Tales from the early days
Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.
8. My origin myth
Superheroes have origin myths. Superman was a foundling in a spaceship. Wonder Woman was an Amazonian princess. My debut into bicycling and my identity as a bicyclist has an origin narrative, too.
I became a bicyclist when we became a one-car family. It was only going to be until we could afford a car, but I discovered I love bicycling and I love not having a car payment. We never did buy a 2nd car.
During my first year as a bicyclist, I biked when I had to. Sometimes I biked to campus and drove home with Iain, sometimes we drove to campus and I biked home. I thought maybe sometimes he could bike and I could drive, but he wasn’t interested.
It was the second year that I started bicycling whenever I had a chance, and I only drove when I had to. That was the year that I had a major abdominal surgery. I learned of other women whose lives were forever changed by the procedure. I was terrified that I would be prematurely old (I was 31). As soon after the surgery as I could with permission, I started doing stomach crunches every night until I could do one sit-up. I tried to do one more sit-up than I had the night before. Within a year I could do 100 sit-ups! Even when I was in the best shape of my life, I had never been able to do that before.
I started biking to work within a few weeks of my surgery. I biked slowly, but the nice thing about biking was that it didn’t hurt. The hunched-over position was actually comfortable. I biked whenever I could. I only drove if I was picking up Nell from school, or going out to eat with my family and they didn’t want to bike.
The moral of this story is that, just like not being able to afford a car payment was one of the best things that ever happened to me, major abdominal surgery also turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.