Sneaking Out for a Girl Seemed Worth the Bike Ride | Cody Maxwell

stories

Jan 4

There was a period in high school when I would sneak out of my parents’ house, ride my bicycle three and a half miles across The Dalles, hang out with a girl, and ride home before anyone woke up.

This seemed entirely worth doing. Repeatedly. Eventually on school nights.

In this solo episode of Maxwell’s Kitchen, I tell a story about teenage determination, my little brother keeping a secret, and the amount of planning I was willing to put into seeing a girl. There was considerably less planning involved in what I would do at school after sleeping for approximately an hour.

In This Episode

High school life around Y2K
Sneaking out through my parents’ garage
My little brother keeping quiet
Late-night bicycle rides across The Dalles
Setting an alarm to get home before my parents woke up
Missing that alarm
Finding an address in a phone book
Arriving at a party where nobody expected me

Host

Cody Maxwell

A solo story from my high school years in The Dalles, Oregon, when a bicycle, a landline, and enough confidence could get me into situations I had no particular plan for handling.

A Perfectly Reasonable Transportation Plan

The story starts around the turn of the millennium. I was in high school, hanging out with friends, working the kinds of jobs you have when you are a teenager, and spending as much time as I could with a girl I liked.

The problem was that eventually I had to go home. Someone proposed that I could simply leave again after everyone went to bed. I do not remember whose idea it was, but I was immediately qualified to participate because I owned a bicycle.

My parents lived in a split-level house. Their bedroom was upstairs, and mine was downstairs, with a route into the garage. I could slip through, take the bike out the back door, get through the side gate, and head across town.

My younger brother knew what was happening. He was not particularly enthusiastic about the arrangement, but he kept quiet. His job in this operation was apparently to remain home with the information while I went off to conduct important teenage business.

Three and a Half Miles Was Apparently Fine

The ride took around 20 or 30 minutes, depending on how things went. There were hills, cold nights, warm nights, and the occasional animal coming out of the bushes to test whether I could remain on the bicycle.

I was also worried about getting stopped by police and brought home. Getting caught would have complicated a system that, from my perspective, was functioning beautifully.

Once I arrived, we would hang out for a few hours and set an alarm for around 4:15 in the morning. Then I would get back on the bike and ride home.

At first, I only did this on weekends. After enough successful trips, I apparently concluded that school nights were an unnecessary restriction. I would come home, sleep for another hour or two, and go to class exhausted.

The energy was there. I was simply allocating almost all of it to riding across town.

The Alarm Clock Had One Job

Occasionally, I slept through the alarm.

One morning, I woke up, looked outside, and discovered that the sun was already up. It was around six. I got on the bicycle and rode home as fast as I could, only to find my dad awake and getting ready for work.

Somehow, I managed to sneak back in and pretend I had been sleeping.

Getting away with something like that is terrible feedback for a teenager. There was very little incentive to reconsider when the evidence kept suggesting that I was excellent at this.

Eventually, she got a car, which improved the transportation situation. Sometimes I could stash my bike near a park and get picked up. One night, my friend was already in the passenger seat waiting for me. The whole thing had become a fairly elaborate way to avoid spending the night in my own bed.

Bringing a Bicycle to an Awkward Situation

The arrangement lasted for months, but eventually another guy started hanging around. I was not happy about that. He was older, available during the day, and spending time with the girl I was making all these bicycle trips to see.

One night, I could not get a straight answer about where she was going to be. I rode to her house, found she was not there, and decided to investigate.

This is where the phone book became involved.

I knew the other guy’s last name. It was unusual enough that there were only a couple of possibilities, and one listing had an address nearby. I got back on the bicycle and went to have a look.

After riding around the front, I went through the alley behind the house. Through a sliding glass door, I could see a small group of people partying inside.

I still remember their faces when I showed up. Nobody was expecting me, and the surprise did not turn into delight.

She wanted me to leave. I wanted her to come hang out with me. These were incompatible plans, and no amount of cycling had given me an advantage in the conversation.

Eventually, I left and rode home. After months of quietly navigating garages, hills, alarms, and sleeping parents, I had finally reached an obstacle that my bicycle could not solve: someone who did not want me to be there.