Our garage has a collection of underused sporting gear hanging from hooks on the wall. Sleeping bags and a tent from the camping trip that happened exactly twice in our 26 years together. A collapsible hula-hoop from my brief stint in a community ed class. (I’ll bet you didn’t know you could take a class on hula hooping!) Roller blades from when we lived in a place with a flat, paved bike trail that stretched for miles. There’s even a pair of green wooden stilts in the corner from my grandparents’ house that as kids, we used to try to balance on and walk up and down their driveway whenever we visited them.
Of all the items in our garage, it’s the bikes that taunt me most when I walk out there. I’m not sure when we stopped biking, but it’s definitely been a decade or more. The old Miyata bike was a gift we bought on our first anniversary so it’s getting up there in years. The mountain bike I bought on Craig’s List is not getting any younger. And neither are we.
The other night we decided it would be more fun to do something outdoorsy instead of just going out for dinner for our anniversary. Maybe a bike ride down the Peavine Trail? We put on our shoes and headed into the garage to see if our bicycle wall art was actually still rideable. The tires were flat, but they didn’t turn to powder when I touched them, so I considered that an optimistic sign. After performing some feats of overhead strength hoisting them down from their perch, we searched around until we found the bike pump, but the tip was missing. Luckily, my husband is a man of many tools and he found his air compressor tips. Before long, we had four functioning wheels again.
I brushed the dust off the handlebars and seats. “We’ve still got a little light,” Mike said. “Let’s take them for a quick spin around the neighborhood.” I thought of several reasons why this wasn’t a good idea, most of them having to do with eating supper a short while ago and feeling lazy after a long day at work, but I kept them to myself. We grabbed our sweatshirts and opened the garage door and walked the bikes gingerly down the driveway, testing the brakes to make sure they still worked too.
“I almost forgot how to get on this thing,” Mike said as he hopped up onto his oversized comfy bike seat. “Were the handlebars always this low?” I was busy trying to remember how the shifters worked on my bike. Was it the left side or the right side that switched between the high and low gears? We looped around the cul-de-sac, trying the brakes again and fidgeting with the shifters.
Suddenly, Mike took off and began pedaling up the hill across from our street. I stopped worrying about which hand was shifting which gear and raced to join him. The evening breeze was almost too chilly for the jacket I was wearing, but it felt good to be outside, riding the bike, pushing to try to keep up, and then reaching the top of the steep hill. We coasted back down to our house, taking a few more laps around the cul-de-sac before walking back into the garage, slightly out of breath and chilly, happy that we both remembered how to ride a bike.
I have faint memories of learning how to ride a bike as a little girl, progressing from a tricycle to a real bike with training wheels. Our driveway looked so steep, but I believed my dad when he said he wouldn’t let me tip over. Before long, the training wheels were gone and I was able to conquer the driveway without any fear.
It makes me think about all the skills we acquire in our lives that we don’t use all the time but are still in us, waiting for a reason to come back out. Maybe it’s the piano gathering dust in a back room, or a drawer full of paintbrushes and sketch pads. Or a novel that’s just waiting to be written down. The skills might be a little dusty but spring is a great time to hop on and just start pedaling. I’ll bet you’ll be surprised how quickly it all comes back. Watch out hula hoop, you’re next!