Bicycles , Treasure , and Trouble

Bicycles , Treasure , and Trouble
My search for treasure

It was just another morning, a slight drizzle and a grey sky. The sun wasn’t too high and didn’t add much light nor warmth to the day yet. I don’t remember but I think I was still on my red and black Moab II, which I later donated to someone at the light-rail station who happened to have some bolt cutters with him…
I haven’t been all that lucky with bikes; I guess it all started to go south back at BYU on a fine October General Conference Saturday. The mountain was calling our names, and our bikes looked sad and neglected so…
No wait, it was before that; we’ll have to go back a little further to another Saturday at Contra Loma. Me, Dad, and Joseph were fishing near the dam for trout. To pass the time while our salmon eggs floated in the muck waiting for a fish to find them, me and Joseph were combing the banks for lures and bobbers and little led weights still stuck to tangles of fishing wire scattered around. Most of our treasure consisted of the weights, bobbers were rare and lures were far an in between. All I’d found that day was a few weights, some dead fish and lots of dirt, which I kept under my fingernails and on my clothes. Then from the distance Joseph yelped and was heading for Dad to show him something he’d found. My eyes grew wide and I ran over to see what it was. In slow motion, as I held my breath and watched, Joseph’s hand opened to reveal a lure, not some rusty old lure with the hooks broken off, though that still would have been a find, but a useable lure that would be kept in the tackle box and treasured forever. I was in awe, wishing it’d been me and thinking I still had a chance, I redoubled my efforts. Not even watching to see if the red and white bobbers would dip under the water or if my pole would get tugged and fall from where it was wedged, I searched. Even the thrill of pulling in a fish was second to a possible find. The sun got hotter and moved up across the sky as I continued my hunt under rocks and up in the branches of trees in the rushes and around roots dangling in the water. Forever had gone by, well at least fifteen to twenty minutes, without anything to show for it. It must have been the delirium of envy that made me do it, it seemed stupid the moment the words came out of my mouth, but it was too late. I’d taken Joseph’s lure out of the tackle box went back out on a mock search that probably lasted 30 seconds and yelled “I found one!”. On inspection it was obvious what I’d done but I insisted I’d found it. Well that got me in trouble…
The next time I got that jealous was a beautiful sunny day out in the green grazed fields past the big hill in Ridge Rock. We were out there exploring and playing around the dragon bones, the remains of Smaug, or some other ancient beast whose true nature went unnoticed due to the resemblance to moss covered rocks. We ventured out a little further and in a different direction that we had before and came to a lone oak tree. Under the tree was an old truck, rusted and dismantled by time. The wooden seats were rotted so rather than driving the thing around we searched for treasure. I found a few rusted nuts and bolts, some glass and other things that I’d find some use for. Then Matthew found a treasure that put even the lure to shame. It was an Indian head penny and in good condition. I was jealous; I took the penny, for safekeeping, and referred to it from then on out as the penny we’d found…
Only one other time do I remember being really jealous of someone who found something, it was near mono lake at a pumice mine that Krista found an old tobacco can, a treasure in it’s self, but making it one of the greatest finds of all was that it contained an old brittle deed to the pumice mine it’s self. I’d learned my lesson by then and got over the surge of envy without doing anything rash, though again I did take it for safekeeping (it’s still in the curio)…
Any way the penny…we tried to imagine the penny falling from the man’s pocket and what happened to him after his truck broke down under the tree so many years ago. We went back a few times, looking for more treasure and the old man’s bones probably, but soon the bulldozers came through and took the truck, the tree, and all the dragon remains and planted houses. I kept the penny as long as I can remember, but eventually it disappeared like the rest of it…
Anyway back to that day at Contra Loma - tired, jealous, treasureless, and in trouble, I got my bike and started home. Rounding a corner down the steep hill by the dam I hit some gravel and things went fuzzy. There was a dull thud and some stars. I dizzily got up and not feeling any pain proceeded to get on my bike when some guy axed if I was OK. I would have answered that I was but he finished his question with “you’re bleeding”. I looked down and saw my leg covered in blood and then came the pain. The handgrips on my bike were worn through on the ends and in the crash the handlebars had stuck into my leg leaving a nice hole. Too embarrassed to go back up the hill to Dad and Joseph I pointed toward our home on marble drive, he pushed me the two or three miles back home…
Then came October General Conference. Like I said it was a perfect Saturday and after the first session the mountain began to call so Me, Joseph, Matthew and some friends. We went to diamond fork canyon for a ride. It was great, well that is until Matthew came around a corner and found me climbing back up the bank of a twenty foot drop into a dry creak bed. I’d seen a good place for a jump but the trail decided to take a right when I was in mid air. Matthew got the heap that was my bike from the bottom while I tried to use my right arm, it didn’t work. I crashed three or four more times on the way down the mountain and crashing on my lame arm didn’t feel so hot, and it was getting hard to find skin left on my hands to pick the gravel out of. I kept crashing because my only good arm happened to be on the side with the front brake, when I tried to slow down over the handle bars I’d go, my right arm didn’t work at all. I remember it was six months later when my arm was starting to feel better. I remember because that weekend, the Sunday evening after April Conference, my bike got stolen; I’d wanted to go on a bike ride the day before but decided to wait another week for my arm to heal and for a non-Conference weekend…
I ended up buying the Moab that I was on that wet grey morning on the way to work. As I often do, I had my eyes pealed looking fore some sort of treasure on the side of the road. You never know when you’ll run across a fishing lure or an old tobacco can with a deed to a pumice mine in it. As I road along I saw some pennies on the ground. Almost enough to stop and pick them up but I decided not to, a few pedals later I found some more. I decided I’d better not miss out on 10¢, if it was a dime I would get it. So I stopped and collected the change. Then I found a broken roll of pennies. I thought all the pennies made sense now as I picked up the soggy roll. I found a few more rolls and was starting to wonder what these pennies were doing all over. I had two to three dollars worth. Slowly, I made my way down the sidewalk collecting pennies. Soon, I was only keeping the ones mostly wrapped up and feeling rich with five or so dollars in pennies. That’s when I saw it, a big canvas bag. I walked up to it and looked and it was full of pennies all rolled and not too wet thanks to the canvas bag. I hefted them into my backpack and with a little difficulty worked it onto my back. It was heavy; it felt like 50lbs and I was winded and tired by the time I got to work and my back was sore. I was worried that my backpack would tear but it held out. Once I threw the bag under my desk, I began to wonder, how does a canvas bag full of pennies…pennies rolled and marked US bank…my eyes began to get wide…find it’s self on the side of the road...not far from a US bank…and actually it was right in front of a police station that I loaded them into my backpack…but what would bank robbers want with pennies...but then again they didn’t keep the pennies…I did…Uh Oh…If I had just robbed a bank and saw that I had a bag full of pennies I’d probably toss it too…I can’t imagine making a get away with 50lbs of pennies, let alone riding to work with them in my backpack…or maybe they tossed’em on the steps of the police station to say “Ha ha piggies you can’t catch us!”…I waited till I had the car to bring them home. It turned out that it was only 40lbs but it turned out to be $50.00 in pennies. I still have them out in the garage. Finally after so many years of searching I found my treasure.

Aaron 2002