My Other Car Is A Bike

So I've officially started riding my bike to work each day. It's been three summers since I rode every day. The last two I couldn't ride to work each day because my office was out in the suburbs. The summer before that, it was too painful to ride because my hip bone was essentially melting in its socket.

But now, all that has changed! I pumped up my tires and started on my merry little way Monday morning. There's something really quite beautiful about the city at that time of day, even though the people driving the cars are mental, the traffic is really annoying, and the roads are a mess, it's still refreshing to be outside in the air and the sunshine, peddling your way from one place (home) to the next (work).

I had a boyfriend who once told me that muscles have memory. In some ways, I know this to be true, when I'm in dance class and the teacher does something like say a grande plie, my body knows exactly what to do from years of study when I was younger. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the muscles still move in the same way; they might remember, but they're certainly not strong enough to pull it off, like, at all. So my grande plie looks kind of lopsided and funny, especially because my hip is still so awkward.

So, it's kind of the same with biking. It's obvious that I know how to ride a bike, but I've been so scared to get back on the daily two-wheeled commute because I figured I wouldn't have the energy and/or the stamina to handle a long-ish (say over 30 minutes) trek from my house to downtown. I had to psyche myself up for it all weekend, and kept saying, "the only way to do it is to do it."

It's embarrassing, I know, and I felt like a Nike ad just saying it over and over again in my mind. But now, after even just two days, I feel like a pro. This morning I even gave someone the hairy eyeball for parking their giant minivan, with the engine still running, in the bike lane on Harbord.

I feel better already and I even slept better last night. I have more energy and I'm even looking forward to a longer than usual ride home this evening, as I stop in on yet another book event. Fingers crossed my hip stays healthy and the disease likes this level of energy. By the end of the summer you probably won't even recognize me.