Just Like Riding a Bike
Learning how to tell old and new stories
When I was a young boy—I don’t remember how old exactly, maybe ten or eleven—I hopped on a bike. I was spending the weekend at my dad’s house and he suggested that we go out for a ride together. It had been at least a
few years before that day since I had sat on a bike—my mom tried countless times to get me riding, but it never stuck. After a few spins around the cul-de-sac outside dad’s house, we set off on the trails around Wheaton. I honestly don’t remember much of the ride. I know it was a pleasant day, maybe late spring or early fall. I vaguely recall crossing over some sort of pedestrian bridge. But what I do remember vividly—on account of the mirrored scars that run across each of my knees—was the moment my front wheel clipped off the sidewalk’s edge to the grass strip beside it. It was likely only a few inches, but that was more than sufficient to launch me awkwardly out of my seat and onto the concrete. To make matters worse, my dad was trailing close behind; too close, it turned out, to halt before his tires ran over back of my knees. We weren’t yet close enough to the house to walk back. So after wiping the tears from my cheeks and sniffling the snot from my nose, I got my scraped knees and bruised bum back on the bike and pedaled the rest of the way back.
But this essay isn’t really about that ride. Or maybe it is, inasmuch as those scars accompany my legs still today, inasmuch as that young boy accompanies my every step still today.
You should know that once when I was very young—many years before that fateful fall—I defiantly declared to my mom that I would never get shoes with laces, because I didn’t care to learn how to tie my shoes. No ma’am, I contended, I was perfectly happy strapping on velcro sneakers for the rest of my days. All this to say that nearly as far back as I can remember, I have had a strong enough stubborn streak to simply say no to those things which brought me little pleasure.
So it should come as no surprise that I wouldn’t ride a bike for close to a decade after that. Those things were squarely out of the equation for me, no matter how much fun my friends seemed to have zooming around on them. I swore off the two-wheeled contraptions, content to traverse my small world on two feet instead.
But my abstention came to an end in the summer after my freshman year of college. I spent it as an intern with the youth ministry at my childhood church. The week before I was set to start, I received an all-staff email declaring the team’s excitement for the annual city retreat. And luckily for me, the day’s featured activity was a long bike ride down Chicago’s Lakefront Trail.
Gulp.
In hindsight, I’m tempted to write off the trepidation I felt upon receipt of this message. After all, my friend/boss Nate was gracious enough to re-teach me how to ride a bike in the church parking lot. The city retreat came and went entirely without incident.
Still, the pressure of the day felt immense. Pressure not just to stay on the bike avoid and flinging myself headfirst into the frigid Lake Michigan water, but to fit in with or even impress this group of pastors and church staffers who would ostensibly be my peers for the summer.
I truly don’t remember much of this ride either, except that it was a beautiful day and it ended with a really fabulous burger on Navy Pier.
But this essay isn’t really about that ride, either. Or maybe it is, inasmuch as the young man who hopped on a bike that day was filled with more shame and fear than he could articulate, inasmuch as a beautiful and winding line connects that young man to the young man writing these words today.
If I’m being honest, I’m not entirely sure what this essay is about.
I’m probably writing these words because a bicycle has long functioned for me like a talisman for my shame, a concrete image that encapsulates yet also domesticates my complicated relationship with that emotion. I’m probably writing these words because just the other day, I learned for the umpteenth time in my life how to ride a bicycle, and two of the previous learnings are the only two bikes ride I can explicitly recall across my entire twenty-seven years of life.
I’m probably writing these words because this most recent learning was filled with such an intense joy that it simply demanded I give it an account.
Rachel and I drove out to Potato Creek State Park to go camping. As we drove up to the campground, we saw a wooden sign on the road’s edge:
GENERAL STORE & BIKE RENTAL →
In recent days, I had actually warmed to the idea of giving it another spin (pun intended), but I’ll admit I was caught off guard when Rachel suggested we inquire about rentals after setting up camp. I’ve learned that it’s almost always the right choice to follow Rach when she suggests we try something new, so sure enough we walked to the general store and found that the price was right for this little excursion. And (you’ll be glad to hear this, Mom) they even provided helmets at no added cost!
I adjusted the seat, flipped the kickstand up, and swung my right leg over as hesitantly as if I were mounting a bareback horse. The movements were more familiar to my muscles than I expected. It only took a few spins around the cul-de-sac outside the store before we set off for the trails.
I think it was the first time in my entire life that “it’s just like riding a bike” made any sense to me.
It took more than a few minutes to actually find the bike trail, a 3.5-mile crescent around the western half of the park. My sense of direction’s no good with or without a map, but we made our way there along with the help of a new friend who was also looking for the trail.
In another version of this weekend, Rachel and I would have strapped on our trail shoes and hiked this loop, and maybe I’d be telling you a story of the aspen grove I stared into, the rainclouds we sheltered ourselves from in that grove, or the slug crawling along a rotting tree stump.
But that’s not what happened, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that you have to (get to?) observe a very different set of data points when you’re riding a bike. I would have hardly paid any attention to the wooden posts placed across either side of the trail entrance. On my feet, I would have simply walked around them, but seated on my metal steed, I had to time the approach just right to avoid a collision. The red lines painted across the bulging cracks in the trail would have hardly been worthy of a footnote on a hypothetical hike, but now they were critical signs that a thick root below the surface was conspiring to upend me: curve around it or brace for turbulence!
Individual aspen leaves gave way to whooshes of green. Singular raindrops on my nose metamorphosed into solid sprinkling sheets across my frontside. Slugs were simply too small to give notice, and even the brightest flower only demanded my attention for a moment before turning my head back down the road.
In a brief spell, my complete amateurism opened the way me to an entirely new way of experiencing the world. The rush of dopamine compelled me to pedal hard and fast, but my relative lack of confidence prevented me from checking if or how far I had pedaled ahead of my teacher. On the way to the trail’s end, a long and narrow puddle warned me to circumvent it at risk of injury. On the return trip, that same puddle invited me into its splash zone and I gladly obliged.
Something in me—somebody in me—came free on that trail. I dusted years of caked-on shame from my knees and found that these scarred joints could pedal after all.
The perspective changes when I’m looking at life in motion, when I realize that I am not confined to a boxcar riding along two rails, hopelessly fixed in motion and helpless to look back. And yet neither am I operating an excavator, digging tirelessly through my past as if it is a quarry to be mined for some useful anecdote or object-lesson.
In these moments, I recognize that I have agency to maneuver the vehicle, to tread an old path in a new way, to stop and start and stop again and start again, to rip through the puddle. Nothing is out of reach, and nothing is mine to keep.
Sometimes, a story simply needs to be told, even if that story only comes back in blurred fragments, in faded scars, in complicated feelings with poorly-defined margins. Sometimes, an instant arrives and departs too fast for any analysis, and yet that instant still needs to be accounted for, honored. Sometimes, it is not my job to analyze why a tale must be told, but to accept that my task is to put words to it as best I can.
Pat Schneider says it well: “That work of going into silent, closed places of memory and writing through it again is sacred work, redemptive work. Under pain, if we go deeply enough, there is joy. Under confusion there is clarity. Under suffering there is grace.” (How the Light Gets In, p. 42)
Sometimes, telling the story of such a moment is just like riding a bike!
That is to say (at least for myself) that sometimes, telling a story feels like the most intimidating and unnatural task in the world until I step into it and begin to pedal forward.
And those are the stories most worth telling.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
-Teilhard de Chardin
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Loved this a whole lot. Koby and I both got e-bikes to bop around on Nashville and it’s been a complete perspective gamechanger. Have never noticed the clouds so much