Riding a Bike

I’ve heard once you learn, you never forget how to ride a bike. I didn’t forget how, but it turns out I can’t ride my bike anymore. It’s a beautiful 24-speed TREK and I’ve had it maybe 8 years. Disc brakes, Shimano something-or-other. A beautiful bike. I loved it and rode it a lot until this past year when I discovered it’s gotten nearly impossible to hike my leg over the bar, get on and get rolling. I felt like I was just asking for a fall, especially stopping with one foot balanced on a curb at a stop light. What I hope will be a solution is a step-though bike and I had REI set one aside for me. It’s what they call a “flat foot”. When I stop, both feet are flat on the ground, the bike between my legs. Like the bike I had when I was a kid. A beach cruiser. Except this one comes with seven gears. Most people around here have transitioned to electric bikes but I wanted something familiar. When I was seven, I begged my parents for a bike. They said I could have one only after I learned to ride my sister’s 26-inch bicycle, which was huge and which my sister had painted bright red. So there I went, up and down and around the block on the sidewalk for weeks, my scrawny small self trying to balance back and forth from the right side to the left until I finally mastered it. A more suitable 24-inch Columbia bike from Dobbs’ Hardware Store in Three Lakes appeared on my eighth birthday and I rode the heck out of that thing until I was a teenager in the sixties and cycling no longer felt cool. One day when I came home and looked outside, there was my mother on that bike, careening around the grass in our back yard. Weaving and unbalanced but laughing. She had never had a bike as a child and I didn’t know until then, but she never learned to ride one. My mother at 40, was in those days considered “old” when I was born so she would have been in her mid-fifties by that time. I remember feeling sad when I saw her struggling with my bicycle in the yard. Sad, and if I’m truthful, kind of embarrassed. Hoping no one would see her. At the same time, I was proud of her determination. Turns out my beautiful TREK bike is absolutely perfect for my 13-year-old grandson. He picked it up yesterday and didn’t miss a beat. He got on and zoomed down the street with a huge grin on his face. He and that bike were made for each other.

Photo courtesy zhivko at Pixabay.com