It was a gorgeous, sunny morning recently when I tried going on a bike ride with Ron. It was the singularly scariest event in my life.
Not that I haven’t ridden a bike—I had a mountain bike that I loved. I could run over anything, jump off of any curb, and never worried about falling. This was a road bike, which comparatively is a super tall, spindly thing that is capable of launching me face first for several yards.
I know this firsthand because when I was a kid, that’s exactly what happened.
My mom picked me up from school on her bike, she placed me on the handlebars in 1970s-approved fashion and we headed the three or four blocks home. Along the way, something went wrong and instead of the wheels propelling the bike forward, they propelled us upward. I would later describe the event to my dad in this way: “The bike twirled like a Ferris wheel. We went over the handle bars, and then the bike went over us.”
After that, bikes were not my favorite mode of transportation until a shiny red beach cruiser got me back into them when I was teen. In my adult years Ron bought me a mountain bike and I loved that, too, but he said it slowed my triathlon times so he gave it away and bought me a road bike.
It’s been hanging in our garage ever since. No triathlons, no casual bike rides. Then, recently, when I asked, like I do always, if Ron wanted to go running with me, he instead asked if I wanted to go on a bike ride with him. For some reason, the crazy cells in my brain outnumbered my normal cells that morning and, without hesitating, I said yes. Then I began to tremble.
Once on the bike I immediately knew it was a mistake. Ron is a thorough, quality-assurance type of guy. That means he’s detail-oriented, patient, and believes in explaining things fully. In my mind, however, that thoroughness translates into Charlie-Brown-like “wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.”
I started hearing “wah-wah” right after he said “24 gears” because, seriously, what the heck do you need that many gears for?
Apparently, for a lot of things, but I wouldn’t know because I lost count at first gear. This is where the argument started. He said, “Try shifting to the next gear.”
I said no. He said, “Just shift.”
I said NO. He asked why.
I said, “I like this gear just fine.” Then he started to get mad.
He rode up ahead—I’m sure to cool off—then slowed for me and tried to talk to me again. “Did you hear that golf ball? It sounded like it was headed right at us.”
“Uh huh,” I replied.
Then he pointed out some kind of flower or bug or something, and I said, “Uh huh.”
And he said, “You’re not paying attention to me; you’re just concentrating, right?”
“Yes,” I said without taking my eyes off the road three inches from my tire.
The thing about riding a road bike is that it’s waaaaay up there. I mean, it is high—like, giraffe high. So an acorn can become a threat. And lizards on a summer day—totally up for a game of tip the giant.
As I was looking down on the world with a small, stiff triangle called a “seat” stuck between my legs and a metal bar ready to cause destruction to my pelvic bones if I were to crash, my husband angrily told me, “This is 5-year-old stuff!”
It wasn’t 5-year-old stuff. “I don’t remember there being 24 gears on my bike when I was 5,” I shouted back at him just as we passed a man straddling his bike and re-hydrating.
At this point we weren’t passing landscape as much as it was passing us—much like in a Mario Bros. video game when Mario and Luigi simply stretch their legs in a sprint but go nowhere, and only the landscape moves like a treadmill until a mushroom rolls in like an acorn and knocks them over.
I don’t know if the other cyclist heard our arguing because he passed out of the screen quickly, but if he did I’m sure he had a good laugh with Mario and the gang.
Fortunately I got through the event, without dying or a crotch fracture. My husband, who definitely wasn’t laughing but instead was frustrated by my bike riding fear, rode up ahead oblivious but confident that I wouldn’t be launched like a human torpedo or impaled by a bike part if he left me behind.
I know he was mad. When I reached home his bike was hanging in the garage, and he had disappeared into the house. Shortly after my first awkward attempt to hang my bike, Ron re-appeared and used his super muscles to tame the spindly monster onto the hooks and put it at rest.
“How’d you like the ride?” he asked.
I wanted to say it was terrifying 6 miles in which I repeated the mantra, “Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall,” to myself the whole time. I wanted to say my knuckles were still white and frozen in a claw-like grip. I said, “Can’t wait to do it again.” We’ve been married 15 years for a reason.
My road bike will be shaving minutes off my 2015 triathlon times, but I guarantee I’m not going to like the process of getting there. Send comments through the executive editor at [email protected].
