Getting ready to bike the Shimanami Kaido
The Mission: Shimanami Kaido (しまなみ海道) Cycling Trail
After spending two weeks in Japan with my dad, I’ll be traveling around the country with my boyfriend and his family. Our main focus will be city-hopping and experiencing as much of the island nation as possible in two weeks! Le bf’s family is much more of the “outdoorsy type” (I’m more of a…exercise at a minimum type…) so their list of things to do includes biking the Shimanami Kaido (at least partially) that links Hiroshima and Ehime prefectures.
The Obstacle
This is all fine and good. Except that I don’t bike. Well, technically I knew how to bike, but I hadn’t really ridden on one since middle school. I basically missed the biking memo in college, too. While every sane student bought/rented a bike on Stanford’s (flat but expansive) campus, I felt I couldn’t trust other students (or myself) to bike safely and decided that walking was the best thing to do. [My fears were not unfounded. Every quarter, a kid would come to class bloodied from a bike accident at our “Circle of Death.”] I like walking, so I figured I’d be fine. [Plus side: I am super good at speed walking to class.]
When I eventually gave in to a transportation device senior year, I chose to bring back my trusty Razor scooter from my parents’ garage. It’s amazing that no screws fell out while I sped through campus. When I finally had enough sense to check the equipment, I realized some of it was rusted…¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I had good times with my scooter, though. Sometimes, especially at night, I would ride around singing when I thought no one was around. Inevitably, people spotted me sometimes, but I continued to derp around anyway.
Anyway, since I’m supposed to cycle on an expressway in approximately a month, we thought it was a good idea for me to practice. So, this past weekend I went to bf’s house to try biking.
At first, I was terrified. I was convinced that I would fall. I was convinced I would break something (bones or a parked car). At first, my boyfriend was kind of just like, “Go. Don’t be scared, you’ll be fine.” In his typical fashion, he continued, “If you break something, you’ll just get a cast.” ……
Little Steps
For a few minutes, I just looked at the pedals incredulously (not actually pedaling), and gave my boyfriend a frantic WHAT DO I DO?! face. At this point, he realized that I was, in fact, not joking that I didn’t really remember how to get on the bike and was much more helpful 🙂 I kicked off the ground, pedaled, gripped onto the handles for dear life and found, to my delight, that I could bike in a straight line! Success!
Breaking and turning, on the other hand, proved unexpectedly more difficult. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it. Thanks, Kenji, for dealing with me and helping me (re)learn how to bike! 🙂
