Back to the Suzy
(June 16, 2006)

I was playing some double-dutch with the neighbourhood kids when my cell phone rang. As I answered it (without stopping my amazing skipping), the clever kids sang.

“How many times will Suzy’s cell phone ring? One, Two, Three, Four…”

The call was from my friend Heidi.
“Suzy what are you up to?”
“Skipping.”
“Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five…”
“How about this afternoon?”
“Nothing.”
“Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five…”
“Good, let’s go riding.”

My friend Heidi is an aspiring professional cyclist, travelling the world from bicycle race to bicycle race. Sometimes, in order to keep herself grounded, she likes to go for fun rides around the city – thus her invitation to me.

I met her at the usual location but she did not have her usual bicycle. Her new bicycle was a teal green colour with a contraption over the back wheel. The contraption extended the bicycle’s length by at least one-third.

“You noticed my new bike huh?”
I concurred.
“Look at these modifications!”

“You see here, on the frame just above the cranks?”
“You mean pedals?”
“Yes, above the pedals, on the frame I installed a flux capacitor.”
“What’s a flux capacitor?”
“It’s what makes time travel possible.”

“You mean?”
“Yes, I have created a time-travelling bike. I call it “La Bicicletta di Time” or in English “The Time Bike.”

What a horrible name for a time machine! A time machine should have a cool name like “Time Voyageur” or “Time-o-naut”, “Clockstopper” or “Beaucoup de Temp” – not “La Bicicletta di Time”. Nevertheless, I kept my mouth shut, as I did not want to ruin Heidi’s moment.

“Flux capacitor? I know that term. Oh! It’s from that movie Back to the Future with Michael J. Fox! You stole it.”

“The term is from that 1985 classic film about a time travelling car but I didn’t steal it. As long as I give the movie credit for my inspiration when talking about the La Bicicletta di Time – I’m not violating any copyright laws. It’s just like when someone writes a story. As long as they give credit, it’s not plagiarism. It may be a lame attempt at being creative but it’s not ethically wrong.”

“Oh, very clever indeed. Please proceed.”

“So, one day while fixing my toilet, I hit my head on its tank. I sat down at the kitchen table to gather my senses and drew this.”

She reached into her bicycle jersey pocket and retrieved a sketch. I looked at its Y-shaped design.
“It’s the flux capacitor!”

Heidi told me all her time travelling misadventures but they weren’t misadventures. She would only use the time travel bicycle to travel to the future to scout her future bicycle races. She would examine the strategies and team tactics used against her at future races. Once back in the present she would counter these strategies and win the race and the precious prize money.

“Don’t you use it for anything else?“

“Well I do buy a newspaper in the future and then bet on present day sporting events. It pays for my race entry fees.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to buy a sports almanac – you know instead of buying all those newspapers?”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be as much fun. What’s the point of a time machine if you don’t travel in time?”

“I don’t want to rain on your parade but shouldn’t you be using the time machine for more than scouting bicycle races and sports gambling? It seems a little, just a insy bit wrong.”

“Wrong? I will tell you what is wrong! There is so little government and so little corporate Canada support for an up-and-coming athlete like me. And especially in women sports. The fact that I had to make a time machine to support my myself financially to train so that Canada can win a gold medal is what is really wrong.”

I had no reply to the 1.21 jigowatts of bitterness.

“Don’t worry Suzy – no hard feelings. Besides, I know my usage of the La Bicicletta di Time is not ethically the best – which is why I invited you. I need you to travel into the future with me.”

“Why?”
She reached into her other bicycle jersey pocket.
“I have gone a little bit further into the future – past my bike career.”

She gave me a future newspaper. On the front was a giant picture of me!

“What happens to me? Look at this picture. Brown hair! An orange outfit! I wouldn’t be caught dead in those colours.”

“And yet you were.”

I flipped over to the paper to the headline, which reads “Former Princess of Pink Found Dead in Orange!”

“I die?”
“Not if we can help it. I need you to help me save the future you. Jump on the back of my Bianchi. To the Future!”

I hopped on the back of the time travelling bicycle.
“Umm… don’t we need helmets?”
She put on her sunglasses.
“Helmets? Where we're going we don’t need helmets!”

