What's New Here?

Hmm. Same messy desk. Same backpack. Same coffee mug. Wha...is that...is that a bicycle?

It's true. Hal the Hyundai has taken a few days off this week so that I can try my hand at the cool kid commute. Just when you thought, "Wow, Kelly can't possibly get any cooler" look what I go and do?!

The coolness of the whole adventure was mitigated by the fact that I had to, as an adult, take LESSONS to learn how to ride a bicycle. In a very Cantabrigian manner, I hired a private tutor. This was less because I felt the quality of a highly paid private tutor would far exceed learning from any old regular American who learned to ride a bike as a child and more because I was not about to embark on this very uncool journey under the tutelage of someone I had to see ever again.

Enter: The Bicycle Whisperer.

Susan the Bike Teacher calls herself the Bicycle Whisperer, and that's exactly what she is. I was a wild, untamed klutz of equine proportions and for forty bucks an hour she guaranteed she could get me to stay upright on two wheels. I drove to Somerville for my first lesson, skeptical. I parked on the street outside of her house, one of those huge old Somerville paint peelers that, to me, always look homey and welcoming. Still, I'm apprehensive and practically tip toe to the front door. Considering I found her on the internet, the chances that this woman might strangle me in her basement with a bike chain are slightly higher than normal. As in any dangerous situation, I just tell myself: "If you survive, think of the story you could write!"

Alas, no bike chain murder here.

Susan answers the door and gets me a parking pass so Somerville's finest won't charge me extra for the lesson. She is the definition of east coast baby boomer, living out her golden years with wild gray hair, attending every available leftist talk and rally in town, and trying to save Africa. She lives with roommates; she started her own organization in Mali; she makes a modest living teaching people how to ride bicycles. She's basically super awesome.

As a teacher, it can be hard to assume the role of the student. Luckily, the bicycle whisperer is about as comforting as a womb, and I immediately trust her with my safety. We walk to the barn, where the bicycle collection lives. We maneuver through the maze and extract my special learning bicycle. The process of building character through humiliation begins here. If anyone videotaped this I would murder them with a bike chain in Susan's basement. The bike is a special machine for special people. Literally. Its center of gravity is very low, the pedals are wrapped with soft fabric, and the rider sits totally upright with feet slightly out in front rather than right underneath. For me, the padded pedals are by far the funniest part. Moving on to: wardrobe.

Susan wraps me and pads me and covers me in so many articles of safety gear that I feel a weird combination of invincible and incredibly ridiculous. It feels like I could just dive into the pavement without getting hurt. Which is great, because at this point I'm pretty sure I am destined to do just that.

Through the streets of Somerville we march with our bikes. People smile at us because they think Susan is volunteering her time for some organization that teaches the mentally handicapped to ride bicycles. Little do they know, she is charging the mentally handicapped forty dollars an hour.

[[real time check in: I am at my desk; it is 7:15 am. Lessons for the day are planned, and I am free to blog. As I have mentioned, my school is located beneath a homeless shelter. Today in the room above me there is a child screaming at the top of its lungs. Again. I. Hate. This. Child. Judge me if you want to, but I do. I hate it. I mean, I don't really like any children until they are old enough to drive. But this child...ohhhhh this child.]]

So we arrive at a large abandoned lot adjacent to a basketball court. It is on a slight incline. We walk the bikes to the far corner at the top of the incline. This is what my life has done to me: a woman I met on the internet sends me down the hill on my bike when I am 27. What the fuck, parents?!

Offering all manner of supportive words, Susan takes me through step by step. By some miracle, I don't fall and it really doesn't seem that hard. Except turning. I still can't really turn. But that's another blog entirely.

She has me practice signaling, changing gears, etc. etc. calling at the top of her lungs from the center of the lot, "Left turn!" "Emergency stop!"

All of this is made exponentially worse when two young men decide they are going to play basketball. I am basically an adolescent male when it comes to the opposite sex. I cannot be expected to behave rationally or devote my attention to anything else when there are boys around. It's a sickness and I've got it. So here I am wrapped up like the Michelin Man on the short bus bike and there are male twenty-somethings playing basketball right next to me. I learn that I cannot yet look over my shoulder at a boy while trying to steer a bike. Horrible horrible cruel stupid world!!

I graduate to the bike path. This amounts to walking through Davis Square with the bikes until we hit the path, thus increasing the potential of being recognized by someone I will have to see again. Still, I am operating in my "I've decided to do this" mode, which means that I will ride the godforsaken idiot bike until my ass bleeds if that's what it takes to learn how to not fall off of it.

Fortunately, riding a bike is not nearly as difficult as I have imagined and my ass, while rather sore these days, has not bled.

The bike path is basically an interactive obstacle course. There are all sorts of moving, unpredictable things and people that you have to avoid hitting. I narrowly missed a family of four, and yelled at them to make sure and teach their kids young or...well or just look what would happen to them!

That being said, the bicycle whisperer felt that after one lesson, I only needed practice and did not have to take another lesson. While I had a pang of separation anxiety just thinking about mounting one of the two-wheeled death traps without her womb-like presence to soothe me, I was willing to save the forty bucks.

Since then I've bought a bike and commuted to work a few times, but I've gotta go shape the minds of the future and will have to write about that later. It involves less padding and way more bone chilling moments of pure terror.