It’s just like riding a bicycle— something you never forget.
How many times have you heard that phrase? Usually it’s spoken when you’re doing something you haven’t done in a very long time: playing the guitar, for instance, or having sex—but there’s one place you’ll never hear it, and ironically, it’s the one place it doesn’t apply.
That place is…..riding a bicycle.
Recently, my doctor told me to stop going to my regular workout. “If you keep this up,” he told me with that dire expression only doctors get, (a little wistful half-smile that says plainly if you keep it up, he will be buying a new boat soon,) “you will be facing knee replacement in another year. And you’re too young for that. I don’t want to replace your knees yet—I want you thinner, and I want you older.”
Hmmph. Thinner and older. I’d love to be the first, but I’m not crazy about the second. Still, he was right. My workout, which included some mild step-aerobics, was killing my knees. No pain relievers were working anymore—the cartilage is almost gone and the arthritis is bad. Trouble is, I was benefiting in a lot of other ways from that workout—one of which was keeping my weight manageable and my heart strong.
So here I was, facing a Hobson’s Choice—-either keep up with the workout and suffer constant pain, sometimes to the point of being unable to climb stairs, or stop the workout and find something that didn’t create any impact on my ruined knees. “What,” I asked the doctor, already knowing the answer but I’m something of a masochist, “can I do, then? What sort of exercise do you recommend?”
Only two things. Swimming and cycling.
Both, he told me, would provide the needed aerobic benefit, while keeping my knees from disintegrating. Well, that was pretty much what I had expected. And it wasn’t unwelcome news. I love swimming. I used to love riding a bicycle too. Either was a good solution—-but I love swimming more than cycling, so I decided to go that route first. I called my local YMCA to check their rates.
“They’re how much?” I said to the nice lady on the phone when I finally got through. “And they’re when?”
Well, I couldn’t swim during working hours, that much is certain. And I could not afford the dues, either.
Another local health club had a pool—-and these rates were better. I could pay each time I visited, rather than paying for a month or a year at a time. Trouble was, however, if I went as often as I needed to, it would cost just as much, if not more, than the Y. Not to mention the cost for gasoline to get there.
That left cycling.
It’s been many decades since I rode a bike. The last one was my son’s and he was ten when we got it—-and it was too small, too light and not very sturdy—-and it wasn’t mine. It was bad enough that my knees kept hitting my chin when I tried to ride it; it was also a tug-of-war to try to get to ride it. And besides—we lived out in the country. Where would I go? Over the river and through the woods? Only hyperactive ten-year-olds like riding on gravel roads; to them, road rash is a badge of honor. To a grown woman it’s just another way to snag your pantyhose.
So, not reluctantly, I let him ride his own bike and didn’t investigate the possibility of getting one I could ride, or one that was properly fitted to me, or one that would even go on dirt and gravel without skidding. Instead, I swam. I walked. I did aerobics and dance. And I ruined my knees.
And the decades passed, while I got older, weaker, and heavier.
But now, here I am, all of the above and the owner of a bicycle of my own.
My son is grown and gone. I no longer live in the boondocks. I have places I can ride, and places I can go--to work, for instance. And the initial expense of the bicycle was far less than the expense of swimming three times a week—-and, I thought in my under-exercised haze, it would help the environment if I rode to work rather than driving my car.
I bought a bike for comfort, not speed. I bought it with enough gears to get me up the slight rises I have to traverse to get back and forth to work. And I got on it for the first time the other day--after two days of trying to put the damned thing together with a manual that was obviously written in some language other than English and translated by drunken giraffes-—and realized something very important that hadn’t occurred to me before I laid out the money for this contraption: I have forgotten how to ride a bicycle.
Don’t let anyone tell you you never forget. You do. You forget also that you will fall. You forget that it hurts when you fall, and your bad knees are what are going to have to stop you if you have to get off the thing or jump to avoid being hurt. And you forget that you can’t ride it in Birkenstock sandals, because you didn’t have those kinds of shoes when you were little, and the edges hit the chain guard and make your feet unstable on the pedals. More importantly, you forget that you used to be fearless—-and it’s just a real revelation to realize how fearful you are now. The traffic is mean-—the roads are not smooth, your butt is much, much larger and that seat was obviously made by the Marquis de Sade. And because you’ve sat on that big butt for the last six months without working out (waiting of course for the weather to get better so you could ride your new acquisition,) your thigh muscles are screaming by the second stroke of the pedals.
That tiny little rise on the way to work may as well be Mount Everest for all the power you can muster to get up it.
I’ve owned my new bike for a week now, and so far, all I’ve managed to do is ride to the corner, up a little ways on the cross street, and back again, before I’m huffing and puffing and shaking with lack of muscle power. At least that’s how far I got today. Yesterday, I was only able to ride around the yard a little. So I guess that’s progress of a sort.
Oh, I’ll get there. I have to. I am woefully out of shape right now, but I’ll get back into shape eventually. If I don’t fall off the damned bike before that and break my leg or scrape my self, or—-godforbid—-get hit by a semi. And maybe by mid-summer I’ll actually be able to ride it to work and back.
After all, it's just like riding a bicycle, isn't it?
