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tell they didn’t believe Rod any more than I did. Surely no store could be that big. We hadn’t known Rod long, but we had already become suspicious that he exaggerated, especially when it came to stories about his life in the big city. We all wanted to ask the big question, but no one dared. We all wanted to ride it, but we felt lucky just to be able to touch it and get close to it. Rod showed us how it changed gears. He even turned it upside down and we watched as the gears slid onto smaller and smaller sprockets and the wheel turned faster and faster. We shook our heads in disbelief. None of us had ever seen a bike with more than one gear. Heck, none of us had ever seen a bike that wasn’t held together with baling twine, wire, and duct tape. This was truly a marvel of engineering. Next, Rod had to show us how it worked. He rode it up the road a short distance and then came whizzing by. “Wow!” Buster said. “It can really fly.” Flying made us consider one other thing. We had developed a dirt ramp in Lenny’s barnyard that we liked to jump with our bikes, coming down hard on the other side, and immediately sliding to a stop a safe distance from the 2