I was too old for a Big Wheel, but after losing my bike I had to devolve to an earlier mode of transportation (there was a reason I couldn't take my skateboard, but I can't recall what it was now...). Susie, Linda and I were on our way back from the Galleria. We'd just gone through the pedestrian tunnel under the freeway (truly scary, a cave 4 feet wide and 200 feet long, with two little lights spaced wide inside, like a coal mine, a coal mine that people pee in), and we were heading home.

Susie and I were supposed to trade off between the Big Wheel and her bike (Linda had her own bike), but Susie, two years older than me, had an even greater antipathy to being seen riding a glorified tricycle than I did, and so she refused the deal. As Susie and Linda rode off I ran after them, all the eight blocks home, telling mom of the grave injustice. She asked where the Big Wheel was and certainly wasn't pleased to hear I'd left it at the mouth of the tunnel. I suppose I figured it was safe as, being a vehicle that my sister and I were fighting over who got to be the one not to ride it, who would want to steal it? And it was a suburban neighborhood, and we'd only be gone a few minutes.

Gone.

Not as interesting a story as the others, but as part of the anthology of compromised vehicles, it had to be included.

Next stop: The Scooter, part one of two.