Wrist Shot

Gilda woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in her left wrist, a remnant of a fall she took over the summer as she descended a friend’s sloped driveway. She's been suffering off and on, made all the more inconvenient because she's a lefty. She's going to see a hand specialist this week. Until then she's been wearing a wrist brace at night, a souvenir of one of my bicycling misfortunes.

We were out in Uniondale for a weekend soccer tournament for Dan’s traveling all star team. We took our bikes with us as we knew there'd be lots of down time between and after games. Uniondale is next to Garden City where we rode.

The end of our family jaunt was on Stewart Avenue, a major roadway. I’d recently learned to ride a two-wheeler (shortly after I turned 40), so I wasn’t too comfortable riding on a busy thoroughfare. I suggested we bike on the sidewalk. Gilda said it would be safer in the street as the roadway was better maintained than the sidewalk. Fearful of cars, I insisted on the sidewalk. While Gilda, Dan and Ellie rode on the street, I pedaled along on the sidewalk. 

As we approached a massive tree with a low hanging branch, Dan said he would try to reach up to touch it. I turned my head to tell him not to, in so doing steered my bike directly into the tree trunk. I crashed, breaking my fall with my right forearm. X-rays from a midnight trip to the emergency room revealed no broken bones, but the wrist took months to heal, less time than it took my ego to admit Gilda was right about where to ride.

Now, careful readers should have noted Gilda hurt her left wrist, I hurt my right. Thus, she could not possibly be using the brace from my fall in Garden City. Correct! She’s wearing the brace from the fall I took the next summer on a charity bicycle ride along the shore in Norwalk, Conn. On a hairpin turn a car came, in my view, perilously close to knocking me over. I panicked and tumbled to my left, breaking the fall with my left wrist. 

I was lucky. I escaped both times with no more than a bone bruise, no torn ligaments, no hairline fracture. It was inconvenient trying to type while wearing the brace, but I survived. We’re really hoping Gilda is at least equally fortunate.

Paddling Along

I’m an old newspaperman, and if there’s one thing we wizened scribes hate it’s getting beat on a story, especially one you’ve been sitting on till the time was right. You can imagine, then, my disappointment and anguish when I read deep into the NY Times on Monday and came across the headline, “A Goal Met Before Age 50, And No Training Wheels!”. It ran over an article about a Bike New York program in Brooklyn that teaches adults to overcome their fears and race off on two wheels (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/nyregion/learning-to-bike-at-adulthood.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=training%20wheels&st=cse).

It was an article I could relate to as I was a late bicycler. It was a story idea I had been planning to incorporate into a future blog after promising to do so last December when I seconded the notion of a different Times piece, “Fell Off My Bike and Vowed Never To Get Back On” (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/12/two-wheeled-trauma.html).

I learned to ride after four decades of disdain for the two-wheeled conveyance. I learned via the Amanda Steinberg system, as taught to Ellie Forseter and passed on to her father. Ellie was all of 7 when Amanda took her under her slightly older wing to teach the finer points of balance and pedaling. I was 40.

As I am quite confident Amanda has not patented her system, I am at liberty to convey its rudimentary form to you. As noted, it works for young and old alike.

First, make sure your bike has no training wheels. For adult men, I recommend an old-style woman’s bicycle because there is no center bar to shall we say, challenge your manhood. The bike seat should be low enough to enable your feet to fully touch the ground so if you ever feel yourself tipping over you can comfortably and without panic steady yourself without falling.

Balancing yourself on the bike, with your legs dangling at the sides, not on the pedals, paddle forward with your feet. After moving a few yards, lift your feet onto the pedals and try to turn them. Don’t be discouraged if you lose your balance. Try again. Sooner, rather than later, hopefully, your balance will become second nature and you’ll be able to continuously pedal.

There. You’ve just learned to ride a bike.

I won’t pretend it’s easy, especially when you’re older and fear consumes you, memories of prior falls and failures freeze you and embarrassment haunts your every attempt. What will the neighbors think?, is constantly going through your mind.

If you’re lucky (I use that word advisedly), as I was, you’ll have a life-partner who will shove you outside the moment you come home from work. Your spouse will exhort you to “man up” and do it before dinner is ready. Don’t come inside unless you’re bicycle-trained. If you do, it’s back outside after dinner, old man. Learn, or be forever left alone while the rest of the family pedals off on wonderful eco-friendly rides.