“Why, is the future concussion free?”
“No, because I’ve seen the future and we travel there without any trouble.”

Heidi pedalled and pedalled, sneaking in behind a TTC bus. I looked down at the speedometre.

“87 km/h! Wow. How can you pedal this fast?”
“It's called drafting. Because we are so close to the bus - the bus is blocking all the wind - thus we can go faster on less energy. It’s a cycling thing.”

Once we reached 89 km/h per I saw a white light and heard a boom of thunder. Before I knew it, we were in the future. Heidi stopped her bicycle at the side of the road. We sat on a bus stop bench to rest as time travelling can be tiring.

“Here we are – 17 years into the future!”
I looked at the surroundings.

“Everything looks basically the same.”
“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know – maybe flying cars, book-burning firemen, lots of TV screens and cameras, Ipods the size of pennies. Maybe the odd alien or talking monkey.”
“You read too much science fiction.”

“I do not! You’ll be happy to know I rarely read at all. Oh wait… did I just make fun of myself?"

“The future is not always gloomy and evil. From my experience it’s usually the same – just the materials are leaner and the people are fatter.”

Heidi looked at her watch.
“We better go save your life.”

We (I mean Heidi) biked to a quiet neighbourhood street lined with maple trees.
“There you are!”
“Where?”
“Up in the tree!”

I looked up into one of the maple trees and to my disappointment, I saw the future-me. To my further disappointment, I was using binoculars to spy on the house across the street. Moreover, to my greatest disappointment I had brown hair and was wearing orange – just like my future-me corpse photo!

“Pumpkin me to death! I am wearing orange. Oh the future is a dark and gloomy place!”

At that moment, the future-me fell from the tree down to the road. Lying on the ground, the future-me could not get out of the way of oncoming traffic. Heidi and I sprinted to the future-me and pulled her to safety.

“Oh thank you Heidi and past-me.”
“How did you know our names?” I asked myself.
“Because past-me, I was you at one point. I knew you would save me as seventeen short years ago I was exactly in your shoes. I too saved the future-me.”
“Oh this is confusing.” I rebuffed.

Heidi tried to unconfuse me.
“Time travelling is confusing Suzy. The space-time continuum is hard to explain so I won’t bother.”
“Is it because it is hard to explain or because you don’t understand it yourself?”

Heidi ignored me and spoke to the future-me.
“What were you doing in that tree.”
“You see that building across the street?”
“The really big old one with the 8 foot high brick wall?”
“Yes.”
“That’s World of Ham’s headquarters.”
“That would explain the hideous orange bricks.” I said.
“I know, aren’t they just hideous? The future-me concurred with me. She was a cool cat that future-me.

Heidi interrupted the conservation of pretty Suzys.
“Why spy on World of Ham? Don’t you still work there?”

“I was let go shortly after World of Ham made it big. As Ham said ‘World of Ham didn’t go mainstream – mainstream came to World of Ham. Oh past-me and Heidi, World of Ham, it’s… oh the future is a dark an gloomy place.”

“Hey I just said that. How ironic the future-me would repeat the present-me in the future?"

Heidi ignored me and spoke to the future-me.
“If you knew the car was going to hit you, why climb the tree?”
“Because saving me is not your quest. The true meaning of this visit is something more important. Much more important indeed!”

“More important than saving my future-me from death?”
“The boardwalk will explain it all.”

Before we left to fullfill our quest, I had one last question for the future-me.

“Future-me, should I invest in Freedom 55?”
“Absolutely, I wouldn’t have my sailboat without it.”
"We have a sailboat?"
"How else would we have won the America's Cup?"

It was close to sunset by the time we bicycled to the boardwalk. We walked along the beach and then I saw it in the distance – the purpose of our quest.

“It can’t be!” I screamed as I ran towards it.

Heidi chased me along the beach until she caught me.
“What is it Suzy? Oh my!”

There on the future beach next to the boardwalk was a statue. But not just any statue for it was a huge statue of… Ham. The inscription at its base read “Visionary, Mentor, Hero”. In dismay, I dropped to my knees on the beach. As I pounded my fists into the sand, I shouted

“You Maniac Ham! You ruined the future! Ah, darn you! Darn you all to hell!”