Linda Mears, OWP 1998

 

Riding Through

It shimmies. The handlebars start with a wobble at 31 or 32 mph, the quaking travels through the frame from front wheel to back, whipping the back tire and transmitting up my arms until it's a contest which force is greater, my side to side action or the momentum carrying me down the hill. I brake, squeezing until the sweat stands out on my forehead and body and bike come to a shuddering which doesn't stop until the wheels don't turn.

Then the shaking is in my knees, and my chest. Because I have to try it again

I started riding as physical therapy after an auto accident, and grew to love the freedom riding offers. Riding out is challenge and accomplishment available to anyone at any level of ability, anyone willing to put in the saddle time. I am proud to look out from the basin hills&emdash;Spencer's Butte, say, or Pisgah&emdash;to see where I have been. My little body on a small frame of metal angles and rounds of rubber; we were there, and there, and from there to there, where the patchwork of the valley unfurls banner-wise all the way to the Coast Range.

I love to slide by the flat agricultural lushness; color is deep and sharp at the speed of bike. The bottom land loam, recently tilled, is a rich, moist brown, knobbled with ancient river stones, tree knots, and whiskery stubble; things dying to prepare for the new. It speaks of something more amazing than green. We expect beauty in life; the nature writer John Muir would call this brown the beauty in death, which startles and surprises us because it challenges our own mortal dread. I ride through it, spring into late fall, and savor the scent of corn and dairy farm and the overripe apples. It is singular, this satisfaction in the internal consistency of traversing; it is to go door to destination, and back to door. Only my legs carry me out there, and my stamina carries me back.

But the farther out I ride, the more I encounter hills&emdash;and speeds in downhill&emdash;which present a challenge even dogged stamina can't tackle. My bicycle shimmies and dances all over the bike lane as soon as I crest 31 mph.

"With loaded panniers, you won't be able to do the coast hills." My partner Adi is clearly disappointed. He takes the downhill like lightning, which leaves him to wait it out in the valley below, worrying about my wobble, while I more cautiously wheel my way down. His exasperation is more than impatient machismo; it simply isn't safe. I could crash behind him, and he would have no way of knowing. Something had to be done.

We consult experts. Our bike shop tests the cycle; no shimmy apparent to them. So maybe it is your form, they suggest. Are you tucking in properly?

Are you relaxed in your grip, are you even in your brake squeeze? We go over the pointers, then ride back to the top of 30th Avenue for another test.

"Don't brake until you absolutely have to," offers Adi firmly. I push into 15, 20 and quickly approach 30 mph. I note the tuck, my arms in repose, relaxed but ready to grip, weight of my center over the seat, pedal tension in my legs. I am suddenly going 33 and wobbling so hard I wonder if I'll have any teeth left in my head&emdash;and then I'm done and shaken, shaking by the side of the road.

"It's the bike, I did everything perfectly," I insist. So we spin slowly back to the shop, where I select a used bike I'll be able to tour with. Again up to the top of 30th Avenue, sweat soaking gloves and trickling down necks and backs. Another approach at speed, another adrenaline-shot shimmy begins with this cycle, too, and I bail out and put the brakes on, quitting only halfway down the hill.

"One more time, maybe you weren't used to the bike yet," says Adi. But I can't make myself go down the hill again. I now know more about mortal dread than I care to, and I am afraid to the bone. Bitter, too. Fitness and stubbornness aren't smoothing my passage. Maybe I'll just quit riding altogether.

"Before you quit on me, or we quit riding together, just try one more thing." Adi isn't smiling, and I can see that something on the order of the relationship is at stake here. He might not like my attitude, but I don't like the pressure. I clench my teeth, seething, and let him ride ahead out of sight.

Back at the shop, he is signing out a lean, thousand-dollar racer, a whippet of a cycle, to my wobbly care. "I can't afford to keep this, so promise me you won't trash it, " he quips, but I am in no mood for joking. I need a new bike or a new hobby or a new partner, or maybe all three. But first, I am convinced I know how to take a downhill. I will prove it.

The cycle is powder blue, but all I can see as I prone over the top tube and move into the speed is the blur of yellow tape on the bars. I have no cyclometer, but Adi is shouting behind me, "That's it, don't brake, keep it up, 40--41--42 !"

I am flying afraid, but I am flying, wobble-free, and I don't touch the brake until the pitch flattens and the road becomes the stoplighted intersection. I am startled and surprised, John Muir, at the sheer beauty of fear overcome.