I haven’t ridden a bike since I was 9 years old. I know they say you never forget, but I don’t think I remember. I’ve repressed those memories.*
A bike is not relaxing to me. It’s stressful. I think of traffic; cars and bikes trying to maneuver around each other. I think of getting tangled in bushes and branches in a park.
I think of a myself going faster and faster as I coast down a hill, squeezing brakes that don’t work and bursting through a sign that says the bridge is out. That’s just to name a few.
So instead of being programmed to think an activity is easy when someone says, “It’s like riding a bike,” all I think is that it’s potentially fatal.
This is something that I’d like to eventually reprogram.
Maybe if I go far away to some desert plain where I can ride freely knowing I won’t smash into anything, I’d be okay… Unless I puncture a tire just as night is falling and there’s no way of getting home before daybreak. (INSERT: Coyote howl.)
*I do remember conversations about how I needed to learn and moments on my bike after I already knew how. But the whole “You can do it, Tia!”? … Poof. Gone.
Hahaha