Anne - she insists that her
last name not be used - is 52, a computer programmer at MIT with
frameless glasses, a fleece pullover and a respectable manner.
But she's hiding something, a secret, and doesn't want her name
in print. A heroin addiction? A Mafia past? Twinkie-philia?
Nope. She can't ride a bike.
But help is available, through a support group of sorts for the
bicycle-challenged that meets through the Cambridge Center for
Adult Education. Through Bicycle Riding for Beginners, Anne hopes
to conquer her fears and find her place in this huge, shifting
world.
Susan McLucas, teacher of the
class and owner of the Bicycle Riding School, stands in front
of her six students, who line up in the sloping parking lot of
the Powderhouse School in Somerville. The class members are helmeted,
padded, and straddling the bikes they've rented from McLucas,
which have no pedals and no training wheels. McLucas says training
wheels don't help and pedals only get in the way.
She ought to know. Twenty years
ago, she discovered she had two friends who couldn't ride. She
taught them successfully and wondered whether there were others
who needed help. Over two decades, she says, she's taught at
least 1,500 people to ride, including men, women, children, and
even a one-legged woman (a special seat was built and the pedal
modified). There have been only three failures, McLucas says.
One overweight man, one elderly man, and one woman who was just
too scared.
Fear is what keeps most people
from riding, McLucas says. The thing is to be one with the bike.
Go with it. Don't fight. "Don't even think about going straight," she
tells the class. "Just see which way the bike is starting
to lean and go that way. You're gonna look like a bunch of drunken
sailors at first."
So why get back on now, with
that Honda staring her in the face? Why else? Love. A new boyfriend
with a fetish for axle grease signed her up for the class as
a gift.
Sonia George grew up in Bombay,
where "it's pretty much a concrete jungle," she says,
with little room for bikes. When she got married and moved to Malden,
she found she wanted to ride with her husband. She says she's nervous
as she waits at the top of that slope.
At McLucas's word, the six students
start down the slope, wobbling and weaving and dragging their soles
on the concrete. Wiggling, says McLucas, is one of the keys. You
have to wiggle with the bike.
Nobody falls. They just limp
along, touching the ground with one foot or the other. Some of
them get their balance on the first try. Most take a bit longer,
walking the bike up the hill to ride it back down again.
Maybe because of her past attempts,
Rice seems to get the knack right away, and McLucas screws on her
pedals, which is the next step.
Just 15 minutes into class, Rice
is wandering farther and farther around the asphalt, pedaling like
a kid.
It's not so easy for everyone.
You know that old saying about
how you never forget? Myth, says Gloria Moody. Bicycling is like
any other skill - juggling, back flips, speaking French. If you
don't use it . . .
When Moody was a kid, she knew
how to ride a bike just fine. But then came The Accident, which
she still remembers "in every excruciating detail." She
was 7, riding along happily, when her front wheel knocked against
something in the pavement and sent her flying end over end, over
the handlebars. She ran home bawling and bleeding in equal measure. "[My
parents] tried to get me back on," she says. "I told
them to throw the monster out - burn it, trash it, I'm not getting
back on."
At 30, with the help of the class,
she's back on. She can't forget her fear, though, and scenes of
her childhood trauma keep coming back to her. This first day, she's
too timid to pedal much, dragging her left foot along for balance.
George, too, learns pretty quickly,
and you wonder if she'll need all four classes to learn. She drags
her leather sandal for the first few runs, but soon picks her foot
up and scoots around the lot, only running into a car once. She
avoids injury and gets up with a smile.
All these women have plans for
their new freedom. Rice wants to ride the bike path to Concord
and go bird-watching there, at a wildlife refuge; she wants to
see the flowers and the great blue herons. George plans to ride
with her husband. Moody, when she gets the knack, will ride with
her boyfriend.
Anonymous Anne, who is enrolled
in the Advanced Beginner class, says her goal is nothing less than
to save the planet. When she gets the hang of it, she's going to
bike to work, 4 miles, from her home in South Boston to MIT.
Anne's just doing her part, she
says. "I think any little thing you can do to reduce reliance
on automobiles is a good thing."
Photo
Caption 1: From the point of view of the class, the gentle
slope of this parking looks more like a death trap: gravel
patches (imminent skid-out), uneven concrete (potential
end-over-end), a black Honda in the distance (possible
collision). |
Photo
Caption 2: From under her helmet, Frances Rice stares
down the car. Every 10 years or so, she gives bicycling
a try. When she was 40, she tried to ride a bike that
was too big for her and veered off into a parked car.
That was 15 years ago. At parties, she never brings up
her inability. "It's embarrassing," she says.
She never learned as a kid, when she was a violinist,
not an athlete. |
