Page 7 - LIfesOuttakes2
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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
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