Bike

 I've never quite mastered the whole "wheels" thing. Roller skates didn't work out, and bikes didn't fare me too well either. My relationship with bikes has been much more tumultuous than my experience with skates.

If I could go back in time , I would convince my young self to just stay in that little plastic red car with the yellow top on it. You know, the one you had to pedal with your feet? Best thing ever, and even better, they still look the same as they always did. I loved it! I would pedal, usually barefoot, with some sort of frightened animal in my backseat just begging me to let it out while I refused to oblige. I was trying to play “house,” and quite frankly, the animals weren't doing a good job at obeying their “mom.” Those were the days......but they're gone now, only to be replaced by horrible nightmares of bigger wheeled things.

I never owned a trike. However, I rode one every chance I got in pre-school. How could a kid not love riding a trike? It felt like riding a motorcycle. There is an unsaid coolness to riding a trike that only those who have ridden one can understand. The cool breeze in your hair, everyone staring in envy, because usually the school only had about 2 trikes in the shed, which meant that when it was time for recess, everyone made a mad dash to the shed to be the first to get the trike and own it for all of recess. I ran as fast as my chubby little legs would let me. Fuck the whole “sharing is caring,” shit. If you weren't trikin' it, you weren't cool. On a trike, YOU are KING.

Training wheels were my security blanket. Often times, They were not correctly adjusted, so I would wobble down the road. They were my reassurance that I was not going to fall down. My bike also would break by me pedaling backwards. I knew that bike inside and out. I had it mastered. Until one day my parents decided it was time to throw ol' Kelly on two wheels. They took the wheels off my 4 wheeler and made me practice. Not too long after, I OWNED it. Mostly because I was much too large to be riding it, but in some ways it was because I was daring. I cut corners, braked hard and left skid marks on the road, and would ride in circles, cutting each turn so tight that I was mere inches from the ground. Well, at one point I got TOO confident and wiped out only to be left with my savage battle wounds.

Some time after this, my parents thought I was ready for a bike that was more appropriate for an abnormally large pre-teen. This frightened the shit out of me, and for my birthday coming up, I avoided the whole “bike” conversation. I awoke on my birthday to a menaching, two wheeled monster in my living room. No warning, no “close your eyes and count to ten!” I just walked out and BOOM it was there. I put on my pretend face and said how much I loved it, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't almost crap my pants. My stomach dropped and I was freaked out. To my parents' credit, it was a nice bike. The sight of it made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. It was a menacing son of a bitch. Look at it....just.....sitting there, mocking me. “ha-ha Kelly, ha. ha. I'm going to ruin your life!” It got to the point that anytime someone used the word “bike,” such as “hey, I have a great idea, lets go for a bike ride!” I would panic and come up with an excuse why such a bike ride was not possible. I would have rather rode my pain in the ass Razor scooter than my bike. I would have rather WALKED or RAN rather than biked.

To practice, I would ride in the church parking lot next door. It was a raised parking lot that led to a lower parking lot via a steep exit hill. I rode around the upper lot until I got my confidence up and then called my parents out to watch me. Well, right around the part of the lot where the exit hill was, I froze, and instead of turning, breaking, or doing ANYTHING conducive to my own safety, I flew down the side of the exit hill, down the grass, where my bike hit a rock that sent me flying through the air. I landed about half a foot from a boulder, my glasses flew off and broke, and I ended up with a bloody nose. The ambulance was called, and my Scottish neighbors brought me a towel to bleed on. The important thing was, I made the paper, and I was left with a harrowing battle tale of how I came so close to death.

Wheels and I, we just don't mix. Although I'm fairly confident that I could get on a bike without making myself bleed, I choose not to. I Just Say No. I do, however, still get nervous and panicky when I am around bikes. So if we ever become friends, please never ever ever invite me on a bike ride.