Once you learn how to ride a bike you can always ride one, isn’t that the way the saying goes? People use it for all kinds of things. If you learned to ride a bike you’ll never forget how to do it. And I guess you don’t.
I have wanted an electric bike for awhile now. I see them out and about. I see them in bike stores. My cousin has two. You can fold them up and take them with you in the car. I haven’t wanted one enough to actually go look at them. I have looked online though but haven’t done enough research to actually go shop for one. I have saved my money though and I do have enough to go buy one if I decide for sure that’s what I want.
I have decided for sure that is not what I want. While on a business trip to Chicago I decided to go sightseeing with a colleague. She had her daughter with us and her daughter mentioned that she wanted to ride bikes. That works for me, I thought. You can rent electric bikes in Chicago. These things are huge but they’re just bikes and I can ride bikes. I learned when I was little. I spent my childhood riding bikes. Anyway, it took us forever to figure out even how to rent them. The writing should have been on the wall. Seriously. I should have taken that as a sign from God that we shouldn’t rent these things. But no, let’s waste time trying to figure out what to scan, when, and if the bike would unlock. Finally, we got it done and we were hopping on the bikes to take off. I was struggling with mine because it was so big. I had adjusted the seat all the way down and could easily reach the pedals so I’m set, right?
Not just no, but hell no. I was not set. For one, you could not easily move the pedals to get started. We were on an incline so if we went one way or another we were going to go downhill or uphill. The big kicker was there was no backpedal brake. You had to brake with your hands. All I could think about was braking too hard on the front brake and flipping over the handle bars. But, the biggest obstacle was that the minute I began pedaling the bike took over (electric, remember) and puts you up there at cruising speed when you’re just trading to get your sea legs.
I could not control the bike. I could not stop. I fell. “No, don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” I was not fine. I fell on my replaced knee but I didn’t care because I was going to ride that damn bike. I got back on. I still didn’t have my sea legs. I was not going to fall. I didn’t. I drove straight into some bushes. That stopped me. The next endeavor was to switch bikes with my colleague. I did that. I was getting ready to take off when I realized I could not touch the pedals, even with the seat lowered all the way. At least I stopped before I hit the tree. I looked at my co-adventurers and said “y’all go on and have a good ride. I’ll meet you later at our next destination.”
I told myself then and there to go right back to the car and head back to the hotel. I could meet up with the adventurers later. They said they could taken an Uber back to the hotel. No. I decided to stay. I flagged down a guy on an electric bike with a trailer, told him where I wanted to go and he took me all over everywhere. He finally stopped at Michigan Avenue told me which way to go and let me off. I asked him what I owed him. He pointed to a sign. I inwardly freaked out and pulled out my wallet. I was getting ready to hand him cash but he said he did not have change and didn’t I have a card? I pulled out a card and found that charged me another $10. This his little machine wanted to know if I wanted to leave him a tip. I looked at him as though looks could kill.
After walking on the lower deck of Chicago for about 20 minutes I found my way to our next adventure where I waited for my co-travelers. I knew I was in the right place. I just needed for them to make their way there. I wasn’t going to sit down anywhere because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back up.
As I stood there waiting for them I came to the conclusion that I needed to forget that I know how to ride a bike.
Would you like to hear about us trying to find the car again? Maybe I’ll save that for another day.