Tip 125: Public shame

I rode up to the girls school just after the bell rang.

It was hot and I was on the Repco mountain bike my parents bought me a few years before, which was just starting to be the right size.

The girls school was on top of a hill. Uphill to get there, steep down on the other side. I could see girls emerging from school buildings and drifting to the front gates as I toiled under my backpack full of homework, to the peak.

I was bookish and teen-aged and as far from being confident with girls as Vanilla Ice was from NWA. My bike was fluoro orange. It was the 1990s.

As I summited, many girls in their checked summer dresses were exiting the school. 

They milled around the gates. All of them were dazzling with their long hair and their beauty and their bright bubbly confidence and all of them were definitely looking right at me, thinking “That guy? Is he cool?”

I tried to look straight ahead and thought to myself, “I can look cool, if I just go really fast down this hill.”

I went to change gear.

This was when mountain bikes were hot.  They had taken the mantle from BMX, and the more gears you had the better. 

The gears had to be Shimano. Some people had SIS but nobody was sure what it stood for. Mine said Shimano, so even though it didn't work properly, it was the best there was.

I kept my bike outside, because that was where you kept bikes. My dad, an otherwise practical man, was not given to bicycle maintenance, and it did not occur to me I could improve the functioning of my bicycle gears by mentioning that they were, practically speaking, totally stuffed.

I pushed the shifter, and knew I would, as usual, struggle with it.

I wasn't going to let my gear levers defeat me in front of all those girls.

I turned my whole palm against the crappy black plastic lever and shoved.

The handlebars turned sharply. The bike stopped. My feet left the pedals and I distinctly recall turning my head toward the gates where the girls were standing. I hoped nobody would be watching as the bright orange bike cart-wheeled and the small boy with the big backpack soared. A vain hope.

I did not soar for ever. My descent onto the asphalt - a surface chosen for its unyielding nature - obliterated layer upon layer of skin and embedded loose gravel deep in my palms.

What followed may be the most reticent display I will ever make.

I did not lie on the road and wail. I did not examine my wounds. I did not hope people would come and fuss over me. I stood immediately, focussing my entire being on not crying.

I grabbed the Repco by the handle bar, haughtily, like it had thrown me off quite unfairly. Casting not a single glance at the assembled school girls, I swung my leg over and pedalled down the hill, remaining this time in a rather easy gear. Far worse than the sting of riding with no knee-skin was the way my face burned and my stomach churned with shame.

By the time I got home my socks were red with blood.

I never once rode home that way again.

---

Quite some years later I got engaged to a woman who attended that very school. One evening I attended a social event with her and had occasion to tell this story. 

She said, “That was you?” before leaving with another man.

Not really.

I would never tell this story at a social event.

Tip 79: Veer into a parked car

Cycling affords a tremendous way to see your city and it would be a shame not to stop and smell the roses.
If you peer off into the distance long enough, however, you will cease to hold your line.  Perfectly stationary objects will jump out at you, and you will find the end of your handlebar has become irredeemably tangled with a parked car.

BONUS TIP: Hold your head high, as though mortifying embarrassment is as preposterous a concept as Scientology, put the car's wing mirror back in place and ride on.

Tip 73: Ride through a head-wind

If your ride to work feels like slow-motion, it sometimes isn't the sisyphean nature of the day ahead holding you back.
The head-wind you face need not be the prospect of filling spreadsheet cells A1 to Z99 and determining the matrix product of the array, but a literal one caused by the coordinated relocation of large number of gas molecules.

BONUS TIP: Relish the opportunity to ride right through the middle of a big fucking metaphor.  On the way home you will have the wind at your back, but if the road rises up to meet you - on a bike - you've screwed up.

Tip 70: Register your dissatisfaction with the local bike-share scheme

 
Why not take a bike?
Because the law says I need a helmet, and I don't #@%&ing keep one in my top pocket!

BONUS TIP: Urban Riding Tips does not condone destruction, Melbourne. Contact your local MP, or more effectively - just keep not using them.  Something's gotta give.

Tip 67: Fall off for no apparent reason.

One fine day, absolutely nothing will be enough to topple you off that still-uncomfortable perch on the Brooks you paid so much for.  As your carbon triangles skitter away across the black-top like a shuffle on a shuffleboard, you'll be lying on your back seeking perpetrators.  Was it the gentle zephyr, the most peripheral pedestrian, or a half-stoned koala in a near-by gum tree?

BONUS TIP: Don't bother people with this non-story. Falling off your bike is not a magic trick and the lack of explanation will not intrigue.  If you don't concoct a big fat lie full of cause and effect, the narrative vacuum will fill up fast with derision.

Tip 14: Hit a taxi, then take a detour

Ride down a hill and through an intersection, fast. Weave out to dodge the car in the bike lane. Weave back in to dodge the traffic, which is slowing.
Get on your brakes, as a taxi slows more than expected.  Get off the brakes because your wheels are about to lock up.
Moment of panic.
Hit the back of the taxi.
Thunk.
No damage. Peer in and see no sign passenger or driver is even aware of what you've done. Continue up the bike lane.  Consider looking over your shoulder. Instead take the next left and next right, to lose them.

BONUS TIP: Take three to four days of shame, guilt and trying not to think about it before you can tell this story to anyone.

Tip 8: Fall off on wet metal

You have drips in your eyes and a big stripe up your back.  A slippery feeling between your toes as your croc loafers prove less waterproof than the animal they're made of.  It's dim, and there's a mirage effect as headlights gleam up from the road.
You're on the brakes the whole time.  You are super careful, slow and steady, alert to cars stopping distances, studiously avoiding puddles of unknowable fathom. 
Until you get within a street of home and you lean into a corner.
Oh! That manhole cover must be new.
When the asphalt rushes up to caress your cheekbone it feels like a rusty razor found way down the back of the bathroom cabinet. Your trousers tear like tissue paper as you slide. It ends when you are lying still, feeling like you are taking a cold gritty bath with your bike.

 
BONUS TIP: If you are spread-eagled on a tram track, ignore the holes in your Lee denim and put a finger to the track.  If the steel is thrumming, you are about to be turned into strawberry jam.  Move!