Vicious cycle

My nephew recently learned how to ride a bike. It took him all of eight minutes until he was riding like whatever the cycling equivalent of Tony Hawk is. It’s clear that he is a child prodigy and will be participating in the Tour de France by the age of ten. Which means he does not take after his mother or me. 

I think I was 26 when I finally learned to ride  a bike (I’m exaggerating, but only a little). It never really interested me, even though everyone else could do it. I was happy enough to swing on the swingset or read a book instead. Apparently, my ability to procrastinate also extended to childhood milestones. My sister also seemed equally disinterested. But one Christmas we both got bikes and it became clear that we could no longer avoid it and were going to have to figure this out. I was probably 10. Which is old for a kid in the 80s to learn to ride a bike. I mean, Elliott had already flown around his town with ET in his bike basket by that age. I would never have been able to save an alien with my biking skills -- ET would’ve just laid all shriveled and dead by that river forever if he had landed at our house (and because I had no wherewithal to keep him in my bedroom, and my mom was home all day with us, she never would’ve been fooled anyway. Poor ET was doomed if he ended up in my backyard). 

Anyway, I vaguely remember learning to ride a bike. I’m certain I did not enjoy the process (I’m also certain my father didn’t either). By the way, my bike was without a doubt the nerdiest bike a kid could have asked for. It was powder blue, had a flowered banana seat and long, tall handlebars so I could sit up like a Victorian riding one of those bikes with a giant front wheel. It perfectly suited me, so I rode it until I was in at least eighth grade, and I’ve never owned another bike since. 

My dad used to take us to the elementary school playground to ride around because we lived in the middle of a hill and one false move could have us careening downhill into a parked car, mailbox, or tree. (Considering that this was in the days before helmets, this was probably a wise decision.) The school playground had a blacktop that was mostly flat, but it sat at the top of a small hill, an incline, really. Once I learned to ride, I rode in circles around that blacktop for hours. Meanwhile, my dad tried to teach my sister who was probably in second or third grade (is that normal bike riding age? I don’t know...but I do know I was a lost cause), how to ride. She’d outgrown her Christmas bike with the training wheels by that time and inherited a hand-me-down from neighbors. It had no brakes. (This seems like a good time to mention that my old-lady bike had foot brakes, not hand brakes. I don’t think I could hand brake now if you paid me. My sister’s bike had neither.) 

As I mentioned, I rode one bike and one bike only, ever. I was probably outgrowing it and it would’ve been a nice thing for me to do to give my ridiculous Jan Brady bike to my sister so she could learn . . . but I didn’t. I liked my bike and I wasn’t going to share. That banana seat was too comfortable. Besides, I didn’t know how to ride a ten speed -- gears, what?! So . . . my sister learned to ride on a bike with no brakes. And that’s how she went flying down the incline from the elementary school playground into the only car in the parking lot (ours) and smashed her face and other things. Seriously, there were toothmarks on the tires of my dad’s car. (Did I forget to mention that my dad drove us to the playground to ride our bikes? Instead of, oh, I dunno, riding our bikes to the playground in the first place? The school was like a 5 minute walk, and we could’ve mostly avoided the hills . . .) So much for not riding in front of our house to avoid potential hills and obstacles. 

As I mentioned, nobody wore bike helmets in those days, not that it would’ve protected her face anyway. She got a fat lip and bled everywhere. We flew home in the yellow Ford Escort and then my dad took her to the emergency room. I felt incredibly guilty. If only I had shared my Brady Bunch bike. What if she died? From a bike injury that was all my fault? I’m not sure I’ve ever forgiven myself for this, to this day, even though, fortunately, she didn’t die. She came home, bruised and with an ice pack. I’m not sure she ever rode a bike again. Which is why it’s sort of a miracle that her kid learned to ride a bike in an afternoon. 

But let’s be clear, I was no Lance Armstrong. Oh no. I mean, besides being driven in the car to ride my bike in circles on the playground, I didn’t do much else with it. Except for a few times over the summer when I’d ride around my grandparents’ neighborhood at the beach, where it was (big shock) also flat and I could ride my bike wherever I wanted without the threat of crashing into anything or having to face a hill of any kind. When we were at the beach, from time to time, I’d ride my bike over to the bay or the pool (both, a few minutes from my grandparents house), swing on the swings or go for a swim or fling a horseshoe crab into the water, and then ride home. It was maybe a three-minute ride. Still, I managed, on one of our beach trips, to have my own run-in, which included Swiss cheese and cost me days of summer flatland riding. 

One afternoon, I was riding my bike around the neighborhood with my dad, and we were coming back to the house. I remember distinctly, I was wearing pink shorts, a striped top, and lavender “jellies,” the plastic shoes that were all the rage that summer with the under-eleven set. They had glitter and a slight heel. The cost $6.99 at Zayre, and I loved them more than anything. (I’m positive someone -- probably everyone -- told me to wear “real shoes” for bike riding, but I didn’t listen. It was jellies or nothing.) We rounded the corner and came up toward the house when I hit a piece of Swiss cheese that had, for some reason, been left in the street. I can still see it clearly to this day. It was a full slice. It had sat in the summer sun, oozing a little, but still held its holey shape and was definitely recognizable for what it was, when I hit it with my front tire. The bike skidded a little and my right foot slipped from the pedal. My jelly shoe flung off and my foot went between the spokes of my front tire, tearing it up (my foot, not the tire). 

At that moment, I fell like I had been hit by a sniper. In both slow motion and in the blink of an eye, I was in the grass in front of my grandparents’ nextdoor neighbors’ house, wailing as if I had actually been sniped. If it was a Kathryn Bigelow movie, the camera shot would’ve been first on the front tire of my bike, spinning as it lay on its side. Then cut to my jelly in the street with heat lines coming up from the asphalt.  Followed by a cut to my face, twisted into an unrecognizable grimace, silhouetted against the sky and my grandfather’s American flag, which always flew when they were at the beach house. And, finally, cut to the slice of the skidded Swiss cheese, sweating oily in the sun. The soundtrack would have been that Doors song from Apocalypse Now . . . 

I don’t really remember what happened next, maybe my dad carried me into the house? But I do remember that somewhere in the sequence of events I was asked what happened and pointing out the cheese. I seem to remember the difficulty all the adults had keeping a straight face when I said I slipped on cheese (I mean, in a full, wide road, with no cars on it, how do I manage to hit the one slice of cheese in the street? I probably would have laughed too, had I not been so indignant.) I also remember being told that if I had been wearing proper shoes… And I remember not riding my bike for the rest of our vacation. 

Still, I didn’t hold a grudge against cheese or jellies or even my bike, which I happily rode on any flat space I could find, until I was a nearly teenager and way too old to be riding a kid’s bike. But that experience has always colored my feelings about bikes. And to this day, I’d rather do just about anything than ride a bike. But maybe, just maybe, my nephew will break the cycle (see what I did there..?) and come out on top. As long as he avoids hills and cheese.