Biker

I was kind of nervous about biking before I got here. After my parents made me learn how to ride a bike as a 9-year-old so that I would grow up with the basic competencies of a normal person (joke's on you! 23 and still can't drive a car!), I spent the next 12 years determinedly proving the fact that you really can forget how to ride a bike. By my senior year in college, though, things were getting embarrassing. One memorable Ohioan afternoon, I re-learned how to cycle on the kiddie bike of a friend.

That brings us to this past June, when I got here and was told that I would be issued a 21-speed 13" women's mountain bike for all my transportation needs. I knew I could manage it...but I was nervous. We had a 2-hour session before moving in with our host families on basic bike repair and maintenance, which mostly involved teaching us how to take off wheels and repair flats. Then, that was it. They were assuming we already knew how to do things like turn with less than a 20' radius. I was on my own. I had never even shifted gears while riding a bike before.

The first time I rode my bike was when I went home with my host family. Loaded down with a heavy backpack and with my mandolin case thumping on my right knee, desperately trying to follow my host mother through a cloud of dust as she motorcycled down uneven dirt roads, I thought about crying. Kids here learn to bike when they're 3, and I did not want their first impression to be of me falling off of my shiny expensive brand-new bike because of my own incompetence. Thankfully I made it back, barely. Who knows what they thought. Things got dicey by the second day of training when I got my first flat. I didn't even know I had a flat. My host brother had to tell me. I sat there waiting for half an hour with my flat front tire while my host brother went to get my host mother, because he said we were too far from the house to walk back. Eventually, though, we walked back. We were 7 minutes from the house.

What really freaked me out was how self-sufficient I had to be with the whole thing. I got a little repair kit with my bike, which included patches, glue, a bottle of mineral oil, and a bunch of mysterious metal tools that I didn't know how to use. I also got a bike repair and maintenance handbook that I still haven't opened. Was I supposed to figure out how to do this all on my own? I had witnessed flats being fixed, but could I really do it in the heat of the moment? What if something went horribly wrong with my bike but I had no idea because I was clueless about my bike anyway, and then one day it broke and I crashed? After the first time I got a flat and didn't know it, I became really paranoid about getting more flats and not noticing them. I imagined living forever in shame after ruining the rims on my wheels. I was not a competent enough biker to look down at the tires while biking.

Things came slowly. I shifted gears a couple of times over the next month. Not actually that hard. I got to the point where I could take my right hand off the handlebars long enough to wave at people. (Only my right hand though. Couldn't do it with the left hand.) My host brother told me that my tires needed air, so I tried to pump them up. A few weeks later I figured out that I wasn't using the pump right and that's why it was really difficult and the tires weren't actually inflating. I took my back wheel off by myself. After 2 months I heard someone talking about oiling her chain, so I oiled my chain, and suddenly my bike ran so smoothly and quietly. Someone showed me how to tighten my brakes. By the end of training, I sort of felt okay about the whole thing.

Now, I'm on my own, and the bike repair guy isn't there every day to help me anymore. Intimidating. At first. Biking 8 km to my friend's site was one of the longest bike rides I had ever been on, ever. I had to reinflate my own tires when I myself noticed they were getting low. I had to oil the chain when I heard it getting squeaky.

But suddenly, 2 months after getting to site, I realize that I am totally fine with all of it. In fact, I enjoy it. I can now look down and check both my front and back tires while riding my bike, I know immediately when I get a flat, and I can talk on my cell phone using either hand while I ride (er, not that I ever do that). I went from only using the lowest gears to only using the highest gears, and a 30 km bike ride to the regional capital is no big deal. It seems like there was never a time when I couldn't do it all. I still don't fix my own flats, but that's only because the pump is a major pain to use, and why bother anyway when I can pay someone to fix it for me for 50 francs, the equivalent of 10 cents. I enjoy keeping everything clean and taught and running smoothly. Tightening the brakes, adjusting the seat, it's just part of my day. Nothing intimidating about it.

I could go on about the whole thing being a metaphor for getting used to life in a foreign culture, but I'll fast-forward over the cheesy explanations. You can think about it for yourself. At least I never fell off my bike. I will say, though, that my progress with bicycling has grown closely with my integration here, and also my overall sense of self-reliance. I kind of feel like a grown-up who can take care of herself now. And maybe, maybe now that I've gotten to the biking skill level of the average 12-year-old, it will just be another decade or two until I get there with driving.