Hitting the Pavement

I learned how to ride my bike in Florida. Nice, flat, even Florida. To be honest, I don’t even remember who taught me how to ride, although I seriously doubt it was my mother. As far as I know, she has never ridden a bike. I’ve never seen her on one, anyway. I imagine I just spontaneously understood the whole thing, the balancing, the pedaling, the stopping without flying over the handle bars. I had those cool spoke decorations that looked like segments of straws, and I don’t exactly recall, but there might have been a banana seat involved.

As an adult, I don’t ride my bike often. I have a shitty mountain bike I bought at Kmart back in 1993, when that was all I could afford. I rode it around my apartment complex in Charleston, also a level ground location, but like Florida, it was humid as a bain marie and left me feeling like I was cooking a flan in my armpits. I moved to Phoenix soon after, and my husband and I finally got to see what mountain biking was all about. We took our bikes over to South Mountain Park not far from our apartment and attempted our first mountain ride. It took us twenty minutes to pedal to where the trail began, going slightly uphill. When we got to the start of the trail head, I had to get off my bike and dry heave behind a cactus. When my breathing returned to a normal wheeze, we got back on our bikes and rode downhill towards the parking lot. I was convinced that at any second, I would hit a rock and go hurtling off the side of the mountain to my death. The excruciating twenty minute ride uphill was an embarrassing five minute ride downhill. Our bikes remained parked for the rest of the year we lived in Phoenix. We felt justified because it was too damn hot to do much of anything there except watch television and discover new ice cream shops.

Now I live in Greenville, South Carolina, a small city with beautiful rolling foothills which are deceptively steep. I have attempted hauling that old mountain bike out a few times, but the childhood thrill of coasting down the road with the wind blowing back my hair has morphed into a more adult phobia of terrifying freewheeling which will lead to massive head trauma. Instead, I stick to spin class at the gym. Sure, I have heard of people careening over their stationary handlebars while sprinting or getting ripped by a wayward pedal when their shoe flies out of the cage. But most of the injuries seem to be less obvious, like sore asses and tweaked knee ligaments. Plus, I can sit near a fan in the dark and pretend I am riding fast, the wind in my hair, a kid again, and not worry about dog attacks or getting flattened by a Lincoln Navigator.

Unfortunately, my two daughters have inherited my healthy dislike of potential injuries. At 10 and 8, they still do not know how to ride their bikes. It’s not like my husband and I didn’t try to teach them how to ride. We started out with the basic tricycle, moved on to a Big Wheel, threw in a Care Bear scooter and a Little Tikes Little Red Coupe, all the while trying to encourage a love of independence and of physical exercise, in a way that didn’t involve my hovering around them like a human safety net. They even had little bikes with little training wheels, the size a three year old might ride, if a three year old wasn’t paralyzed by a fear of subdermal hematoma.

When they each turned six, we presented them with “big girl” bikes, to which we then added training wheels. The training wheels never worked well because they were too small for the bikes, and the girls never wanted to try because the wobbling was more than they could bear. Sure, once a year or so we would get all helmeted up and head outside, but then fear would overtake E and S and the screaming and crying would follow. It was all I could do to get E to sit and balance with me holding on to both the handlebars and the back of the seat. S tended to not be as scared as E, but if her big sister wasn’t going to do it, than screw it, she wasn’t either.

I tried to convince them that riding a bike isn’t so tough. I told them how I still knew how to do it, even though it was years ago since I rode regularly. I showed them pictures of a sea of Asians riding their bikes to work because it was too crowded and expensive for everyone to have a car. I tried the environmental angle, how no pollution was created because of a human powered bike ride. Everywhere we drove, I would point out idiots riding their bikes. “Look, kids,” I’d say. “That guy looks drunk, and he can still manage to balance and tootle down the median into oncoming traffic. If he can ride a bike, so can you!”

