LEARNING TO RIDE A BICYCLE

Not too long after we got married, David and I bought a tandem bicycle. Our plan was to cruise the streets and alleys of suburbia. I hopped on behind him and after the first few tense moments of developing the trust that somehow we would both be leaning the same direction at the same time, those wonderful old feelings came back to me. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the pumping of your calves when the pedals turn the wheels. There’s nothing quite as thrilling as the wind playing your hair on a day that isn’t breezy at all until you get going. I had all of this and I celebrated it. Truly I did. But there was just one more little thing I wanted. I wanted to steer.
Okay! So maybe it seems a little audacious to you. Maybe you are thinking that if you have one blind rider and one sighted rider it would be best to put the sighted rider in front. And basically I agree with that. Truly I do. But the whole experience of riding a bike is just that much more perfect when you are the one steering. I knew this to be true, remembered it from childhood.
Now I have never claimed to be an excellent steerer. If they offered me a straight line to follow as a sobriety test on any given day I would likely be falsely arrested for impaired driving. But I do have a tiny bit of vision, and if a path contrasts in colour with the area at its edge, and if I keep my tiny point of vision directly on the line of contrast without blinking or moving my head, I can follow that path by watching.
The first bicycle I ever steered belonged to my little brother Allan. You can say whatever you like about little brothers. Call them pests or tell stories about how they ruined your childhood by breaking one of the china tea plates your dolls used to eat off. I’ve looked at little brotherhood from many sides, as a big sister, as the wife of a little brother, searching for the truth amid the sibling reminiscences at many a Sunday dinner. The little brothers of the world tell me I really don’t understand what they go through. What I will say on the subject is this: I would never have learned to ride a bicycle if I’d not had a little brother.
My little brother was little indeed, five years littler than me, his next-up sister. By the time he came along, I’d had quite a bit of practice at being the littlest, a position in the family pecking order that brings with it certain advantages. One of the advantages it brought to me was big sisters, seven and eight years older than me, the kind of sisters who can really be useful. It’s like having more mothers and grannies, a great convenience when you need somebody to tie your shoes or button the buttons on the back of your dress. Big sisters can also ride you double on their bikes, which is what sister Sandra used to do for me. Thank Heaven she had a boy’s bike. I could sit sideways on the bar, holding my legs out to keep them away from the wheel. We’d whiz around the block which, on the farm meant, up the trail to Granny’s house, down her driveway, out onto the road, over to our driveway, then up to our house. The block was small, so on a good day we’d continue right on back to Granny’s and make the whole loop another time. It was Sandra who first introduced me to the way the wind plays in your hair on a bike ride. Given the fact that I was getting a little heavier every day, and taking into account her affinity for teaching, I probably would have learned bike riding from her if she’d had permission to teach me. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense to turn a blind child loose on a bike.
The days of riding double had ended by the time I turned ten. Sandra’s old red CCM one-speed with the carrier basket on the handlebars stood lonely in the garage, waiting for Little Brother Allan to grow into it. He paid it no attention, seeing as how he was preoccupied with the challenge of learning to ride his tiny blue-five-year-old-size two-wheeler with the carrier rack on the back. Did I mention that little brothers are known for their tendency to get things their bigger sisters never had? Anyway, he had this little blue bike that was just tall enough so his feet couldn’t touch the ground. But mine could!!!
I don’t know how I discovered this, or why I even tried to sit on the seat of that little blue bike of his. Memory is an imperfect science. Perhaps I was plotting some nefarious compensation for the broken tea plate. I can imagine myself putting my right foot on the right pedal, but I really don’t know why I also put my left foot on the left pedal, given that there were no tricycle wheels at the back, no training wheels to steady me. I am scared of roller coasters. I am scared of going down steep hills. Did I mention that I was nominated for Chicken of the Year fifty-three years in a row?
But Allan’s little blue bike didn’t scare me, possibly because it took so much effort to keep my feet from dragging on the ground. Dad got involved somehow, possibly when Little Brother Allan asked for a turn on his bike. I remember him steadying me from behind, urging me to keep both feet on the pedals. Before long I was cruising slowly along the driveway, tiny wheels spinning beneath me, while my knees rhythmically tapped the handlebars with each revolution. Those were the days when my knees were so often bandaged that a few revolutionary bumps couldn’t do them much harm. So I kept on riding, gathering speed along the entire length of Granny’s driveway. Dad himself used to be a bike rider. He was delighted.
Out of the garage came Sandra’s old red CCM. I was too chicken to push up on to seat with my feet dangling in the air, so Dad took me over to the back step where I could stand a little higher and climb aboard the easy way. “Push off with your left foot,” he said, and the next thing I knew I was cruising on the big wheels, pumping the pedals with feather-like ease, flying along Granny’s driveway with the wind in my hair.
Things might have turned out differently if Dad had put together the whole picture at the beginning of the first lesson. He might have foreseen that Granny’s driveway would not be long enough to contain the cycling passion of a girl pushing big pedals with the wind playing in her hair. He might have anticipated that a girl who could only navigate by focussing her tiny spot of vision directly on the road’s edge without ever looking up for even a millisecond would—more than occasionally—glance up to admire the sunshine and thus find herself smacking into the back of his blue Pontiac, or unceremoniously exploring the ditch bottom beside the road. I followed the tractor paths across the field. I crashed into fences. I fell into mud puddles and hit my face on tree branches. I skinned my ankles as well as my knees. I even rode my little cousin double on the bar, though I doubt if his mother knew it. As for my own little brother, he was now completely free to ride his own little bike whenever he chose.
I lost touch with my bike during high school, or maybe I just got too old for skinned ankles and knees. I never planned to take up riding again. But then David and I got this tandem.
David agreed to let me steer our new bike in our back alley. I’ll admit that I was a bit nervous since I hadn’t steered in a long time, and the bike was too tall to accommodate my feet dragging on the ground. Looking back later, I realized that I probably should have tried to steer at a time when he wasn’t riding on the back. But the tandem was new to us, we liked to do things together, and we never considered riding alone.
David’s backseat pedalling experience proved to be unsatisfactory. I guess he found it a little nerve-wracking, the way I gave the first two pedal pushes and headed straight for the neighbour’s fence. I’d say he didn’t feel entirely comfortable with my weaving from side to side, depending on which boundary happened to come into my line of vision. And it could just be that he’s a little more concerned with having control than some other people have been. Whatever the reason, that particular chapter of my bike-riding saga ended about thirty seconds after it began. Maybe we should have experimented on a smaller bike.
I’ll admit to being a little disappointed with the way things turned out. I knew, when he suggested we change places, that this was probably the last time I’d ever sit on the front seat of a bicycle. I could have held a grudge all these years, but I didn’t. Instead, I chose to forgive him for not having faith in my driving, the way I forgave my little brother for breaking the tea plate to my best set of china doll dishes. And I am glad I forgave him, because we rode that tandem often, chatting and leaning together as the pedals pumped and the wind played in our hair.