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. |
