When I was 8 my parents gave me a big bicycle, except my birthday is in January and there was always snow on the ground then in New York, so I didn’t acquire my new bike till April.

It was an English 3-speed, and it looked like a Raleigh but it read Gazelle Sports Model. Eventually I was told that Gazelle purchased the Raleigh factory in Nottingham and produced bikes for about three years before reselling, and mine came out of that era. Someone told me it was identical to a Raleigh but with stronger welds.

I learned how to ride well on that bike. I thought of it as my own black horse, and I named it for the animal on the popular television show.

It came with us to California, and I remember thinking a trip to Imperial Beach and back, 16 miles with my dad and Steve, was a heroic jaunt. I pedaled Fury to the library every Saturday, to friends’ houses, everywhere.

The bike moved with us to Marin county but its frame was knocked just enough off-kilter that I couldn’t ride it no-handed for any distance after that. But Fury waited, and at the end of college, after my boyfriend Mike totaled his 10-speed, Nick and I salvaged the Campagnolo parts and converted Fury to a racer. We had to rebuild the rear wheel but I ended up with the only 10-speed in the bay area that had side-pull breaks and the ability to take any cable or streetcar tracks in the City.

I gave up bike riding when Katie got big enough to throw my balance off in her above-the-rear-wheel carrier. I meant to get back to it and when I did, 20 years later and lightly, I had to admit that old Fury’s frame was just too small for mine. I bought a new bike.

But I couldn’t give Fury up. We’d had too many good times, gone too far together.

I housed my old bike at Deakin Street, in the storage area of Capistrano, and in the funky detached garage over Codornices Creek all the years I lived there. Finally, when I built my little place in Eugene, I buried old Fury in the foundation.