I recently purchased a new-to-me vehicle. I didn’t want a new car, mind you — rather, fate decided I needed a change in conveyance. We had a Nissan Xterra and dutifully kept it in good shape until it was paid off, at which point it gave a tired shrug and began to deteriorate before our eyes.

Like a time bomb programmed into the car’s computer, systems began to fail in a cascade of badness. The paint conspired with a Christmas tree of warning lights on the dash panel. On the first warm day, the air conditioning gave a mighty death rattle and something akin to a burning gym sock smell filtered into the cabin. The transmission began to buck and, although we’ve never hauled anything much larger than our dogs, a leaf spring broke. Times were easier when I was able to move under my own power — back in the days of bikes.

I miss it, I really do. If I didn’t live so far from work, I’d still be tempted to get along via pedal power. As a kid, I wasn’t even that crazy about being the first of my friends to get a driver’s license as I readily rode my bike in virtually all weather all across the Midcoast region.

My first bike was a little red, nondescript model with training wheels. I didn’t have the training wheels on long before I announced I was ready to “big kid” my way up in the world. It was like riding on the air as I rode up and down the sidewalk in my Columbia Avenue neighborhood. There would be a dip with each driveway, followed by a gentle rise — the wheels rolled and the earth below felt like it was breathing.

This was freedom only a kid would know. Running or rolling down a grassy hill was exhilarating in its own right but this was a notion akin to flight. As with any small bird, I wobbled a bit with first flight but soon my little red bike was connected to my every whim, darting up my driveway or making long, lazy loops in Windorf Circle. Riding up and down the gentle slope behind my house to the playground beyond, I would become lost in my thoughts — whatever such thoughts consumed a seven-year-old. The bike became an extension, like walking thoughtlessly in an open field. When I had completed my meanderings around the playground equipment of the time — a black flying saucer, the twirly slide, the red slide and swings, I ended with a barreling dive back down the slope toward my house.

There were many such dirt paths then, worn by countless children’s feet and bicycle tires. The Navy has, since then, legitimized most of them by paving the areas the grass had long surrendered to.

I’ve biked plenty as an adult, but like most things “adult,” it’s lost its flavor, become dulled by adult thoughts and disused or overburdened adult senses. The gentle breathing of the earth beneath my small wheels has lost its thrill and me, my connection with it. Freedom gave way to a helmet strapped to my dome and worrisome sidelong glances into indifferent traffic. Is my heart sound? How bad will my allergies be today? Will I “get there and back” on time? No, adultness is not fit for a bicycle and I wonder when I see grown ups on bikes that cost more than many cars I’ve owned over the years. How can there be any joy in that? “I’m working toward a triathlon,” I’ve been told — or “I’m training for the trek across Maine.”

Me, I just want to feel the earth breathe again — but cannot.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the very adult fact that I have a newish car with paid maintenance for the next eight years. That’ll put me at — well, old enough to not want to tuck under my car. I’ll take the hills in Durham with just a little extra oomph, and try my best to remember the feeling of two little wheels beneath me.

Douglas McIntire is a writer and educator in the Midcoast who will spend the next five years paying off the most adult car he’s had thus far. He can be reached at [email protected].