Day 4: I Rode My Bicycle and I Did Not Die

I begin an attempt to carry my bike down the stairs.

Longtime readers of my photography blog will know that I am abjectly terrified of my bicycle, or rather, of riding it. I grew up in nice little suburb that undertook a massive bicycle lane improvement project when I was in high school. So, by the time I was ready to graduate from riding my bike in endless loops around my subdivision to riding it to a summer job, I could travel the entire journey in a wide, well-marked bike lane. 

Now that I live in New York, though, I never, ever ride my bike in traffic. This is a totally inhospitable environment! I'd be crazy to want to wrangle my bike through these streets. Basically, its existence consists of having its tired pumped up, being escorted down several blocks of sidewalk and over a footbridge to a dedicated bicycle path, going for a twenty minute ride when it finally feels the wind through its spokes and on the little waving fronds of rubber that have still not worn off the tires, and returning to the hallway of my apartment, where its tires promptly deflate and it lies dormant for another four to six months.

A car drives over the ostensible bike lane. This is what I'm talking about.

This began to strike me as ridiculous. It's not like me to be dissuaded by fear; I think the proper amount of caution allows me to be safely adventurous. My inability to climb up a sheer face of ice was not really a damper on my everyday life but I decided to traverse a glacier in Iceland anyway; my refusal to ride my bike is, in fact, inhibiting me. It's silly to let this fear go on any longer. 

I'm going to get on it! I'm going to ride it! 

So I chose this morning for my ride, knowing that the time of day would provide the right number of challenges on my block. The produce truck would be unloading at the 24-hour mini mart downstairs, and a few taxi drivers would be waiting at the stand, but the traffic wouldn't yet be bad. I plotted my route so that I'd have only right turns and I'd avoid the steep inclines closer to the river. I pumped up both tires, grabbed my helmet, and wrestled my bike down the staircase. At the bottom I noticed my yoga pants were smeared with bicycle grease and a thick layer of dust.

And then I was off! Things were terribly awkward and wobbly for the first stretch, but I got into my groove a few pedals in. Although my plan was to go only once around the block, I went twice! And I liked it!

The fearless adventurer returns home.

HOW I LEFT MY COMFORT ZONE:

Um, I risked my life. 

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:

I am invincible!

I realised that I can't wait around until conditions are perfectly right before undertaking a project, task, or challenge.  They never will be. The road will never be completely free of cars, garbage trucks, and potholes, but I don't have to wait until then to ride my bike.