Especially when one is biking for the first time to class.
With a group of inexperienced bikers.
In a foreign country.
Who don't speak the language.
Can't recognize the traffic signs.
And don't know where their brakes are.
Let me just say that we probably should have started bike lessons a few days prior to an excursion downtown. But when we went to pick out our bikes on Saturday at the nice little bike shop I discovered the first day I got lost (that's another story), I did not see through the giddy elation to the impending disasters. I was mildly warned that I would "need to let a few of us know what to do..."
I was not prepared for the heightened anxiety and nail biting process that getting to class produced today. After two mild crashes, in which it was proclaimed that maybe the bikes were not quite right, 2 ignored red lights, and multiple traffic jams on narrow bike lanes, I felt ready to have everyone walk!
Crash number 1: at stop number 1.
Crash number 2: into the back of biker number 2.
By this time, we all had our eye on biker number 5, Mistress of these particular crashes. We were ready to warn her, or move out of her way, at a moment's notice.
Crash number 3 was one very spectacular event in the final turn toward school, and was a surprise for all of us. Our dear and delicate friend (NOT the one, mind you, that we were watching for), miraculously extracted herself from the center of an intersection, a mail truck, and a tram line with a small nod, graceful smile, and wave to move on.
By the time we arrived downtown, I was a Mother Hen Mess of wondering what had gone wrong.
It was on the return trip home when enlightenment struck. Full force. In the form of a cement post. We had just left our Castillaña friends with directions how to get to and from a certain landmark (nail-biting moment number 12) and an outline of how to return home on my newly weathered and frustration-mangled map. Feeling over-confident having only one charge to watch out for, I regretted my nerve when she(remember biker number 5?) plowed dead center into the 'standing policeman' and... uprooted it from its spot! On the corner of an intersection. On an entrance to a bridge. A CEMENT post. UPROOTED.
Now, to be fair, another cyclist was headed straight for her. And, in her defense, the bikers of Amsterdam are rather... aggressive... ahem. A kindly old gentleman stopped us after she extracted herself from the post, which was left angling wildly to one side.
With her pride, and side, badly bruised, he spoke to her in English: You are so brave!
To me, he spoke in Dutch: Put her in front of you so you can see where she is going!! She is just like my wife...
Following his sage advice, we managed to steer ourselves up and over the bridge. On the turn to our dorpje's limits, her confidence regained. She was sandwiched between myself and him, but in a moment of abandon, she catapulted past him and down the path, careening to the left and heading right towards traffic!
He shouted back at me urgently: Catch up! Catch up!
*
Tonight, over IB profin to bring down the swelling, calcium to mitigate cramping, and vaseline for her cut (the grand prize for Most Crashes Sustained), she confessed: You know, I just told my brother that I had three disasters on the bike, and you know what he said? Who let YOU get a bike?! Are they crazy?!
Then she proceeded to tell me: I never did understand where the brakes were, you know!
I was dumbstruck: But do you drive? (Mind you, she is an accomplished MD in her country)
Are you kidding?? she replied, (with an impish grin)... I would run into everything!
She then added that as a child, she once biked straight into the Headmaster of her school, crashed multiple times, and could never quite realize just how the thing operated! The Headmaster himself had told her in front of her class, and her parents agreed, that she was banned from biking. By this point, my own guilt was assuaged. This here was a rebellious act of defiant freedom!
We decided she should, and could, keep biking. Away from others. And maybe with bumpers. At least till she learns how to turn. Or how to brake.
Or how to jump off.
She might be here for another MA, but her REAL degree is going to be Biking 101.
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