but because I wasn’t used to the traffic. While I had practiced biking to I.V and around campus, I was wholly unprepared for the sheer number of bikes that seemed to appear around me in the roundabout. It was like I was just one in a legion of bikes at the starting line of a triathlon or charging forth on a battlefield.
Scared of running into someone, I did exactly that — the front wheel of my bike locked with the bike in front of me, sending us both crashing down. My keys went flying out of my basket, and I immediately began apologizing profusely to the man with the Schwinn bicycle, whom I had so inelegantly unseated. He moved on without a word, but the girl behind me pulled off to the side to help me move my bike out of the way. I picked up my keys, and she handed me my bike. With her infinite wisdom, the kind stranger looked me in the eyes and said, “Don’t worry. It’s happened to everyone.”
You might be saying, Lucy, this is not that bad of a story. But as a brittle, insecure freshman, it was mortifying. I never really rode my beach cruiser again after that. For one, the accident had caused my tire to go flat — the bike was at least 15 years old after all. And I couldn’t seem to get over the humiliation of it, despite the stranger’s kind words. Plus, I lived in Anacapa freshman year, so it’s not like biking was essential to my survival here. So I became a walker.
Four years later, I now believe walking is the best way to experience I.V in all of her glory.
EMILY YOON / DAILY NEXUS
As I reflect on my time here, I can’t help but think about walking — how my green Adidas sneakers have touched every path and street of our one-square-mile paradise. They’ve taken me from Anacapa to the whimsical serenity of Fortuna Lane. Past the campus stables and to the sticky tar of Devereux Beach. I’ve walked the entire length of Abrego Road and back in flip-flops, sand rubbing the tops of my feet until they’re blistered red.
While a bike can get you places faster, it also blurs the edges of our quaint town. Walking affords time for observation in a way that biking doesn’t. When I walk, I bear witness to first dates, games of die and beer ball, groups of friends exactly like mine chasing the last bits of sunset. I feel the temporality of my time here, and I know that come June, I will be gone, and someone else will walk these streets as I did. Just like all of the others who came before me.
When I walk, I see collective effervescence — from games of pickup basketball at Estero Park to friends singing on their porch. Community surges through the streets, on shared Lime scooters and tandem bicycles.
We’re known for being a bike school — this I cannot deny. But next time, when you’re debating biking or walking to the sunset or to class, take a walk. Stop and smell the bougainvillea.
I walk through I.V because I crashed my bike. And I can’t help but be grateful.
Lucy Dixon loves these roads where the houses don’t change.
