That's exactly what I meant. The piece uses parallel construction as a device to explain the sense of freedom. Uber is the starship of the present, compared to the the car or the taxi, in the same way that a bicycle is the starship of the past, compared to walking. No, it wasn't explicitly stated, but easily inferred that to the younger version of the author, the bicycle is a starship.

In reading the piece, I thought it would break the parallel construction by joining the present back to the past. It didn't. But it didn't explain why those couldn't be connected other than "We aren’t children anymore and things cost money."

I took that line to mean that the author recognized a need to separate the worlds of childhood and adulthood. I didn't like this explanation because bicycles do cost money. Eg, in the jwz link I posted, jwz points out that bicycles will get stolen, so use cheap bikes and don't get attached to it. If the mean time between thefts is 100 trips, then that's about $5/trip, or well below the cost of a car, taxi, and Uber.