Lucky Dorito

One of the docs at my office took up riding his bike for exercise at age 58. He had both knees replaced less than 18 months ago due to arthritis and he still rides. A lot. It’s nothing for him to ride 15 or 20 miles a day. I stay impressed with his tenacity, that’s for sure. Especially since he’s in his mid-60′s now.

Due to the inclement weather we’ve been experiecing lately, he has resorted to taking *spinning* classes at our local YMCA. He has been talking about it at the office, not to make me feel like a slug (although it does!) but because he is truly jazzed to find something to DO while the weather is yucky.

We were talking about it at work the other day when I suddenly had a flashback memory so vivid that I just had to share it. Another example of classic *dumb dory* moments. (Gosh, that should be a category title huh?)

When I was a junior in high school, my boyfriend (and future ex-husband) mentioned something about having an old bike in his dads garage still, collecting cobwebs. I got all excited, thinking, “Really? And nobody is using it? That’s what I need!” with visions of being a kid, riding my bike in the neighborhood. Loving the freedom it gave me. I figured it would be just as fun as I remembered as a kid. I mentioned it several times and he sort of shot me down, over and over, explaining that it needed a lot of work. The chain was broken and would need to be replaced and it had a flat tire… yada yada yada.

It turns out that he had decided to fix it up for me with his spare time. He appeared one afternoon with it all ready to go and presented it to me as if it was the greatest gift in the world. And truly, I suppose it was a pretty fabulous gift… I had practically begged for it, after all.

Just as I was starting to get on – realizing as I did that a boys bike is shaped different from a girls bike. Hmmm. Who knew? Not only is there a bar in the wrong place – my legs were way shorter than his. He was rushing me onto it, to try it out just as I was noticing these things and thinking in my head that this is not exactly what I had been picturing in my head.

So, over swings my leg and I am straddling it, thinking…. well…. praying that I would not make a total fool out of myself. He gave the seat of the bike a little shove to get me going and ….

I… rolled… right… across… the… street… and… right… into… the… curb.

You can just hear Newton’s First Law of Motion in your head picturing what happened, right?

You guessed it – I ran smack dab into the curb and flew arse over teakettle onto the grass.

I jumped up, hurt only by embarrassment, just in time to see him throw his hands up in the air and exclaim, “Oh. My. Gosh. You can’t even RIDE a bike!”, probably picturing all the hours he had wasted fixing up the bike for me to promptly wreck it. (He always was prone to be quick tempered, but I was too young to realize at the time that was a way of life for him, not just a random thing.) I stammered my apology through my gales of giggles as he picked up the bike and put it back in his car and began to leave, still muttering under his breath. I was laughing my head off…. thinking how stupid I must have looked and yelling out to him as he drove off, “Oh come on…. lemme try again.” He just shook his head and kept going. Dork.

That was the last time I was ever on a bike. It still cracks me up to think of it.

P.S. Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law Big Bad Brad! Have a great day, bro.

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