Futility engulfed my first attempt. I gave up when it became too dark even on our protected cul-de-sac. The next day I was sent out again before dinner. No luck. I moaned over meat loaf I’d never be able to learn. I just couldn’t coordinate more than two turns of the pedals before losing my balance. Ten-year-old Dan volunteered to observe and correct my faulty approach.

We marched out after dinner, I climbed onto Gilda’s old bike, and as I proceeded to explain to Dan how I couldn’t pedal more than two revolutions...I was halfway down the block, the wind in my exhilarated face, tension turning my smile into a grimace as I realized I had no idea how to stop or turn. While Dan called for Gilda to come outside, quick, I figured the only way to stop was to plow into a curb. I got back on the bike. Lo and behold, I was able to pedal again. I was riding a bicycle. Far from laughing at me, neighbors came out and applauded.

Oh, the joy of conquering a childhood phantom.

Truth be told, I hated biking. My ass hurt after a short spin. My neck hurt from looking up with my back bent over the handlebars. My hands and wrists hurt from holding the handlebars too tightly. And I didn’t like falling, which I did repeatedly (see above mentioned blog on two-wheeled trauma).

But at least I learned to ride. I hope it’s true what they say about never forgetting how to ride a bicycle, just in case I find myself in a desperate situation, as Carl Reiner’s character did in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. You never know when knowing how to ride a bike can help you save the world.

Two-Wheeled Trauma

Lots of children woke up Christmas morning to find a bicycle under the tree. Or maybe a two-wheeler showed up under the Hannukah menorah a few weeks ago. Either way, my reaction to these childhood conveyances can best be summarized by the following headline: “Fell Off My Bike, and Vowed Never to Get Back On.”

The accompanying article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/nutrition/30best.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage) reconfirmed my antipathy toward a sport, an exercise, that I have disdained since around the time I was 7. I never learned to ride a bicycle as a child, a deprivation of youth I attributed to my father (why blame myself when an adult authority figure is readily available and central to the story?).

Like any good father, my father was teaching me to ride without training wheels, a feat he had accomplished with my brother and sister. Behind our home in Brooklyn, we shared a T-shaped common driveway leading to the garages tucked into the back of each row house. The long portion of the paved driveway was at least the length of a football field and was commonly used for many of the games we played such as ringolevio, punchball and blind man’s bluff. It was a perfect place to learn to ride a bike.

My father dutifully ran alongside the bike holding it steady as I attempted to maintain balance. All was going well. I turned my head to tell him something, but he wasn’t there. I must have been at least 10 yards past him, cycling on my own. But I panicked. I crashed down to the hard pavement. I ran back home, crying to my mother, “Daddy let go.” I was inconsolable, determined never again to trust him to hold me steady, resolute in my opinion that my large tricycle was just as good as a two-wheeler. All my friends pedaled circles around me on their two-wheelers. I countered I could run just as fast as they could bike.

No amount of coaxing could change my mind. It stayed closed-minded for the next 33 years, until I was 40 and Ellie was 7. She had just learned to ride. Gilda threatened to go on biking vacations with Dan and Ellie without me. So I learned (subject of a future blog). On our first bike outing as a family, around the SUNY Purchase perimeter road, Ellie tumbled down a steep hill in front of me. Good thing she was wearing a helmet.

A few months later we were riding in Garden City while attending one of Dan’s soccer tournaments. As we came to Stewart Avenue, a major roadway, I suggested we ride on the sidewalk. Gilda said it would be safer in the street. Fearful of cars, I insisted on the sidewalk. Gilda gave in. As we approached a massive tree with a low hanging branch, Dan said he would try to reach up to touch it. I turned my head to tell him not to, in so doing steered my bike directly into the tree trunk. I crashed, breaking my fall with my right forearm. X-rays from a midnight trip to the emergency room revealed no broken bones, but the wrist took months to heal, less time than it took my ego to admit Gilda was right about where to ride.

The next summer as we were biking on vacation I fell as a car came too close to me on a hairpin turn (at least that was my view). I decided I preferred safety to biking with family and have rarely been aboard a bike since. A few years ago we donated my bike. We gave Gilda’s to our daughter-in-law Allison. Gilda keeps hinting she’d like us to buy recumbent bikes, the type that are low to the ground. I doubt we will. I have too much regard for my bones and insufficient confidence in my stability on two wheels.