Cycling for retards
Last weekend, while strolling up and down Smith Street, something big and shiny caught my eye. Something that I knew would bring me pleasure. Something that I was eager as a beaver to ride fast and hard until the sun went down and came back up again. It was a used bike. A 10-speed. A Schwinn all sparkly and cherry red. It had "bazima" all over it. I named it Donna.
I bought it for $80 and took it home recalling my childhood wheels. This one was just like it. Except the one I used to have was yellow and it had a banana seat and a white basket. I think it was a 3-speed. Also, it might not have been a Schwinn. Anyway, it's been a long time since I've had a bike and I had to have this one. I saw it and I wanted it. Badly. So I'm trying to pretend like my new bike, Donna, isn't totally ten times too big for me. When I'm on her, I feel less than a third of my menacing 5'4" size.
Remember in "The Muppets Take Manhattan" when Kermit and Miss Piggy go bike-riding together in Central Park? Remember how Kermit looked on his bike? His little spindly spiney frog legs and arms maneuvering huge handle bars and wheels the size of windmills. That's kind of how I feel when I'm riding my new bike. I feel like a muppet relying on some invisible man with his arm up my butthole for balance. You know how people always say "[something] is just like riding a bike"? It's true that once you get on, it's not like you forget how to do it, but it does take getting reacclimated and unretarded. It's been so long since I really went bike riding with any sort of regularity that I feel retarded. Retarded and like a muppet.
The other night after work, I decided to take Donna for our first real romp. I only nearly crashed twice. That front wheel is ginormous. But I rode all around the hood and not just on the quiet streets. That would be impossible. Eventually I stopped at a nearby bodega to pick up some fresh fruit for the fridge. I parked my new sparkly girl next to a meter and even had trouble with my brand new lock, both wrapping it around and locking it and then unlocking it and unwrapping it. It was all such a production. I'm not an uncoordinated person, mind you. Maybe I'm just old. Old and cynical. It took me, like, thirty minutes to lock up my bike and another forty-five to unlock it, for fuck's sake. What if I was being chased and had to use Donna for a safe getaway? I'd be caught and killed and she would be taken away from me and before I breathed my last breath I'd feel like such an asshole.
It occurred to me that a similar thing happens when I go swimming. I was never a strong swimmer to begin with, but these days, when I go swimming (which is rare -- I went once last year? In a lake in Colorado?), if I haven't been in a while (which is usually the case), it feels so foreign to me. It doesn't matter that I love being in the water and that I look good in a bikini. I feel retarded. I don't feel like Kermit because Kermit is a frog so he would be a good swimmer. Maybe more like Scooter. Scooter probably couldn't swim to save his life.
If [some things] are just like riding a bike and swimming is just like riding a bike, and riding a bike is just like riding a bike, why do I find it so hard? I also learned that when you're riding your bike in the summer and it's hot so you're wearing flip-flops your pedicure can really take a beating.
