Bicycling Blues

My bicycling skills are coming along…well sort of. The way I feel about it is, that if I’m staying upright and moving forward, I’m coming along, or is that going along. Anyway, I feel that it is going to be awhile before I feel even marginally confident on a bicycle; it still feels too dangerous and scary. I can’t even imagine being in traffic with other bicycles let alone raging cars and monster trucks, and what if pedestrians decide to throw themselves under my wheels? This is forshadowing at its best as I peer around the church’s parking lot with pessimistic and squinty eyes.

The asphalt from where I sit seems to be at least 10ft below me (hey, the perception used to be 40ft) while I'm cruising in wide circles, around and around . . . first clockwise and then counter clockwise, with a few figure eights thrown in for good measure.

Strangely, I having problems with right turns and I don’t get it? Seeing that I’m right-handed one would think if I going to have problems with turns, it would be the left hand ones. I been diligently working on the right turns and think I pinpointed the problem. It seems that I’m either turning the handlebars just a bit too much or thinking about it too much. Or as I did yesterday not thinking about turning at all as I headed to towards the end of the parking lot and suddenly realized that I was not turning away from the bushes and trees but very sedately still heading right at them. Instant scrambled brain! Turn, turn, stop, stop where are the brakes, shit … not coaster brakes, hand brakes dummy, hand brakes, move fingers up to clasp the hand brakes, turn, turn…. Whew, it all worked out with a clumsy right-hand turn that wobbled but didn’t fall down. Yeah!

So if I never learned to ride a bike before this where did I get illusion that I had coaster brakes as this is a million-geared mountain bike that I’m practicing on. Way back when, in my very early twenties I thought it would be cool to finally learn how to ride a bike, so I bought one; a basic bike with coaster brakes that I tried to ride all of a week. I crash-landed too many times that week, lost any confident that I thought I had and sold the bike. So it appears that the fragments of using coaster brakes from that short experience are firmly entrenched in my brain patterns.

Flight Plan

Flight Plan

Last year, after ten years of working in a cubicle, of being the office go-fer, I left my job. The thought of remaining in a financially safe, boring position for another nine years just to retire was depressing. Unable to perceive a way out or how to move forward, I did the illogical and bailed out during a major economic crisis. Several weeks later, while sorting through an old box of personal paperwork, I found my unfinished application to the Peace Corps—a forgotten dream.

Today, I cross-off another square on my calendar. . .78 days to Benin.

late afternoon
the erratic route
of a bumblebee


(Note: this was written a couple of months ago)

Night Song

After fifty years of skirmishing with my hair, we come to terms; it will behave if I don’t unduly impose my will on its free spirit. My mane accepts a moderate haircut, one length, slightly above my shoulders; this allows the freedom to fly unhindered in dreams and reveals my face in the daylight. We have tried longer tresses, catering to my desire to have a braid meandering down my back. While there was no hirsute rebellion about being plaited each night, for both my hair and I fretted about being entangled in a dream state, there came the afternoon I clearly heard, “Cut me.”

This time, instead of returning to the cropped, boyish styles that I usually wear after a period of long hair, I try shoulder length—most days worn with two side combs winging my hair back from my face (almost a 1940s look) or unceremoniously gathered together with a rubber band when my neck is hot. Today, I realize that I can still draw my hair up into a tight, twisted bun—for those days at work when I want to subtly announce, "Don’t mess with me."

Now, I find a certain ease in dreams with a brush of hair crooning just over my shoulders; anchored but free.

night breeze
through the wisteria
the wind chimes

(c) 2007, Beverly Tift
Haibun Today