I spotted the black, inanimate objects near a store in town. One man stood guard while the rest of the riders shopped for food.

“I’ve never seen such beautiful bikes!” I said to the guy standing guard. Each bicycle a jumble of gears and chain, the frames sleek yet sturdy. “Where are you biking to?”

“Not the whole Oregon route this time,” said the man. “We started at Mitchell, rode to Long Creek. Coming to John Day we hit sun, torrential rain, and snow. We’re heading to Dayville, then back to Mitchell.”

When the rest of the group returned, the bikers, dressed in lean and lithe biking outfits, clustered around their transportation. I wondered what the bikes would look like if they were alive. Definitely black panthers, muscled and alert with paws clawing the ground, impatient to race onto the open road.

Knowing my own current bike, dusty and with two flat tires, reclined in a shed, I broke out in a case of reminiscence for my own bike Glory Days. My bicycle as a kid was a blue, one-speed, Schwinn beauty, heavy as a freight train locomotive.

We lived at the edge of town with fields and woods to explore. On gravel roads, we pushed our bikes up steep grades. Coasting down a gravel hill allowed opportunities to wipe out on corners, spreading gravel like a road grader and leaving us bloody with a generous supply of scabs. Sometimes we skidded into a ditch and landed on softer objects: poison oak, thorny berry canes, rotted fir logs — home to stinging ants.

In a word, what did owning a bike give us? Freedom!

My younger brothers and I explored with the intensity of Lewis and Clark. What did we discover? Some of our finds: trees to climb, pond filled with tadpoles, the world’s biggest mud puddle, perfect kite-flying hill, and fields with frolicking colts, calves, lambs and piglets.

What skills did we learn?

We gained the ability to pedal like crazy with one leg, while holding the other leg on the bike handlebars to keep farm dogs, with their breath like a firestorm, teeth like grizzly claws, and the personality of a Tasmanian devil, from divesting us from a pant leg and an ankle bone, as they raced after our bikes, snarling and slobbering in anticipation of fresh meat.

After we shared this dog-related information, others spread rumors that what we thought were raised with grizzlies were more along the breeding line of cocker spaniels, probably inviting us in for cookies and milk.

One big discovery while out biking — finding the patch of blackberries in a gully off a gravel road. These weren’t low-growing native blackberries but rather “Himalayan blackberries,” considered an “introduced invasive pest.” The huge purple berries have an intense blackberry flavor.

Drawbacks to Himalayan blackberries: lot of seeds, fragile fruit (puddle in a berry pail before you can reach home), vines a story or more tall and thicker than a man’s thumb, thorns as persistent as barb wire and, as sometimes in life, the best berries dangled deep into the plants.

Not a problem for a kid with a bike. My brothers and I raced home. We biked back to the berry site wearing long-sleeved shirts and berry pails tied with rope at our waist. We returned home bloody, disheveled and triumphant. We handed Mom our berry harvest and our request.

Mom knew the challenge of picking Himalayan blackberries. My brothers and I enjoyed warm Himalayan blackberry pie on that summer afternoon. Not a bad haul for a day’s bicycle jaunt.