Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Like Riding a Something
Do you know what is like riding a bike? The sort of thing that, once you learn it, you never lose it? The stuff your body holds onto even after years of letting it go? What, I ask, is like riding a bike? BIKE RIDING.
Sure, it sounds obvious, but the truest truths are - and yet we all too often argue such points, or fail to grasp them. “Riding a bike” is just a figure of speech, is it not? Real bike riding, on real roads with a real bike, must somehow be something different. There’s too much to it that demands practice and reinforcement. After enough time has passed, riding a bike, however natural it may once have been, will have to be relearned.
Perhaps in some ways that’s right. Muscles get soft, fingertips forget exactly how to manipulate shifters. None of that signifies, though, when you get right down to it. Riding a bike, as it turns out, sticks to the brain pretty good. I know, because I tested it.
It was in 2002 that I took a low-sped, high-impact tumble on the ol’ velocipede and busted myself up badly enough to take myself out of commission for half a year. But after the cast came off, and the physical therapy concluded, and I’d gone back to doing yoga and built myself up again stronger and more limber than I’d been before, even when everything returned to pre-crash conditions and the bike accident was no more than a distastefully embarrassing memory, for some reason the bike never really came back out of the garage. It wasn’t that I had developed an aversion to the exercise - I hooked my old beater bike to a stationary mag trainer at home, and I rode bike machines when I went to the gym. I even got out with my bike for a quick jaunt every six months or so, across the bridge and right back home. In my heart I hadn’t give up on biking. I just wasn’t actually doing much of it.
In part, it was the bike itself. There was a little glitch in the front derailleur; it wouldn’t drop into the small ring when I needed it to. For the uninitiated, that’s a big inconvenience. It made me work much harder when I could least afford to. Also, my old helmet was a bit on the dorky side - bought as a temporary replacement in 1996 after my dear SIL took a bad tumble wearing my old one, it was clunky, unflattering, and crusted with old sweat. But it had never actually broken, so I’d never bothered to replace it. I just quietly disliked it. As for the issue with the shifter, I’d tried to get it tuned-up a few years ago by some condescending louts who’d shamed me into not telling them they hadn’t solved the problem. Getting my bike back to their shop to complain to those smarmy hippies of an inadequate repair was just too daunting for me. Instead, I simply didn’t ride. Running became my interim exercise of choice.
Running was fun, and fine in its way, but it didn’t really shift my gears if you know what I mean. I’d spent so many years on my bike, escaping and sublimating and actualizing, it had become much more than mere exercise to me. Strapping on crosstrainers and galumphing around the park on foot never felt as essentially essential as riding the same route. It was something I could make myself do while my bike gathered dust, but running was never totally satisfying to me.
For my birthday a few months ago, I decided that my gift to myself would be a bike repair. I found a well-established shop and explained the shifter issue; they seemed mellow and competent and quoted me such a low price that I shopped for a new helmet as well. Two days later I brought bike shoes to work in my messenger bag, and at the end of business I rode the N-Judah light rail car to the shop at Stanyan. There I picked up the old GT, now refreshed and recalibrated and all pumped up. While I was at it I picked up a sweet new lid with arcing vents and a slick finish, that fit snugly on my head without any fuss or bother. I rode home through the park, arriving breathless and exhilarated. It felt very good and very normal, but ultimately incomplete. It had been too short and flat a ride. I hadn’t yet fully fallen back onto my bike again.
It took four more days before I could clear an hour for a ride worth the name. Sunday was hot and sunny and I got into bike togs for the first time in years - the stiff-soled shoes and mushroomhead helmet I’d worn just a few days before, but also the tight kneeshorts with asspadding and a spandex shirt cut extra-long to keep me under wraps as I contorted myself over the handlebars in the throes of my exertions. It felt weird to wear those clothes, as if somehow I wasn’t entitled to dress like that. But on a deeper level, it felt very right indeed, as if my sense of being misclothed was itself mistaken.
In the late afternoon sun I arranged myself on the saddle, looked both ways, and pushed off. Some things felt weird and different; some, familiar. They broke down something like this:
Weird and Different:
* Clicking the shoes into the pedal cleats
* Adjusting the seat to just the right height
* Navigating auto traffic
* Navigating pedestrian traffic
* Navigating bike traffic
* Finding and taking the most efficient path through the Presidio and onto the bridge
* Sensitivity of front disk brake
Familiar
* Pulling back against the bar-ends to blend strength and gravity into a single motive force
* Clicking through the gears to push into a cresting acceleration
* Steering through the windblast that rages incessantly around the towers of the bridge
* Replacing the chain on the fly when it slipped off the small chainring
* Hopping over cables laid across the bike path
* Attacking a hill when I thought I just wanted to take it easy
* Harmonizing my own heartbeat to the clicking of the freewheel as I glided alone through the forest
Technically, that’s seven to seven - a tie. But not really. The things that demanded renewed familiarization all felt superficial - little challenges about little things. I should have known better than to ride the bridge on a sunny Sunday afternoon. The cleats are a trick, not a skill. The seat would find the proper height eventually. The route, the traffic - these things were conditional, not essential. The brakes demanded my attention but to be honest with myself, I had never really mastered them in the first place.
The other seven, though - those carry some serious power. They’re integral, expressive, and inspirational; they uplifted me. The flat-out joy of flying along the blacktop and 500 feet over the mouth of the bay came right back to me as if I’d never left the saddle. It was, in short, just like riding a bike. I should try it again sometime. I think I’ve still got the hang of it, you know.
