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The son who was somehow on a bicycle before he walked now rides five hundred miles through open roads and back woods, claiming the country by endurance.

The compression makes the boast feel legendary, as though childhood and adulthood have been folded into one continuous motion. Bike oh bikes is both affectionate and slightly awed, keeping the machine at the center of his identity. Saying the country is his does not sound possessive so much as earned through repeated passage.

The whole sequence boiled to a near-legend: 'On a bicycle before he walked / Bike oh bikes / Twenty five miles an hour,' and 'Now he rides five hundred miles / at a time / Across the open roads and back / woods of this country / because it is his.' The compression folds childhood and adulthood into one unbroken motion, and the final 'because it is his' makes ownership a thing earned by repeated passage rather than possessed.