Once when I was coming home from vacation, I pulled up at the toll booth where you pay for parking your car at Pittsburgh International, fresh and relaxed from my trip, and the guy asked me if I wanted the handicapped rate.

"W-why?" I asked slowly.

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"Well, I see you got that wheelchair in the back of the car. That is a wheelchair, right?"

"No," I said, "It's my bicycle." And then I paid the outrageous full price for a week's parking at the airport and thought, I am dumb as a box of hair. I could have said, "That's right, mister: The Trek 24-speed wheelchair, complete with bottle cage and derailleur. How big a discount do I get, exactly?"

To be fair to Airport Parking Guy, it was dark, and the bike was in two pieces, the front wheel having been removed and stacked on top of the frame so I could fit it in my car.

As a professional writer, I am already anticipating the three questions you, the reader, have for me.

1: Why don't you just get a bike rack?

Well, I had a bike rack, but I drive a hatchback with a very sloping back window, and the rack never fit securely onto the hypotenuse, as it were. The last thing in the world a cyclist needs is a bike rack that almost fits. You don't want to be changing lanes on the parkway and think, whew, I sure can see better now that stupid wheel isn't taking up the whole mirror. AAAAAAA!

But I discovered that, if I folded the back seats down and took the front wheel off the bike, I could gouge and disfigure the inside of my car instead of the outside.

2: Why would you leave your bike in the back of your car for a week while you fly away on vacation somewhere?

Because it's cheaper than hiring a sitter.

Every time I attempt to remove the bicycle from the back of my car, the handlebars get caught in the autoturf (you know, that fake fuzzy "carpeting"), I strain my back, the crank snags on the lip of the trunk and I get tire tracks on my shirt. Then I have to drag it down the stairs to the basement and hang it up next to the spiders.

The very next time I want to ride, I have to reverse the whole process. It's very unsettling for the spiders. Not to mention my sacroiliac, which has already tried to get a PFA order against me.

So I just leave it in the car. I know someday I will regret this, if I am ever at a party with, say, George Clooney AND Antonio Banderas, and they both need a ride somewhere, and I have only one seat available.

On the other hand, that's what laps are for.

3. You weren't kidding about the box of hair, were you?

No, and here's further evidence: I was discussing the joys of summer cycling on the Montour Trail with a girl whom I was paying to manicure my nails. Getting my nails done during biking season is like having the maid do up the hotel room right before Courtney Love checks in.

After 20 or 25 miles on a trail (particularly the Montour, whose surface offers two options: dust and mud), I feel righteous and fit and full of fresh air and the delights of nature. Unfortunately, I look like hell on toast.

When you ride on a bike trail in summer, you encounter lots of wildlife. I've seen deer, unusual birds, groundhogs, a family of skunks, the occasional snake, and oodles of rabbits and chipmunks. And though I've had a few close calls -- I swear the chipmunks are playing chicken -- I've never hit a critter.

But I can't say the same about the bugs.

I realize they get the worst of the collisions, but I'm not the one with the exoskeleton. Some of those hard-shelled beetley things can give you a nasty thwack at high speed.

The worst is when something crashes into my helmet, because then I'm left to wonder whether it ricocheted into one of the many vents and is now limping around in my hair, shaking off the impact and plotting revenge on my scalp.

And then there are the plagues of grasshoppers and clouds of gnats. Insect repellent is useless. What you need is a windshield. Or a flamethrower.

I started wearing sunglasses regularly because things that fly into your eye are a real problem. You claw at your face, trying to steer with one hand, and without a mirror you have no way to be sure, when you exchange pleasantries with the attractive guy also filling his water bottle at the fountain, that your nose isn't sprinkled with little hairy legs.

I always go directly home from a trail ride. I have scratches and dirt on my legs, insect parts on my shirt and severe helmet hair.

The bike stays in the car. The spiders charge too much to watch it.