Mark's Pages

December 30, 2008:

We invented our own hide and seek game, on bicycles.

One team hid. They were not allowed to cross certain boundaries, and they were given a specific amount of time, I think one minute per team member, to find good hiding places.

The other team chased. The goal was to find the hidden players, and tag them. Of course, they could flee instead, turning the game into a riotous bicycle chase.

Victory depended on a time limit. The hiding team had to evade the searches for a total of five minutes per team member. So, if there were four hiders, the searchers had a total of twenty minutes in which to discover and chase down all four.

It was not for the faint of heart. We were up and down curbs, flights of concrete stairs, in and out of planters, over fences, in and out of traffic, at flat-out breakneck speed.

We became very creative at this. My friend Craig learned to carry his bike over his shoulder, running up a long concrete stairwell connecting one street to the next. So I organized the chase team to double-up: one at the bottom of the stairs, another at the top, and we'd bag him with nowhere to go. Another kid would throw his bike over a fence into the canyon, then jump over after it to hide inside bushes. I pulled my bike up into a tree once and hid there.

And we became highly skilled. We could ride crazy-ass over any terrain at phenomenal speed. I could jump hedges and curbs while outrunning passing cars. Craig could duck beneath an outstretched hand and peel off 90 degrees into an opening between buildings at Olympic speed. Everyone could ride down stairs, turn corners with no hands, leap over holes and ditches without thinking about it.

In hindsight it's surprising the adults didn't stop us. We should all have been killed by cars. Probably we all were and my life since then has all been imaginary.