Sculpin

I never really learned to ride a bike, you know. When I was a little kid, I won one in a contest from Jolly Time Ice Cream. It was a sparkly powder-blue machine that I picked up at Gregg’s. But I lived on Capitol Hill, which wasn’t exactly learn-to-ride-a-bike territory, and I was allowed only to ride it in circles in the neighbor’s driveway. (Thank you, Mrs. Hedeen, wherever you are.) So my bikeriding experience is pretty much limited to knowing that the feet go on top of the pedals.

Back in 2006, I took a little stab at learning to ride a bike by myself, using Josh’s old electric. But I went out only three times. The summer got away from me — I was doing some hardcore gardening that year — and I became more interested in our new tandem; then, when fall came, some heavy family drama distracted me. (In retrospect, I wish I’d spent less time worrying about other people’s opinions and more time riding a bike. I suspect I can file that under Important Life Lessons.) And then in the spring of 2007, I sprained my hip in yoga. I really nailed it. I could hardly walk for a month; I hired gardeners because I couldn’t put enough weight through it to use a shovel, even six months later; and, above all, I wasn’t going to get back on that bike. The tandem was okay because it’s a step-through, and it wasn’t too long before I was able to carefully slide one foot over that low top tube. (It was perhaps less okay than I was letting on, but I had cabin fever. Can you blame me?) Anything higher than that? No way.

That hip is a continuing problem, but I have enough play in it now that I can get on the bike if I lean it waaaaaaaaay over. Getting off the bike presents more of a technical problem; the best I can do involves a lot of sideways hopping. Graceful! But I can sort of manage it, which is good enough for now. So today, back to the parking lot I went, back to the trusty old electric, with Josh for moral support.

Holy crap, that’s hard. I started at the top of a tiny little slope, hardly a grade at all, but I felt like I was peering down into the abyss. “Okay, now I let go of the brakes,” I told my hands, but they weren’t listening. There were cracks in the pavement which clearly wanted to eat one of my tires and kill me. Also a grate, which wanted to eat a tire and kill me. And a curb, which was going to call my tires to it, eat them, and kill me. Cars were whizzing by not 200 feet from me, and probably one of them was going to come over and kill me. At some point I was going to have to turn a corner, which was probably going to kill me. However, if I didn’t let go of those brakes I was going to die of shame for sure, so with an effort I unclamped my fingers and off I went. Miraculously my left foot found its pedal. Impossibly I made the turn. Someone was shrieking in terror, but as long as that was just me, that was okay.

“Brake! Braaaaaaaake!” yelled Josh as I coasted to a stop. Right. Braking. We have to do that when we’re not on a tandem. I forgot.

It’s kind of tricky to learn a scary new thing when your heart rate isn’t supposed to get much over 140. I hopped my way sideways off the bike and sat down, practicing the emergency edition of my old biofeedback exercises, until my heart slowed to something more reasonable; then I tried it again. My leg seemed too heavy to lift a foot onto the pedals, mysteriously heavy the way a reluctant cat can make itself heavier than it should possibly be. But lift it I did and off I went again, and it was a little better. I was still shrieking in terror, but I could shriek words now: “Everything is fine! Everything is perfectly fine!” On Josh’s advice, I tried focusing out a little further from the bike, which seemed to help. Turning seemed to get even harder, though, until I was shouting at the bike, “Turn! Turn, you fucker, turn!”

We can’t have been out there for more than ten minutes, but that was plenty for the first day. Josh swears that I can learn to ride a bike in a month, no problem. If the weather holds even a little, we’ll find out.

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