The Bicycle Love-Hate Binary

Ever since I learned to ride a bike, I’ve had a bizarre relationship with the activity. I learned how to ride a two-wheeler when I was five or six, and I loved riding fast...all speed, little good judgment otherwise. Most of the time things would start out fine, but by the end of almost every ride, I’d fallen off at least once. Considering how well-honed my sense of balance is in just about every other athletic activity I do, this bike-tipping propensity doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Sensible or not, I have diligently avoided bike riding whenever possible ever since a certain *ahem* incident in 4th grade. Yes, I do own a bike, but it’s probably been about four years since the last time I even took it around the block. I knew that coming to Germany probably meant embracing the bicycle, but believe me, it wasn’t a prospect I relished.

Sure enough two weeks after I got here, I “wanted” to ride my bike. I’ll do a lot for independent transportation, and I have to say that it’s nice to be able to go into Dessau when I want to without depending on someone else or having to pay for the bus. H, J and I practiced bike-riding, and honestly, it’s not the actual riding that is the problem, rather starting and stopping because my bike is a little too tall for me. I’ve finally managed bike riding with some grace, even if I spent the first couple of weeks looking fairly (read: completely) ridiculous because I’d hop off my bike at almost every stop light and walk with it across the road before awkwardly wavering back and forth when I’d try to start back up.

Thankfully I usually get a ride to school and only have to bike to the city when I want to because my one bike ride to school this year (early on in the bike-riding saga) was a complete disaster. How bad can it really have been?...monumentally bad. It commenced with me getting the heel of my shoe stuck in the pedal, so that the ride ended abruptly with me awkwardly hopping off on one foot before I even really got a chance to get started! “Ok, nobody saw that,” I thought to myself and tried again. After that the ride was fine again...up until when I got to the city. My bag somehow lodged itself in my wheel, and once I dislodged it, my bike began screeching. Not just a little squeak. I mean loud, obnoxious, fingernails-on-chalkboard screeching. Of course it was right then that I ran into one of my students. Embarrassing. I half-rode, half-walked the rest of the way to school and arrived there soaked in sweat (I had to leave my sweater on in class, that’s how bad it was) and about fifteen minutes later than I intended. Lucky for me, H always plans for us to be there early. I explained to her that my bike was making an odd noise, but I couldn’t bring myself to own up to the real reason why. Hadn’t I already lost enough of my dignity between 6:30 and 7:30 A.M.? Luckily J fixed my bike with little hassle, and I’m happy to report that the return trip was mercifully uneventful. Since then, my skills have improved immensely. If I can just learn to keep myself up by holding onto the walk-signal boxes at the intersections, I just might pass for a German.

Although I can honestly say that I’ve felt the most culture frustration in the last four weeks while I was on a bicycle (anything else that’s ruffled my feathers seems to be intensified by my bike “hate”), I can also say that during my last few bike trips, I’ve experienced some of my greatest elation. There’s nothing quite like pedaling up the hill to the bridge and seeing the church towers of Roßlau across the Elbe river, and feeling astounded and warmed by the idea that this is the place I’m calling home. At these times, my capacity for love overcomes my bike “hate”, and I pedal furiously forward with a kind of reckless abandon. The situation becomes a metaphor for the way in which I can start to see the good in many foreign experiences that I found disarming at first, as well as a clue to why I’ve always been prone to falling off my bike.

Deine,
N*