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It’s been about 10 years since I rode a bike with any regularity. Back in college, it was my main means of transport, especially when I couldn’t be bothered with waiting for the bus. I’ve gotten to where I really miss it, and thus when my parents were going to sell their old bikes at a yard sale, I asked them to save my mom’s for me.

However — and this is an important however — skills tend to atrophy after a decade of disuse, as I found this evening on my inaugural ride. Not that I forgot how to ride, at least the basics (I didn’t fall off, or come close to falling off). I’m rather out of shape and practice and was hardly expecting to ride for an hour or so, but I blame the fact that my ride only lasted fifteen minutes and that I was somewhat red in the face for quite a while afterwards on the fact that my gear-shifting skills are, apparently, withered away into nothing. Trying to use unfamiliar gear mechanisms without a diagram or instructions didn’t help, either.

It was quite embarrassing. Going up a hill, I only managed to make it harder and harder to pedal, and finally had to give up and walk the damned thing to the peak of the hill. On the flat, though, when I tried to get more resistance to build up speed, the stiffer gears disappeared and suddenly my pedals were flying around at 700 rpm, while my speed dwindled to that of an asthmatic pug.

I’ve tried Googling for the manufacturer of the gears (seven-speed Shimano, circa 1988) and for the bike manufacturer (Trek Antelope). Not a whole lot of help to be found. Lots of really bike-geeky stuff that I, quite honestly, don’t give a shit about; lots of “which bike is best for me?” walkthroughs; but no “here’s how to change gears on an older secondhand bike because you haven’t ridden a bike much at all since your dog was born and you’ve forgotten” assistance. You’d think I’d be able to pick it up through use, and maybe that’ll work, after much mortification and getting out of breath in front of the entire neighborhood. I just need to find somewhere to ride while I’m relearning, where no one who knows me will see me. o.O

Oh yeah, and I remembered the reason I stopped wearing bell-bottomed jeans in college, besides the fact that it was the first half of the 1990s and they were horribly out of fashion anyway: it’s scary when your trouser leg nearly gets caught in the gears. (No way I’m wearing those little spandexy tights, though. Neither the neighbors nor I need that sort of horror.)

Addendum: According to How Stuff Works, the top lever is supposed to move the chain to a bigger sprocket, and the lower lever is supposed to move it down. Hmm. I swear that I was trying every lever I could get my thumbs on, on each side, but maybe I was just afflicted with horribly bad luck and always shifted in the direction opposite of what I needed, and just got irrevocably screwed up. More practice needed, I suppose. Meh.