The Story of the Phantom Bike

This is the Story of the Phantom Bike, named Pudd’n. She is an elusive bicycle. She is a nomadic bicycle. She is a shy bicycle. But never the less, she’s a bicycle, and she intrigues me. Only a few, at least to my knowledge, have noticed Pudd’n or given her any attention. I don’t know where she came from. All I know is she has never been locked and now she’s gone.

She showed up sometime in mid August on Commonwealth Avenue. I remember the first time that I saw her she was leaning against the back of bench. It was late when i first saw her (around 4 in the morning) as I was walking home from working one of the many 22-hour days in August. It was because of that then recent lack of sleep that I wasn’t 100% sure that this bike that I had just seen was real; thus I brushed off the significance of what I had just seen. After two hours of sleep – which can do wonders when you don’t have the luxury of sleep for two weeks – I was walking back on the same route that takes me past the same bench and there she was. Pudd’n was real, she had survived the night and was leaning right there.

When I left work that night, I made it a point to make sure Pudd’n was still there, and she was. However, She was gone the next morning, though I did find her later that same down leaning against another bench further down the street. With the continuing trend, she disappeared the next day, but this time for quite some time: a whole day, maybe two. Soon she migrated back west down Comm Ave to the bike racks outside of the George Sherman Union. It was then and there, that the Phantom Bike could no longer elude the gaze of my camera phone, unlike how Bike Snob NYC continues to elude the entire City of New York:

Wherever Pudd’n, the Phantom Bike is now, I hope she is well, riding about and avoiding the potholes and Massholes that plague the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 'Til the day we meet again.