In the mid-'60s, my cousins lived on South Hill, south beyond the Red Deer Hospital. We lived north below the hospital hill on Forty-third Street, east of the brewery and the CPR railroad tracks, and south of the Waskasoo Creek. I rode my bike to their place one warm Sunday afternoon in July. After I arrived, Aunt May decided to come to our place.
   Why?
   I don’t remember. All were to come as my cousins were not to be left at home alone. If they were, it would make all episodes of “Home Alone” look like a church picnic.
   Aunt May and cousin Sue decide to walk as it’s a short but steep trail down past the hospital.
   Cousins, Bert, Art, Steve and Gene decided they didn’t want to walk but rather ride on my bike with me.
   They’d learnt from past experiences I rode my bike and not them.

   Which one was going to ride and who was going to walk brought a frenzied and animated commotion. With their hands flapping, they flopped around on the ground with a pretense of great injury, threats of death by very grusome means and how the others would slowly die at the hand of their mother if the one doing the threatening didn’t get to ride was duly expressed.
   After a heated debate, they decided they’d all ride, at the same time, on my bike.
   My bike was great. I’d put together a standard twenty-four inch CCM from parts and pieces I’d scrounged from different places.
   Now I’m sort of a help to anyone and see if it can be done type.
   So, I agreed if they could all get on my bike, we’d ride to my place.
   They then pointed out that I, the bike owner, had to do the peddling.
   Yes! I do the work as I usually do. And they’d do the joy riding, as usual.
  Then, with lively deliberations and to make sure past events and procedures were understood and followed and that all agreements to the ride were legally binding, with allotted assessments of penalties to a very dark confinement, they all agreed to the ride, not with me, but with each other.
   I was standing over the middle bar when Gene, the youngest, decided to be on the handlebars.
   Steve, the next youngest, was going for the crossbar in front of me as Art and Bert angrily discussed who would ride on the seat.
   With the rest loaded, I declared we’re leaving. Art jumped onto the seat behind me. Leaving Bert standing, hurling shocking insults of devastation in a hot place at Art and the rest of us.
   It took several tries to get going with hollering, yelling, threatening, pinching, and whatnot, as one would lean the wrong way, as the others leaned the right way. Then, lean the right way, which quickly became the wrong way.
   We, however, did get going.
   Bert, the oldest, who preserves his body from hurt and harm at all costs, grabbed onto Art’s shoulders. After several feeble tries, he stood on the back axle as we frantically wobbled down the street.
   With all loaded amid the hollering of threats that if we crashed, I, the peddler and driver, would never again ride a bike because of the deformity of my curly, battered and maimed body.
   It was about three blocks to the hospital road, which ran downhill from the Red Deer Hospital to the busy Gaetz Avenue below. In those days, this road was gravel. It had a washboard surface that shook your teeth loose and made your eyeballs fall out.
   We began to descend the hill.
   For a brief, fleeting moment, all became deathly silent as the true meaning of life flashed before our eyes.
   Then the blood-curdling screams of terror, threats of a mutilated body, mine, and demands to immediately stop exploded.
   Fears emitted in wailing as they beat on each other, pinched, and gouged each other, as unnerving screams echoed across Red Deer’s serene landscape.
   I was standing on the brakes with all my ninety-eight pounds as the bike defiantly bounced out of control down the hill.
   It was then, from within this crazed din, Art hollered a defiant "STOP!" With this Gene, ya, he stuck his foot into the front wheels’ spokes.
   The front wheel slid sideways as the hollering rose to screaming pain, with bodies scattered in the dust and gravel.
   I tried jumping clear but caught my right knee on the handlebars.
   After a few minutes of painfully limping around, I picked my bike up and hobbled home with the wailing, bawling, hollering, murderous threats fading behind me.
   A while later, in dragged the teary-eyed, blood-stained bodies of the accusing mob.
   After relating their heroizing stories, with hands flapping, tears streaming, running noses, and moans of great pain, their hollering, threats and accusations died to whimpers of retaliation. All this suddenly evaporated into declarations of outstanding heroic accomplishments of survival and defying actions preventing death.
   Once this declaration of great valour ended.
   All became quiet.
   We laughed so hard we rolled on the lawn until we couldn’t move.
   You know, the actual injuries, scrapes and scratches were very, very mild.
   But what a bike ride it was.