Sally Breslin: My Life: I THINK MODERN BICYCLES WERE DESIGNED FOR SPEED, NOT COMFORT

When I was a kid, bicycles were simple – upright handlebars, a foot-braking system, a thickly cushioned seat, and two wheels with big, balloon tires. You also could add touches like a basket to carry stuff in, or a bell and a light on the handlebars.

Simple.

I rode my bike everywhere when I was a kid and really enjoyed it, so when I got married and moved out to the country, I (because I hadn’t yet learned how to drive a car) decided to buy another bike...a modern one. The nearest food store was three miles from our house, so I thought it would be great exercise for me to hop on a bike and pedal it over there whenever I needed something.

The bike I bought was considered state-of-the-art for its time. It had five speeds, a streamlined seat, and handlebars that resembled rams’ horns. The best part was it weighed only about half of what my old bike weighed.

Unfortunately, my first ride on it left me feeling so terrified, I nearly had to undergo counseling before I dared to ride it again

Back then, we lived on a street that steeply sloped down to a busy highway. The day my bike was delivered, I was so eager to try it, I climbed right on it and took off, zooming down the hill. As the highway grew closer, I pushed my feet backwards on the pedals in an attempt to slow down the bike before stopping it, the way I’d always done on my old bike with the foot brakes.

Nothing happened.

I could see the cars zipping by at 60 mph on the highway below as I rapidly approached them. I continued to push back on the pedals, trying to stop the bike, but they just kept moving until I looked as if I were pedaling backwards.

Visions of my body becoming a permanent decoration on the side of an 18-wheeler began to pop into my mind, when I suddenly remembered the bike had handbrakes. Panicking, I squeezed them both at once, as hard as I could. The bike came to such an abrupt halt, I nearly had to dig my teeth out of the asphalt.

But if I thought getting used to handbrakes was a challenge, trying to learn when and how to change the bike’s speeds was even worse. Even though there were only five speeds, I didn’t have the slightest clue at which point I was supposed to use which one. Every time I tried, the bike made a grinding sound and nothing happened. I finally gave up and just left it on the lowest speed for everything.

The problem with using only one bike speed, however, was trying to climb steep hills. It was about as easy as strapping cannonballs to my ankles and attempting to hike up Mount Washington. I did so much grunting, it’s a wonder I didn’t attract a wild boar in search of a mate.

And I quickly developed a strong dislike for the ram’s-horns handlebars – not only because of their strange shape, but also because they forced me to ride in a really unflattering position – with my butt up in the air. Every time I had to stop at a traffic light, I would cringe, imagining the view the people in the cars behind me were being subjected to.

I also disliked the poor excuse for a seat on the bicycle. Gone was the wide, thickly padded seat of bygone days. In its place was something about the same size and shape of a Dorito...made of granite. When I sat on the bike, the seat completely disappeared, so I looked as if I were sitting on just a metal post.

The old bikes used to have protective fenders over the tires to prevent mud and water from kicking up onto the rider. But my new bike had exposed tires. The first time I rode it in my hunched-over position during a rainstorm, so much mud and dirt ended up on my back, it made a big black stripe down the entire length of my white sweatshirt.

I looked like a mutant skunk.

My husband soon grew tired of listening to me complain about my bike, so he decided he’d also buy one and go riding with me to show me just how much fun and how enjoyable modern bicycles could be.

So we went bike shopping and after hours of deliberation, he finally selected a 15-speed Huffy - not because he actually knew anything about 15-speeds. He just wanted to look really macho.

Most of our first ride together was spent with him fiddling with all of the speeds on his bike and trying to figure them out. In fact, they distracted him to such a degree, more than once he and his bike nearly became intimately acquainted with a pine tree.

And the road he picked had so many hills and bumps on it, it could have been used as a training course for Olympic mogul skiers. I began to feel as if I were riding on a bucking bronco because my body was off the seat more than on it. After about the 150th bump, I was ready to just ditch my bike in some bushes and hitchhike back home.

Needless to say, "fun" and "enjoyable" were not exactly the adjectives I would have chosen to describe our ride.

When we finally made it back home, I asked my husband if he'd enjoyed his first outing on his fancy new bike.

“Well,” he said, “the ride was both good and bad. The bad was the seat. I never want to torture myself again by sitting on that rock-hard sliver of plastic some sadist thought was a good idea to design.”

“And the good?” I asked.

"I’m pretty sure the last big bump we hit cured my hemorrhoids.”

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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