Fast forward to last month. S, at eight years old, decided it was time for her to learn to ride her bike. E, at ten years old, refused to accept her baby sister mastering this basic childhood skill before her. So it became a challenge, which meant that every night after dinner, we braved blood thirsty mosquitoes and 98% humidity to help them overcome their fears.

S was highly motivated, and she also has the ability to make changes when she wants to, a skill most adults never master. She wanted to learn how to ride her bike, so she got on it and rode. Sure, she still had training wheels. Yes, she fell over a couple of times, even with said training wheels. But she got back up and tried again. It was a beautiful thing to watch. By the end of the second night, she could pedal mighty speedy up and down the street, with barely a plastic rattle of training wheel to be heard. Her upper lip was beady with sweat. Her face was blood red from the heat and the exertion. Her hair was matted and wet under her helmet. Most of all, she glowed with pride.

E, on the other hand, made room for panic on the bike. She has outgrown her blue Schwinn Dee-Lite, since it was purchased for an anxious six year old who wouldn't sit on it. Now she is almost my height, and her knees would hit her chin if she could muster the bravado to actually ride it. Her training wheels popped off on their own the first night she walked it up and down the street in front of our house, just testing the waters, getting the feel of it. She progressed to very stiff balancing and rejecting help while yelling at us for pressuring her the second night. The third night, she threw the bike on the ground and ran when another one of her fears joined us, the bee cleverly disguised as a hornet. (All bees are known as hornets around here, as if relabeling them justifies that level of terror.) The fourth night, she moved on to slow pedaling while either my husband or I held onto the back of her seat. In the meantime, S was riding literally in circles around her.

Drastic times, being what they are, meant I had to call in some reinforcements. My friend JR took a crack at it, and we saw E pedal independently about five times before she realized she was solo and stopped. MJ, a very experienced road biker, gave it a whirl. She came over with her combination of tough love and gentle coddling. “You can do it, you just have to believe,” she would say. When E would answer her, MJ shouted,” Less talking and more pedaling!”

While my husband and I pretended to be busy with our Frisbee, MJ convinced her to fly from the nest. E was riding! Not far, not fast, and definitely not stable, but it still counted. No training wheels were in sight, no adult hands clenched the seat back, and no more yelling could be heard.

The next day, E’s friend CM came over to play, and E very much wanted to show off her new skills. They went outside and tried some more, and with CM’s gentle guidance and encouragement, E started to ride all by herself. She could push off and pedal and get enough speed to make it farther than a yardstick. I was so happy that CM was here to make E feel comfortable, since she didn’t want to listen to the rest of us. The truth is, she is more comfortable with the rest of us, but with CM she had to be brave. Whatever. It worked.

We got E to ride from one mailbox to the next, then to another. Finally, being the idiot I am, I decided we all needed to ride from stop sign to stop sign. I didn’t take into account E’s lack of comfort and her inability to steer nor the subtle downhill curve in the road. We made it to one stop sign, turned around, and while I was guiding S back to our house, E bit it. I didn’t see it happen. All I saw was E lying on her back on the street, her bike on top of her like crumpled up sheets. She was crying softly, and both of her shoes had popped off. As I helped her up, I noticed the stream of blood flowing from her elbow. CM’s eyes had never looked bigger. I escorted E back to the house, leaving S to flounder on her own. After cleaning up the blood, which made E almost faint on top of CM, and assessing all other injuries, E was done biking for a while.

S, on the other hand, really was ready to roll. After a couple of days’ hiatus, during which E convinced herself she had cracked a rib even though she was fully capable of swimming and attempting to play tennis, S persuaded us to go back outside with the bikes and continue what she started. My husband took her training wheels off, and after the practice she had, she got on and rode. She has confidence and speed and a little style. She’s not ready for trail riding yet, but with a bit more practice, she isn’t far from it. E, however, not so much. She is back to riding by the yardstick, after talking too much, over-thinking, and losing her temper with anyone close by.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike. What I hope is that, like me, E forgets how she learned to ride a bike.