Willowy Legs, Step One

I had another bicycle lesson the other night. I did slightly better this time, but still not stellar. For this trip, we drove to the oval in Highland Park where I learned that I don't pedal, shift, turn, or coast properly. I didn't care too much that I wasn't good at those things. What bothered me was my inability to ride with one hand. "Why do I need to do this?" I asked Corey, who was sitting up unicycle-style zooming around me in circles.

"Because you might need to do things, like get water and stuff." Soon enough, I realized my most important task would be to scrape off the layer of dead bugs from my décolletage. But I couldn't stay upright with one hand on the bike! I've spent four weeks this summer so far working on balance and stability in the gym and I can't even keep myself upright on a bike with one hand. I felt like such a failure.

I totally zoned out while Corey crouched next to me drawing diagrams with rocks. He pointed out turning radius and trajectory lines for turns, and I calculated how long it would take to get the bug guts from between my boobs.

Later, I was taken aback by how difficult it was to haul my bike into the basement. The weight of the machine combined with the narrow stairs and awkward moving parts made me very clumsy and I struggled hard core. "How do the other residents manage to get their bikes up and down so easily?" I asked him.

"What other residents?"

I looked around at the 4 (maybe 6) bikes in the basement and realized they didn't belong to the other residents. They were Corey's. All of them. "Are these ALL your bikes?" I thought the five bikes in his office were more than enough bikes for one man.

"They didn't all fit in the storage space." He smiled his little smile and cheered me on as I reattached the brake cable and hooked up the front wheel. Finally, his expectations and mine were in synch.