I’m not biking this year (again)

Every time I say I don’t know how to ride a bike it is like suddenly there’s a stage light focused on me, that will follow me wherever I go for the next five minutes I’ll spend explaining the reasons why I’m not getting on a citibike. New year, same shit. Every time I say I’m also not interested in learning something new at such an old age. Yes, I am 24. No, I’m not old for everything. Yes, I am still young. But not to have scratches on my knee or to put myself deliberately, purposely, in situations of failure. Dude, if I wanna feel like a failure, I just have to look at my bank account after spending three hours on tiktok. Plus, I do not need to wear a helmet. My head is watermelon shaped and everyone knows we, the watermelon society, cannot and will not wrap anything around it. But back to the biking thing, people seem to be so much more bothered than I am about the fact I will never get ass cramps and stories about how the other day a truck almost ran over me. Of course, there were moments in my life where I wished I knew how to sit on two moving wheels, like when I was in Amsterdam, for example – I almost created a new kind of oppression in those ten days I spent there. Obviously, I walked everywhere I went and my friend, who has lived immersed in the bike tribe for years now, was surprisingly the most supportive person about my great lack of mobility. Maybe I was getting a second wind, when you’re surrounded by a certain environment everything different from it seems better. I mean, as a New Yorker I will never appreciate a slow-paced walker, but, in another environment, I think it’s amazing to just… walk by in no rush. My decision of not riding a bike this year, like all the other years before this one, comes also from the realization of the verbal sentence I use. Never in my life have I said, “I want to know how to ride a bike.” It’s always “I wish I knew.” Meaning that, I wish it happened before when I cared less, when I had less attachment to my spine and knees, more courage to give myself a chance to fall. I hate New Year’s resolutions (since 2020 – I’ve learned my lesson, thank you very much) and I didn’t think too much about what I want for this year. But definitely, though, I hope to be giving more shits about what I want to know rather than the things I wish I knew.