A Bike Ride

A story about growth.

On Sunday morning I went mountain biking. There was one problem: I hadn’t ridden a bike in nearly ten years. Did I mention that was only problem #1? In a laundry list of brain blasts and ideas I’ve come up with, finding myself on my younger brother’s rusty, broken, and faulty Toys R Us ‘mountain bike’ was one of my finest.

A friend of mine reached out to me saying what a great time I’d have with him if we went out and hit the rocky trails. I couldn’t have agreed more. It wasn’t until the night before, when I still needed to purchase a helmet—oh, and make sure that my brother’s bike could even pedal—that it dawned on me that perhaps I should have prepared myself a little better for the morning ahead.

At dawn I awoke. Completely unready, I shoved the cobweb-covered bike into the back of my car and sped off to meet my friend. As I drove I listened to an audiobook of The Immortality Key by Brian Maruresku. Listening to him go on about his research into the psychedelic history that fueled Ancient Greek, Roman, and even Christian societies made me regret not going into archaeology, a dream I always had has a child. I digress.

So the car drove itself with me at the helm down the Long Island Expressway. Muraresku’s tales of spiked beers and wines will be the source of another essay, so I’ll get to my point.

The car parked. The man got out. I greeted my friend in an enthusiastic “Goodmorning!” to perfectly mask the unease that had begun to bubble up into my stomach the closer I got.

Seeing his mammoth of a bike dwarf the rusted-up toy I had brought did nothing to qualm my nerves. And without further hesitation, we were off.

There I was. A person who hadn’t rode a bike in years, suddenly dribbling down a rocky and root-filled path that was just begging for me to crash and fall. Within seconds I had to stop. Within seconds, not to embarrass myself in front of my friend, I tried to continue.

Stop. Go. Stop. Go.

I was in agony. Realizing how foolish I was to have agreed to do something as crazy as this, I felt something I hadn’t felt in some time.

A burning sensation began to swarm onto my cheeks. I could feel their heat steaming up into my eyeballs. My hands began to get clammy. My eyes opened wide and my mouth shut tight. Every hair on my head stood up in unison.

What word would describe it best? It was embarrassing. Sure. But this was different. Embarrassment. Fear. Anxiety. Humiliation?

Without a second thought my mind was suddenly transported from the rugged trail.

I saw it. Clear as day. A baseball field. Early morning in what must have been springtime on a Saturday. One kid, in his 7th grade year to be exact.

He was wearing gray baseball pants and a black t-shirt. A glove on his left hand which he probably (hopefully) still owns today. What must have been a Mets cap adorning his head.

Without a second thought my mind was suddenly transported from the rugged trail.

It was the first day of practice. The hopeful mind of a foolish kid told his father it was a great idea to leave the CYO team from his school, the one with all his friends on it. The team he’d been on since 1st grade. Where he was the starting catcher for a mediocre team who had fun with each other every day. Something told him that he was better than everyone else. He got his dad to sign him up to an advanced league. He didn’t know any of the kids.

That kid was me, and there I was. Stepping onto the field. My cleats dug into the wet grass. It was a cold and sunny morning. A day I hadn’t thought of in years, likely since that brutal season finally came to a thankful end.

The clang of an aluminum bat smashing a baseball high into the blue sky. The ball was crushed by the team’s best player: the catcher, the coach’s son. Suddenly I was a new kid without a position. All the other kids were bigger, stronger, faster, and meaner than I was. I remembered the season before. Practice was us friends getting together to hang out and have fun.

Instead, I heard snickers and mocks as I whiffed on pitches and ducked my head instead of grabbing for hard hit balls in the field. I was afraid to get hurt and I wasn’t ready for the sudden jump in competition.

And there I was. Standing with my rubber cleats planted firmly into the wet grass. And there it came.

The burning sensation in my cheeks. The heat from them steaming up into my eyeballs. My hands cold and clammy. Every hair on my head standing straight up. My eyes beginning to water.

Embarrassment. Fear. Anxiety. Humiliation.

My vision refocused. I was back on the trail thumping along on my brother’s bike. I couldn’t believe how I had gotten myself into this situation. A feeling and memory I had blocked from my mind had come into focus as if it had happened yesterday.

Feelings I hadn’t felt since I was a child. Sure, moments of those come and go in adulthood. But I couldn’t let myself become tortured with the same awful feelings that that kid had felt all those years ago.

Humans are creatures of habit. But we’re also creatures of growth. I had thousands of years of evolution backing me. I wasn’t about to let my mind kick me back in time. I could do it.

Keeping the air coming in and out of my mouth (see Breath by James Nestor, essay upcoming) I began to teach myself on the fly. Learning how to shift, when to brake, when to slow down, and when to speed up.

Suddenly I was enjoying it. Having fun. I had grown—evolved—in a matter of minutes. The desire to make that kid on that baseball field proud had prevailed.

Later that day, I went to a bike shop and bought a real bike. I was hooked. If I’d listened to that little voice in my head telling me I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t have. That’s not that way we as people should live and it’s not something I plan on letting myself give into.

We’re capable of doing anything. Trust me on that. I really believe we can do anything we set our minds to. I started off on the wrong foot because I had set my mind up for that failure. I changed the outcome of that day by changing my mindset.

Let me end this entry here with a quote I love. It holds true in this situation and every other. Expect to hear this a lot, if I end up writing more of these.

“There is neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”

- William Shakespeare