As Easy as Remembering How to Ride a Bike...

Apologies for the lack of posts. My time online has been limited while out of town for a couple days (it seems funny to write "out of town" while I am in another country...)

In all fairness, it was not 9 days... I posted something on the 24th. I'm just sayin'...

Anyway, more stories to whittle away at whatever may be left of this silly dignity I have been dragging around for all these years...

While in Karlshamn, we decided to take a bike ride on that first night. Jenny's brother, Johannes, had some friends at a local camp site and he wanted to say hi. All of the "adults" had ventured into town a bit earlier.

I use the term "adults" in that way because I find myself at an awkward age. Doing what I can to slow what has become hurtling towards thirty, I find it hard at times to call myself an adult. Maybe no one is really sure when to do so. Under my current circumstances, it can be especially hard to do so when you find yourself living with someone at their parents' house and visiting a bunch of older relatives. However, it seems important to use the quotation marks around "adults" when you recently saw them depart on bicycles as a giggling, drunken group, headed into town for fun and mischief.

That being said, we continue...

We grabbed the remaining bicycles (myself along with Jenny, her brother, and his girlfriend, Nila) and headed off. I wasn't sure how long the ride was into town, mostly due to barely paying attention on the way to the house, nervous from driving in a foreign country on roads I didn't know.

I found that just getting going was tough enough. The bike seemed to be built for someone considerably taller than me (a feeling that creeps in fairly often in Sweden) and my feet had a hard time reaching the ground without certain other delicate parts resting uncomfortably on the bike itself (it was at this point I recalled stories about someone I went to high school with who had an uncomfortable encounter involving this metal bar, a roadside curb, a stay in the hospital, and those "certain other delicate parts"... he was called "One-Nut" after this and I had no desire to earn myself any unfortunate nicknames at this point in my life).

I started biking along anyway on this Giant Swedish Contraption and everything was going great. Johannes decided to take a detour down a dirt path that led toward the lake. I was close behind him and Jenny was trailing behind with Nila.

I felt a bit awkward on the bike as I haven't truly ridden one in years. I sat on a couple during my time in San Francisco and pedaled in circles, but nothing that actual qualified as a bike ride. I just kept telling myself about how every attempt to use a rusty skill again is emboldened by the phrase, "It's as easy as remembering how to ride a bike..."

I smiled to myself as I got the hang of it and it felt good to have the air rushing past my face.

I even maintained this smile as I watched Johannes take a curve up ahead.

As I approached the curve, I calmly squeezed the brake handle. And then squeezed some more. Then some more.

The smile stayed frozen on my face, some magical thinking on my part that if I just stayed happy, nothing could go wrong.

This was about the time I flew into a group of bushes.

Jenny and Nila came around the bend just as I was pulling myself up and out of the bushes, lugging the bike and trying to brush debris from my jacket and hair.

Jenny tried not to laugh and asked, "What happened?"

I desperately wanted to tell her it wasn't my fault. After taking a look at the bike, I felt a rush of relief because I was able to do just that.

Looking down at the bike, we could see that the brake handle had completely broken off. The plastic had broken in two right above where it met the bike itself.

"Why didn't you just use the foot brake?" Jenny asked blankly.

Wha-? Huh?

"What do you mean the foot brake?"

"Um, you just pedal backwards to brake."

Damn these Giant Crazy Swedish Contraptions.

I had to explain that I had never been on ten-speed that had foot brakes. You either had hand brakes or foot brakes, unless you were in grade school and had an awesome BMX bike with white tires that left white skidmarks on the asphalt and had both foot and hand brakes (yeah, I had one).

Everyone laughed at me (I've become resistant to feeling any shame when this occurs anymore) and Jenny insisted on switching bikes with me. My pride was damaged a bit and, as I would discover later, so was my elbow, but I was fine and we continued the rest of the way to town.

As we biked toward town, I felt myself huffing and puffing as we mounted what were essentially gentle slopes in the terrain. I switched gears, I stood up on the pedals... nothing made it as easy as it always looked when other people did it.

By the time we finally reached town, several kilometers away, I was hoping that a nice farmer would come by in his pickup truck when we were ready to leave for Jenny's aunt's house, offering to give us a ride in the back of his truck since we looked like such nice kids.

Allow me to make a couple points before wrapping this up.

First, I am currently in the best shape of my life since getting out of college. I feel better, I lost weight, I've been walking the hills of San Francisco... I'm much healthier than I have been in 5 years.

Second, I set out traveling almost one year ago. Before I left on my road trip in my car, my initial plan was to bike across the country. I was going to get a bike, a small tent, a sleeping bag, and the bare essentials, load onto a bike, and trek to the ocean and back.

I told this plan to my family and friends and was almost universally told I was insane. I recall one night in particular, sitting outside of Tom's grandmother's cabin late one night with Tom and Meighan. Meighan became angry and told me I was completely nuts and was going to die out there. That seemed to be the consensus from everyone. Only one person was supportive. After Meighan went to bed that night, Tom looked at me and said, "You should do it. I believe in you."

And I intended to. I only chose not to because I kept pushing back the start date of my trip for money reasons. As it grew later in the year, I became aware that leaving in October would mean I would need to bike south immediately just to avoid freezing to death. This would add 2,000-plus miles to my trip... one way. Financially speaking, it would end up costing the same to drive my car there and back as it would to buy a bike, all the necessary supplies, and support myself on the way.

So I opted to drive.

And it all worked out great.

Now, I will say this once. Once.

As I biked along that road to town, huffing and puffing those few kilometers, I thought back to last summer and one question jumped into my head:

"What the hell was I thinking?!"