HE WAS A TROUBLED KID FROM A BROKEN HOME. THEN HE FOUND BIKES.

BRYAN ALBRIGHT LEARNED EARLY THAT LIFE COULD BE CRUEL AND UNPREDICTABLE. CYCLING BECAME THE ONE THING HE COULD COUNT ON.

- IAN DILLE

HIS FIRST BIKE WAS RED. AND IT HAD A FLAT TIRE.

BRYAN ROLLED THE BIKE ACROSS THE STREET NOT long after I moved in. A cherubic, 11-year-old fifth-grader, bright-eyed and brown-haired, trudging up my steep driveway, he found me in my garage where I was drilling holes for bike hooks, my cycling gear spread across the floor.

“Can you help me fix this?” he asked, or something along those lines. The wheel was out of true and the brakes rubbed, so we fixed those too. Then we adjusted the gears.

We tested the bike out with a lap around the park, and a promise to go ride again.

Bryan’s Aunt Laura had bought him that bike not long after he came to live with her. Every kid should have a bike, she believed. Especially Bryan.

Bryan, who had been pulled from his mother and siblings by Child Protective Services, put up a thuggish front and wouldn’t really talk to Laura “unless it was about Nazis,” she says, “or nuclear weapons.”

Laura was 35 at the time and, as the oldest sibling, had been born into the role of babysitter to “a bunch of snotty-nosed” nieces and nephews. The desire to have children of her own had long since extinguished. Laura’s sister (Bryan’s mother) had been through some trauma and had used drugs. Laura was aware that her kids suffered from neglect as a result. She expected that the state might one day contact her about Bryan.

Laura and Bryan’s house had two cabs parked in the driveway. An old yellow minivan, a hand-me-down from Laura’s dad. And an always-clean Chrysler 300, Dylan’s car.