The Bicycle That Wanted to Race
by Namu Marupudi
Every morning, Nia rolled her bicycle out of the garage for their ride to school.
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About this story
Every morning, Nia rolls her bicycle out of the garage: Wobbles, with scratched paint, a rusty bell, and a single gear — her favorite thing in the whole world. When a flyer announces THE MAPLE STREET BIG RACE, Nia is thrilled and Wobbles's handlebars go shaky. At the park, sleek Blaze ('Ten gears!') and Zippy ('Racing tires!') zoom past, and Wobbles suddenly feels very old, very slow, and very rusty. But Nia wraps her arms around his handlebars: 'You've carried me through every rainstorm, every shortcut, every single day without ever giving up. That matters more than shiny paint.' They practice up the steep hill on Chestnut Street, around the curve by the pond — they tumble into the grass and get back up — until the morning of the race, when an old, dented bike named Rusty offers the wisdom that changes everything: 'The wobble never fully goes away. You just learn to ride along with it anyway.' A big-hearted story about practice, patience, and racing nobody but yourselves.
- Wobble — to shake unsteadily side to side
- Gear — the toothed wheel a bike's chain turns
- Rusty — covered in reddish-brown flakes of rust
- Kickstand — the little metal arm that holds a bike upright
- Chrome — shiny silver metal, like the fancy bikes' wheels
- Practice — doing something again and again to get better
- Chain — the linked band that turns a bike's wheels
- Teammate — the one riding with you, like Nia and Wobbles
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